Would a CHP-MHP alliance work?

It is two months since the first Gezi Park protests broke out. This morning's Cumhuriyet recounts the casualties: five dead, eleven blinded, 106 with head traumas and 63 people seriously injured. Although the protests continue, notably in Antakya last week, there is no doubting the protests have died down.

It is quite clear that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his governing AK party have embraced what The Economist astutely described as "democratic majoritarianism", the view that electoral might always makes you right. Three consecutive terms, a 50% victory at the last election and an opinion poll lead that was curbed but not shaken by the Gezi Park incidents all point to the government's enduring legitimacy, AK supporters say.

CHP surges in first post-protest opinion poll

One way of assessing the political implications of the unrest in Turkey, which has entered its fifteenth day, is to look at what opinion polling has to say. Politicians, reporters and foreign observers alike are all keen to know how the events have affected how the country intends to vote.

We may now have the results of the first serious attempt at polling in the last two weeks. They show a significant narrowing of the gap between the governing AK party and the opposition CHP.

The headline figure (with changes from Gezici's last poll in May) is AKP 38.5% (-3.2), CHP 31.8 (+3.6), MHP 18.5 (-1), BDP 8.2 (-0.9).

The result is the strongest CHP showing that I've seen since just after current leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu's election in May 2010. Consider this graph:

The first step of the peace process: a PKK ceasefire

What happened this morning is quite extraordinary.

The imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan, released a message calling for peace in southeast Turkey.

Tens of thousands of people turned out in Diyarbakır to hear it.

The message, to mark the Kurdish new year of Nowruz, was read out in Kurdish and Turkish.

The PKK leader called for his organisation's armed militants to retreat across the border back into northern Iraq. He did not ask them to disarm. 

Turkey's next election: the CHP's challenge

Here’s a prediction that won’t astonish anyone: the CHP will not win Turkey’s next general election in two years’ time.

A victory for the main opposition party is a monumentally difficult thing to achieve not just because of the party’s current leadership woes, but because the governing AK Party has a solid hold on power.

A Metropoll survey at the end of December, which showed a near-uniform swing in support away from the three main parties, reported a full 25 per cent of voters saying

Back to where we started

These are the elections Turkey must hold in the next thirty-six months:

• March 2014: local elections (most likely on the 30th, the final Sunday);
• August 2014: presidential election (31 August most likely for first round, with the second, if required, to follow a fortnight later);
• June 2015: parliamentary election (14 June most likely).

If the glacial work of a 16-member parliamentary committee charged with writing the country's new constitution ever bears fruit, there will be a referendum to vote on that as well. But the committee was due to report back at the end of 2012 and, well, it hasn't, so it's perhaps not worth holding your breath.

While that work continues, the political chattering classes are speculating over electoral scenarios: can the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) score a high profile win against the governing AK Party by, say, winning control of the Istanbul mayoralty? Is it even possible to weaken the AK Party's punctilious grip on power?

In 2009, the CHP came close to wresting Istanbul away from AK, following a slick campaign led by its candidate, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. The difference btween the two parties came to 7.5 percentage points, far narrower than any recent national result, and allowed Mr Kılıçdaroğlu to become the only credible contender for the national party's leadership later that year.

The party now needs a new candidate for Istanbul and the most obvious name is Mustafa Sarıgül, the maverick mayor of the city’s Şişli district and easily the country’s most recognisable local politician. The rumour is that Kadir Topbaş, the current AK mayor, is being lined up for a role in national politics. Up against a fresh-faced AK candidate, Mr Sarıgül could become Istanbul’s first left-wing mayor in 25 years.

For an assessment of the second question, that of the AK Party’s seemingly unending hold on elected office, kindly consider the rough chart below.

The above shows the June 2011 election result (on the far left) followed by quarterly averages of voting intention data from Genar, Konsensus, MetroPoll, Pollmark and Sonar.

Any half-decent pollster will tell you that a trend of similar results is more valuable than a single, potential outlier result in gauging the public mood. In that vein, it is worth ignoring the specific numbers indicated above and looking just at the gradients.

There are two recent trends are immediately noticeable:

1) After a bump early last year, AK Party support has declined to just below its record 2011 election result;

2) CHP support has shown an increase, but not one proportional to AK’s decline.

Importantly, this chart does not tell us how many Turkish people plan to vote, but don’t know who for. The figures are compiled from the polling companies’ headline results and it is standard Turkish practice to distribute undecided voters among the other parties proportionately. (*)

Bearing this in mind, what does this poll of polls suggest? That we are back to where we were in June 2011: the two polls conducted at the end of last year, if reflected in an election, would deliver a healthy AK majority above 300 seats, a 120-strong CHP opposition and a small Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) contingent of around 50.

So the AK Party juggernaut rolls forward. But how to boot it from government altogether, or at least reduce its majority and force it into a coalition?

There are two main schools of thought on this.

The first centres on the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The AK Party is built around his personality, the argument goes, and risks fragmentation or utter collapse once he steps down. The second is even simpler: the AK Party occupies the Turkish centre ground and other parties need to dislodge it to win power.

But waiting for Mr Erdoğan to go and seizing upon a power vacuum is a risky game. Far better for AK’s opponents to invest in the second approach.

The trouble is, whatever the opposition’s strategy might be, the polling averages show that it is not working.

* For more on what is standard practice and what is not in Turkish polling, read my post from June last year and Christy Quirk’s comment in particular.

The polls are wrong: one in two Turks won’t vote AKP

A 52 percent poll lead does not mean one in every two Turks would vote AK tomorrow

A year ago, Turkey’s AK Party won a third successive term in government. The victory came as no surprise; that they increased their share of the vote to just under 50 percent took most commentators aback. A poll by Konsensus in Haberturk last weekend suggested that, in the event an of an election tomorrow, they would repeat the feat, increasing their share further still. The headline result was AKP 51.6 / CHP 26.8 / MHP 12.7 / BDP 5.0, virtually unchanged since the last Konsensus poll three months ago.

This does not mean one in every two Turks would vote AK in a hypothetical election tomorrow, because the results are more opaque than you might think. Pollsters in Turkey have a habit of sharing out respondents who do not express a voting preference among all the parties proportionally. This gives everyone a nice, round number out of 100, but it inflates the support of each party and effectively ignores anyone who hasn’t made their mind up.

In the same Konsensus poll, the undistributed result (with changes from their March survey) was AKP 43.1 (-4.7) / CHP 22.4 (-3.2) / MHP 10.6 (-1.7) / BDP 4.2 (-1.0). Far from an increase, the trend here suggests a decline in support for all parties, with AK and CHP hit the hardest. This is the lowest Konsensus has polled for AK since before last year’s election.

More interesting is the number of those non-committal voters – those who were undecided, or would spoil their ballot, or not vote at all – which this month came in at 16.4 percent. It suggests one in every six voters has not made up their mind – that’s twice as many as the last survey. In fact, Konsensus hasn’t reported such a high proportion of voter apathy for a year-and-a-half, well before the last election.

Now, part of this is because of time: the last election is long gone, the next is a couple of years away, and politics simply won’t register with as many people. The fact that all parties have suffered losses suggests this may well be the case. But the CHP and AK Party losses are significantly larger, which could point to greater disappointment in the larger parties. It is difficult to establish how statistically significant the drop in AK and CHP support is without looking at a trend – which means more polling, please.

That said, the “apathy vote” should not be overblown. All pollsters, even those hostile to the government, are showing a solid AK Party lead fuelled by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s personal popularity. It would easily win that hypothetical election tomorrow, even if we can’t say by how much.

Konsensus’s other headling-grabbing finding was the answer to “Who should succeed Abdullah Gül as President?”, which Mr Erdoğan topped for the first time. Fatih Altaylı, writing in Haberturk, argues that public awareness of the president’s role has greatly increased and that Mr Erdoğan’s high approval ratings have made him a sure bet for the role, able to claim it “without moving a finger”.

Of course, things can change in an instant, and that instant might come this week, when the Constitutional Court is due to rule on the length of President Gül’s term. The government had set it at a single term of seven years, but the CHP argued this didn’t tally with the earlier 2007 referendum, where Turkish voters endorsed two terms of five years for their president, and took it to the court.

The ruling is due on Friday. Ali Rıza Çoban, the rapporteur, has already submitted his report, which found that the president’s term should be seven years, but preventing him from seeking re-election for another five would be unconstitutional.

The report is only advisory; it will be the court judges who make the decision. It won’t be an easy choice, though, as it could spell a potential twelve years in office for Mr Gül, taking him to 2019. That wouldn’t poll well with Mr Erdoğan.

Election 2007: timetable of events

Following on from yesterday's missive, a quick guide for when to expect what in Turkey's election today. Let's hope for a few surprises.

7am - voting begins in 32 eastern provinces, 8am in the west.

4pm - voting closes in the east, 5pm everywhere else. Counting begins soon after the queuing remainders have voted.

6pm - first results start trickling in to newswires and Twitter. Turkish TV wringing its hands showing lifestyle programming: no-one is allowed to report the results until the Electoral Commission lifts its election news ban.

Midnight - Scheduled end of Electoral Commission's ban on TV results coverage, allowing ample time to make sure every ballot box in the country is safely tucked away.

6.50pm - Around now, Turkish TV loses patience and switches to live coverage of Electoral Commission's front door. Reporters shout for permission to read out results that anyone with an internet connection has already seen.

7pm - Electoral Commission spontaneously announces every ballot box has been found, no-one is still voting in a remote village, and acquiesces: TV results coverage permitted.

7.01pm - Explosion of results. More than a quarter of all votes should have been counted by now; most will be from eastern provinces, where voting finished earlier. AK dominate in the northeast, so will have won most of the seats so far. The fate of the BDP independents should be clearer too. Watch out for Leyla Zana in Diyarbakır.

7.45pm - First substantial results from the west by now. If vote counting is as fast as it was in 2007, the networks should be calling the election for AK around now too. The size of their majority will depend on whether MHP has crossed the threshold.

8.30pm - Vote share for all three main parties should be roughly clear by now, unless the MHP really is on a knife-edge.

10pm - Final colour of Istanbul's 85 seats should be clear by now.

Golden Numbers of Election Night

Alas, James in Turkey will shirking its good name for this Sunday's election. The bright lights of other events around the same time have been enough a distraction to prevent travel to Turkey, or even to cover the vote from afar. Selections from this blog's coverage for the last time the country did this is still available, though.

By way of recompense for the radio silence around this election, however, allow me to offer the Golden Numbers of Election Night. This is your indispensable guide to the numbers to watch out for as the votes are counted, categorised by political party:

AK Party
Justice and Development Party, religious conservative, governing
276 - absolute majority: the number of seats AK need to govern alone for a third term.
330 - the number of seats needed to change the Turkish constitution, pending approval in a referendum
367 - supermajority: the number of seats needed to change the Turkish constitution without a referendum

CHP
Republican People's Party, centre-left, main opposition
21% - CHP's share of the national vote in 2007's general election
23% - CHP's share of the national vote in 2009's local elections
Anything above 25% would represent a significant improvement on CHP's previous performance, which had exploited a saturated secularist constituency.
Anything above 30% would be an excellent result, a victory for leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, and possibly enough to prevent AK receiving an absolute majority.

MHP
Nationalist Action Party, right wing, opposition
10% - the national share of the vote MHP must cross to win any seats. Stay above, and they could win as many as 70 seats. Fall below, and even provinces the MHP is projected to win - like Mersin and Osmaniye - are likely to fall to AK, possibly helping the governing party towards a supermajority.

BDP
Peace and Democracy Party, pro-Kurdish, candidates running as independents
20 - the minimum number of seats required to form a group in parliament, receive additional funding, and be represented in parliamentary select committees
21 - the number of seats won by pro-Kurdish candidates at the last election
30 - the highest number of seats pro-Kurdish candidates could realistically win in this election, making them kingmakers in a parliament where AK falls short of one of its majorities

MHP crashes below threshold in opinion poll, but result is really a CHP victory

Just two parties are likely to cross the 10 percent threshold at the next Turkish election, according to the latest Haberturk/Konsensüs opinion poll. The results, which paint a dangerous picture for voter representation in Turkey, suggest the right-wing Nationalist Action Party (MHP) has the support of only 8.5 percent of voters, which would be the party's worst showing at a general election for nine years.

Just under a quarter of respondents were undecided, said would spoil their ballot or declined to answer the question. Here was what Konsensüs found, with the undecided vote shared among the parties and changes from the previous month's survey in brackets:

AK Party: 49.6 (+3.6) [Justice and Development Party, governing, religious conservative]
CHP: 26.8 (+0.3) [Republican People's Party, secularist]
MHP: 11.1 (-1.4) [Nationalist Action Party, nationalist]
BDP: 6.9 (+0.2) [Peace and Democracy Party, pro-Kurdish]
SP: 0.8 (-2.4) [Felicity Party, strongly Islamist]
Others: 5.6 (+0.5)

AK Party sources were delighted: this poll appears to confirm that their oft-repeated target of a 50% is quite attainable. Press coverage has also focused much on the fate of the MHP, which falls foul of the electoral threshold before the undecideds are shared out. It confirms fears that the dwindling support of the nationalists means that they have a real battle on their hands to ensure they actually make it into the chamber.

But press coverage of the results seems to have overlooked the support of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP). Take a look at my estimated calculations of what parliament would look like (based, as ever, on my calculations**, and with changes from the 2007 election result):

AK Party: 301 (-40)
CHP: 162 (+50)
MHP: 67 (-4)
BDP: 20 seats (no change)
Total: 550 seats

These results would give AK a majority to govern alone - just. But they would also give the CHP their best results since 2002, but this time in a parliament of three parties, not two. This parliament would have a much stronger opposition, despite the rise in AK's share of the vote. It would be an excellent result for Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, CHP leader.

A few other observations from this opinion poll:

• Voters appear to be flocking towards the larger parties. Fewer people said they will vote for the far-right BBP or the fundamentalist SP. This trend suggests Turkish voters are increasingly aware fringe parties are unlikely to be represented in parliament.
• Konsensüs posed a number of "problems" in Turkish current affairs and asked which party was best-placed to solve them. The AK Party, unsurprisingly, led in them all, but it was interesting that just a few percentage points separated them from the CHP when asked which party was best placed to solve "inequalities in income distribution". A sign that the CHP's return to social democratic roots might be taking hold?
• Most importantly, this poll was conducted well over a month before the election campaign kicks off. There's plenty that can change between now and 12 June.

* Konsensüs interviewed 1500 people by telephone across Turkey between 2 and 10 February 2011.
** This is a crude and entirely unscientific swing, assuming the 10 percent electoral threshold is not lowered and the pro-Kurdish BDP's 20 MPs decide to run again as independents.

Did Erdogan tell Mubarak to go? Just a little bit.

Amidst all the drama coming out of Egypt, there's been a bit of a buzz about the Turkish prime minister's call to Hosni Mubarak. A number of outlets - notably the excitable Los Angeles Times - have been reporting that Mr Erdoğan used his speech today to turn against the Egyptian president and call on him to step down. That's not strictly true. Here's what he said:

"I want to make a very genuine recommendation, a very heartfelt warning to the President of Egypt Mr Hosni Mubarak," the prime minister said earlier today. "We are mortals, not permanent. Each one of us will die and will be questioned on that which we have left behind. As Muslims, we will all be going to a two-cubic-metre hole (in the ground). ... All that comes with you will be your shroud. 

"That is why we should listen to the voices of both our consciences and our people. Lend an ear to the people's cry, to their most humane demands, and meet their call for change without hesitation. ... Freedoms can no longer be delayed or overlooked in today's world. Elections that span over months cannot be called democracy."

A few points on this:

1. These were carefully crafted remarks. Mr Erdoğan did not explicitly call on Mr Mubarak to go. He urged "quick action" so that there is "no opportunity" given to those "dark forces" who want to "exploit the people's call for change" - all those words are his.

2. This is not a call from the Turkish parliament. Mr Erdoğan was addressing his parliamentary party, not the general assembly, when he said the above. No motion has been tabled or passed.

3. The obvious: Turkey is Muslim. Clearly, it's significant that the democratically-elected leader of the Muslim world's best example of a democracy has spoken out in defence of Egypt's protest movement. Mr Erdoğan's stock has risen in the Arab world over his outspoken comments on Israel. The question is whether his words carry weight now.

4. America's implicit support: Mr Erdoğan was one of the world leaders to receive a call during Barack Obama's telephone diplomacy session over the weekend. I would be astonished if today's statement comes as a surprise to the United States.

5. For you seasoned followers of Turkish domestic politics, the right-wing Nationalist Action Party (MHP) used the events in Egypt to send a warning to the prime minister. "Abuse of the state's power and resources can have consequences," said Devlet Bahçeli, party leader, in a speech to his own parliamentary party. He is absolutely right: it's partly why his own party was booted out of government in 2002.

MHP chauvinism: make your wife vote for us

News from the bastion of Turkey's right wing: the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) is on the prowl for the female vote. It appears, according to this story from Habertürk (via NTV), that it has finally dawned upon the party leadership that their support base is overwhelmingly male. At the last election, the MHP appears to have learned, the six million votes it received were not equally split between women and men. In fact, fewer than two million women voted them.

This shouldn't be news to anyone other than the MHP. The party leadership has spent years ignoring opinion polls telling them that their support base is overwhelmingly patrilineal. This gender inequality is reflected in the party leadership: Devlet Bahçeli's top team is almost all male. Indeed, many have speculated he himself is an Edward Heath-esque bachelor. The division can also be seen in parliament, where just two of the party's 70 MPs are women.

The MHP's explanation for this electoral deficit comes from its deputy leader, Osman Çakır: our voters' wives aren't voting for us.

"Either these four million men are bachelors, or their wives aren't voting for us," Haberturk quotes him as saying. "A large majority of these men cannot be bachelors, which means votes have not come to the MHP from the women in these households."

Astonishingly, he goes on: "That is why we joke among ourselves by saying 'these men don't treat their wives well, so they react by voting for another party. If they treated them better, this wouldn't be the case'."

Turkish women are woefully under-represented in parliament. The MHP's two token MPs are at the bottom of the pile. The ruling AK Party and opposition CHP have slightly better ratios - nine and eight percent of their parliamentary parties respectively are women - although there are only two women in the cabinet. Both AK and the CHP have pledged to increase female representation at the next election, but it seems unlikely they'll reach the standard set by the pro-Kurdish BDP: one-third of its MPs are women.

Meanwhile, the message to MHP men is clear: treat your women better, because your political party is at stake.

The party leadership is planning to launch its campaign on 28 January under the slogan "Raise your voice, Turkey", when a number of electoral pledges aimed at women - state support for childcare and maternity leave - will be announced.

Last week in my prediction piece for the upcoming election, I said Turkey needed a third party in parliament, and that the MHP should cross the electoral threshold. But with the likes of Mr Çakır in the party, it isn't always that easy to support that.

Who will win Turkey's next general election?

Some astonishing news for you: Turkey's parliament is playing by the rules. That's right. The Grand National Assembly is preparing for an election at the scheduled time.(*) For the first time in decades, longer than most of us can remember, Turkish people will not be dragged to the ballot box because of an exodus of MPs from the ruling party, or a collapsed coalition, or a military intervention. No, the 2011 general election will take place because the rulebook, Turkey's constitution, says it is time for one.

You could say this is a sign of more stable, predictable times in Turkish politics. To a certain extent, you would be right. With six months to go until voting day it looks like AK, the party of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, prime minister, is set to win a third consecutive victory.

That shouldn't surprise many people. Mr Erdoğan's party has a solid record of progress, and it would take someone quite obstinate to argue Turkish people are not better off now than when AK came to power in 2002. Opinion polls suggest the ruling party is likely to win around 45 percent of the vote, close to what they got last time.

But even though the victor is already pretty clear, it is an important election for Turkey. This is what I will be watching out for over the coming six months:

1) Distribution of seats in the new parliament

An AK victory might appear inevitable, but the size of that victory is far from certain. One reason for this is the resurgence of the main opposition CHP. Their newish leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has been working to collect the anti-AK vote under one roof, and has had some success in broadening his party's appeal to voters who supported the right-wing Nationalist Action Party (MHP) at the last election.

Analysts believe that if the CHP can win 30 percent of the vote (up from 20 percent in 2007), they can seriously dent AK's chances of governing alone by winning enough seats to rival them in the chamber.

AK's target is for at least 50 percent of the popular vote. CHP are aiming "to govern alone". Both seem quite far-fetched at this stage, but both objectives reflect the two parties' urgency to win as many seats as possible.

2) The fate of the nationalists

Turkey's electoral system operates a 10 percent threshold. If a party's national share of the vote does not cross that line, it cannot be represented in parliament, regardless of how well they do in individual provinces. As I blogged yonks ago, it's too high and needs to be lowered, but it has helped the AK Party win two crushing parliamentary majorities. Unsurprisingly, they aren't about to kick away the ladder that carried them up to where they are.

AK and the CHP are probably both going to cross the threshold this year, but the same can't be said for the MHP. Polls suggest Devlet Bahçeli's party is in trouble. By some estimates, they may crash below the threshold and out of parliament. That would be in the interests of the two larger parties, giving both of them more seats to play with.

It would not be in the interests of democratic representation. Just over half - 55 percent - of Turkish voters were represented in parliament after the 2002 election because AK and the CHP were the only parties who crossed the threshold. MHP joined them after the 2007 election, meaning that four in every five votes, a better proportion, were represented. Turkey is too pluralistic for at two-party system. A third party must cross.

Nonetheless, all three parties have been stepping up the nationalist rhetoric in recent weeks, which might explain Mr Erdoğan's bizarre intervention to tear down a statue near the Armenian border or his recent war of words with German chancellor Angela Merkel over her recent visit to the Greek side of Cyprus. Expect Israel or the EU to come up before long.

3) What will the prime minister do next?

This is the biggie. Mr Erdoğan has already said that this next term will be his last as leader of his party. He has spoken somewhat wistfully of disappearing somewhere quiet and warm to write his memoirs, but most commentators reckon he has ambitions for the next rung of the ladder - the presidency.

Whether he can achieve this depends on what happens to the incumbent, his former deputy Abdullah Gül. When Mr Gül was elected by parliament in 2007, it was for a single seven-year term, much like his predecessors. But one month later the constitution was amended by referendum: Turkish presidents are now elected - by the people, not parliament - for a maximum two five-year terms.

It is still not clear whether Mr Gül's term of office will measured by the old rules under which he was elected, or the new rules that replaced them. He could have to stand for re-election as early as next year, or serve until 2014. Of course, Mr Erdoğan could start work after the parliamentary election on a new constitution that changes the system entirely - rumours abound of a French-style presidential system, which Mr Erdoğan is understood to covet.

4) The date and the candidates

Sunday 12 June is everyone's best guess for voting day, supported by both CHP and MHP. The government has until March to fire the starting gun, however, and chances are they'll take their time.

In the meantime, the parties have been thinking about their candidates for parliament. Political parties in Turkey are extremely centralised, with every list - 81 of them, one for every province - being personally endorsed by the party leader. In 2007, AK notoriously culled large numbers of its 2002 intake to make way for those who had curried greater favour, and could do the same again.

Interesting names are being banded about, too. Erkan Mumcu - a former AK minister who held the key for Mr Gül's first presidential run, dropped it, then disappeared into nothingness - is reportedly considering a run on the MHP ticket.

An interesting few months await.

(*) Well, nearly. Following the 2007 referendum, Turkish terms of parliament were reduced from five years to four, which means this year's election should be held on 22 July, but given that people last time were queuing in temperatures above 35°C last time, voting looks likely to be brought forward a month.

Opinion poll suggests huge gains for CHP; hollow victory for AK Party

Metropoll's latest opinion poll* just over a week ago asked, among other things, for voting intention. Here are the topline percentages, with changes from the 2009 local election:

AK Party: 45.3 (+6.5) [Justice and Development Party, governing, religious conservative]

CHP: 30.7 (+7.3) [Republican People's Party, secularist]

MHP: 13.8 (+0.3) [Nationalist Action Party, nationalist]

BDP: 6.5 (+2.7) [Peace and Democracy Party, pro-Kurdish]

SP: 1.3 (-0.3)** [Felicity Party, strongly Islamist]

DP: 0.6 (-0.5) [Democrat Party, centre-right]

HAS Party: 0.8 (-2.9)** [People's Voice Party, split from SP]

Others: 0.5

These findings suggest a flock in support towards the four mainstream parties. This is interesting considering we are probably just over six months away from a general election, and Turkish political parties tend to proliferate - rather than unite - around this time.

If this were replicated at a general election, this would be a substantial stride forward for the CHP and its best result in 34 years. For other parties, this poll appears to reproduce the 2007 election result: the governing AK Party stages a recovery from its poor local election showing two years ago, whereas the MHP records a small drop in support that is within the margin of error. All other parties, save the BDP whose members will probably run as independents, fall below the 10 percent threshold.

So how would parliament look in such a scenario? Interestingly, despite the similarities in vote proportions to 2007, the seat distribution would look remarkably different:***

AK Party: 265 seats (-70)

CHP: 180 seats (+79)

MHP: 85 seats (+15)

BDP: 20 seats (no change)

The AK Party would shed around a fifth of its seats and lose its governing majority in the process. The CHP, meanwhile, would be far from able to govern alone and would seriously struggle to lead a coalition with these numbers, but would still become the single largest opposition party AK have ever seen. But why?

The answer lies in vote representation. In 2007, 89 percent of Turks voted for parties and independent candidates who ended up being represented in parliament. Under this poll, the figure would be 96.3 percent. If the findings of this opinion poll are correct, it represents an exodus of voters from the smaller parties. It suggests Turks are aware their vote is less likely to be represented if they don't vote big.

* Metropoll interviewed 1504 people in 31 Turkish provinces between 25 and 29 December 2010. The full survey can be found here.
** The HAS Party split off from the SP late last year. Figures for both parties are compared to SP's 2009 local election result.
*** The above is a crude and entirely unscientific swing, assuming the 10 percent electoral threshold is not lowered and the pro-Kurdish BDP's 20 MPs decide to run again as independents, this poll would roughly produce the following seat distribution in parliament (with changes from the present situation).

Turkey will say 'yes' in next month's referendum, according to poll

Quite in contrast to my predictions of a tight result at Turkey's constitutional referendum on 12 September, GENAR have released a poll that suggests quite a strong yes vote:

Yes: 56.2%
No: 43.8%

The poll predicts a turnout of 87 percent, which is higher than the last referendum (67 percent) and strikes me as rather high even by Turkey's recent electoral record. Predictably, much of the voting is along party lines: a crushing number of governing AK Party supporters (98.1%) will vote yes, while a similarly huge number of opposition CHP supporters (91.8%) will vote no. 

Murat Yetkin writes in today's Radikal that the Kurdish vote is something Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, prime minister, is depending on to pass his prized reforms. The pro-Kurdish BDP has boycotted the referendum, but more than half of its supporters say they will vote anyway and are more likely to vote yes than not, GENAR's polling suggests. BDP leaders have offered to support a yes vote in exchange for some promises for further reform from the government, but polling like this appears to indicate the BDP holds less influence over Kurdish voters than it likes to believe.

GENAR asked about awareness of the package being put up for referendum: 80.3% said they hadn't read the proposed changes. Of those who had, a narrow majority (23% vs 20%) said they would be voting yes. Those who they had followed debates in the media to some degree (59.7%) were more likely to be voting no.

I'll have more analysis of the referendum package - and that all-important Kurdish vote - in the coming days.

General election voting
GENAR also asked how respondents would vote if there was a general election on Sunday. The headline percentages were (with changes from the last GENAR poll I covered in January):

AK Party: 41.0 (+4.5) [Justice and Development Party, governing, religious conservative]
CHP : 28.0 (+5.1) [Republican People's Party, secular]
MHP : 14.9 (-3.9) [Nationalist Action Party, nationalist]
BDP : 5.1 (-2.0)* [Peace and Democracy Party, pro-Kurdish]
SP : 2.7 (-1.3) [Felicity Party, strongly Islamist]
Others : 8.3 (-2.5) [includes independents]

The changes look quite large, but remember that there is an eight-month gap between this and the previous poll. Support for AK is up; support for the CHP is up by a greater amount, attributable to the rise of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.

More interesting is the exodus from the right-wing MHP: almost a third of people who voted MHP at the 2007 general election said they would not vote for them again. A quarter of these floaters said they would now switch to CHP. This reflects a trend in recent GENAR polls: many MHP voters appear to be disenchanted with their party. Only 74 percent said they would support their party's position at the upcoming referendum (as opposed to 98 percent and 92 percetof AK and CHP voters respectively). Turkish voters at large seem to feel the same way: 84 percent said they could never imagine Devlet Bahçeli, MHP leader, becoming prime minister.

How would these latest voting intentions look in parliament? Well, keep in mind that the following is a crude uniform swing, assuming the BDP's 20 MPs run as independents and retain their seats (with changes from the present situation):

AK Party: 259 (-77)
CHP : 177 (+74)
MHP : 94 (+24)
BDP : 20 (NC)

So in parliament this would represent a clear swing from AK to CHP. It would also be coalition territory: AK would be just short of the 276 seats needed to govern alone; CHP+MHP together wouldn't be able to reach this threshold either.

GENAR interviewed 2274 people in 16 Turkish provinces between 31 July and 8 August 2010. The full survey can be found here. * Figures compared with the Democratic Society Party, now banned.

Three things that can lose you a referendum

It's referendum time in Turkey again. On 12 September, 49 million or so Turks will be asked to approve the latest package of substantive changes to the constitution drafted 28 years ago by the country's last military junta. In the best traditions of irony, voting day wil also mark thirty years since the coup that put that junta in power.

The last time Turks were consulted on constitutional change was October 2007, when the headline reform was to the presidency. "We want a president elected by the people," the AK government proclaimed, "and may he hold office for two five-year terms." 69 percent of voters agreed. Changes relating to parliament's voting rules and term in office were bundled into the same package. All said, an easy win.

Three weeks tomorrow, voters will be called back again, but this time it won't be as straightforward for the AK Party. Opinion polls indicate the yes vote is ahead, but only narrowly so, and a large proportion of voters are still undecided. Three reasons help explain why 2007 won't be repeated again.

The first is the Turkish army, which is not a factor in this referendum. In 2007, the General Staff published its notorious "e-coup" online, criticising the government and the threat it posed to the secular state. The gamble back-fired: AK called a snap poll, was returned by an increased majority, and went through a honeymoon period that helped it comfortably win the referendum too. Many AK supporters then were simply those alarmed by the prospect of a military intervention.

This time, there is no stand-off with the military. Aside from a spat surrounding the appointment of one particular general to the post of Land Forces Commander, the government and army have been in full agreement - over the fight against the PKK - and there is no anti-coup sentiment to exploit.

This helps partly explain the second reason why history won't be repeated - that the government's support base is shrinking. 2007 saw a strong government with a strong mandate presiding over a strengthening economy; 2010 brings us a weaker government with a nearly-expired mandate, presiding over an economy out of recession but facing unemployment above 10 percent. Put another way, the people are bored with this government and aren't all that richer than they were three years ago. Besides, they now have a credible alternative.

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu was elected leader of the opposition CHP in late May. Turkish voters were interested: here at last was a personality to rival Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, prime minister, who spoke colloquially about jobs and public services, and didn't have that aura of elitism that followed the former CHP leader around.

Mr Kılıçdaroğlu has maintained his party's support of a no vote, not entirely out of a compulsive rejection of anything proposed by AK, but also because of rational argument: why, for instance, is a package of such diverse reforms being voted as a whole, rather than as individual clauses? The CHP leader's voice will sway many in the next few weeks.

The third reason why this referendum will be no easy win is that the proposed reforms are hideously complicated. I certainly can't profess to understanding them all yet, and I suspect a lot of the Turkish public is with me. Part of the reason for this is the lack of any headlining reform: in 2007, people were promised the right to elect their own president. Most people understood that. In 2010, people are being promised that senior judges will be appointed in a slightly different way. A marketing dream this is not.

As it stands, the governing AK party is supported by the far-right Great Union Party (BBP) and the religious Felicity Party (SP) in a yes vote. Aside from the CHP, the major parties urging a no vote are the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), the centre-right Democrats (DP) and the centre-left DSP. The pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) are currently boycotting the vote, but have incidated they may switch to a yes if some of their demands are met.

But more on that in a future post. Over the coming weeks, I'll examine the arguments of the yes and no camps, cover the political machinations as Mssrs Erdoğan and Kılıçdaroğlu campaign, and come to a - no doubt highly influential - conclusion over what verdict Turks should reach on 12 September.

Poll shows first CHP lead in eight years

The week's events in the Mediterranean have clouded many things, including an interesting set of opinion polls published by SONAR at the end of last month. Here are the topline percentages for voting intention, with changes from the company's last published survey in January:

CHP: 32.5 (+5.4) [Republican People's Party, secularist]
AK Party: 31.1 (+1.6) [Justice and Development Party, governing, religious conservative]
MHP: 18.6 (-1.8) [Nationalist Action Party, nationalist]
BDP: 4.3 (-2.0) [Peace and Democracy Party, pro-Kurdish]
SP: 3.7 (-1.8) [Felicity Party, strongly Islamist]
DSP: 3.5 (+0.5) [Democratic Left Party, centre-left]
DP: 2.4 (-1.7) [Democrat Party, centre-right]
Others: 4.0 (+2.1)

This poll represents the first time in eight years that the governing AK Party has lost the lead in SONAR polling. The source of the CHP bounce is, of course, largely the rise of Mr Kılıçdaroğlu to the leadership: the fieldwork was done in the five days immediately following his election. A new face at the head of a major political party means increased media coverage at the expense of the governing party, and a general sense of change and optimism.

On a crude and entirely unscientific swing, assuming the 10 percent electoral threshold is not lowered and the pro-Kurdish BDP's 20 MPs decide to run again as independents, this poll would roughly produce the following seat distribution in parliament (with changes from the present situation):

CHP: 209 seats (+110)
AK Party: 201 seats (-135)
MHP: 120 seats (+51)
BDP: 20 seats (no change)

Were a general election to produce this result, this would be firm coalition territory for Turkey. CHP and AK would be near equals in parliament, both requiring the support of the nationalist MHP to form a government. It's disconcertingly reminiscent of the 1970s, when CHP and the centre-right Justice Party were near-equal forces, and wholly dependent on smaller parties to govern. Regardless, it's a striking change from the last opinion poll I looked at in January, which produced a clear AK lead just short of an overall majority.

SONAR are making much of the fact that it is the first time their polling has shown a CHP lead for eight years. While that is a remarkable achievement, there are some points of caution:

1. AK has also recorded an increase in support, albeit considerably smaller than that of CHP.

2. Voters are becoming polarised. It appears the anti-government vote - supporters of the MHP, the BDP and the centre-right DP - is rallying behind CHP, while the CHP's recent prominence has persuaded some supporters of the strongly Islamist SP to turn to the AK Party.

3. The difference between CHP and AK - 1.4% - is well within SONAR's margin of error of 1.7%, which suggests CHP's lead is still extremely slim, and that the poll could have produced a narrow AK Party lead.

There are other anomalies too. Support for the centre-left DSP has increased at a time when the centre-left appeared to be collecting around Mr Kılıçdaroğlu. Rahşan Ecevit, the DSP's founder, former stalwart and wife of the late prime minister Bülent, is among those to shift her loyalties to the CHP, which is why the DSP increase is interesting.

The large increase in support for other parties is partly down to SONAR no longer publishing the results for the far-right Great Union Party (BBP, 2.2% in January) separately.

Most important, however, is that this poll was conducted in its entirety before Israel stormed that Turkish ship carrying aid to Gaza. The response of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the prime minister, has been strongly endorsed by many Turks. As in most cases of international crisis, the opposition - including Mr Kılıçdaroğlu - have been sidelined into issuing mild statements of support. It will be interesting to see how that reflects into the next opinion poll.

SONAR interviewed 3000 people in towns and villages in 16 Turkish provinces between 24 and 27 May 2010. The full survey can be found here.

AK support down in latest GENAR poll

GENAR's quarterly survey was published earlier this week. For national voting intentions, the headline percentages were (with changes from the previous quarter):

AK Party: 36.5 (-1) [Justice and Development Party, governing, religious conservative]
CHP : 22.9 (-1.8) [Republican People's Party, secular]
MHP : 18.8 (+1.3) [Nationalist Action Party, nationalist]
BDP : 7.1 (+0.5)* [Peace and Democracy Party, pro-Kurdish]
SP : 4.0 (-0.4) [Felicity Party, strongly Islamist]
Others : 10.8 (+1.5) [includes independents]

On a crude uniform swing, assuming the BDP's 20 MPs run as independents and retain their seats, this would translate into following seats in parliament (with changes from the present situation):

AK Party: 247 (-90)
CHP : 155 (+58)
MHP : 128 (+59)
BDP : 20 (NC)

Such a result in a general election would leave Turkey in coalition territory again: AK would not have enough seats to govern alone, but would need just a handful of seats (i.e. within the broad margin of error) to enter into coalition with BDP. CHP and MHP would also be able to form a government together with these figures, although the balance between these two would be much more evenly weighted.

Of course, the above paragraph is entirely hypothetical. It assumes many uncertain things: that the voting trend would be exactly the same nationwide; that the Democratic Left Party (DSP) would run on the CHP ticket, as it did in 2007; that BDP MPs would run as independents to overcome the 10 percent threshold, as they did in 2007; and that no other party members will try the BDP's tactic.

The election itself is still 18 months away, and there are a few things we know will happen before then. Abdüllatif Şener's Turkey Party has yet to make an emergence, while Mustafa Sarıgül's new centre-left movement has yet to mobilise. Political parties are transient things in Turkey, you never quite know how they come and go, but it seems pretty certain they will make some impact.

Support for the government's "democratic initiative" - that is, its policy of new rights and institutions for Kurdish citizens - appears to be strictly along party lines. While AK voters support the programme overwhelmingly - 63% - all opposition voters are overwhelmingly against: 87% of CHP, 89% of MHP and, interestingly, 68% of BDP supporters expressed the opinion that the initiative "would not succeed". Overall, 61% said they found it "not positive" or "not positive at all".

GENAR also asked about the government's parallel initiative towards Alevi citizens, which appears to find slightly greater support. AK voters were the only majority supporters again, albeit by a much narrower majority (52%). Opposition party voters ranged from a near-even split (BDP and Democrat Party voters, 48% and 46% in support respectively) to a strong rejection (CHP and MHP voters, 22% and 17% in support).

The survey also appears to suggest:

- The recently-merged Democrat Party has made little impact, polling just 2 percent (change from previous survey unknown).
- The nationalist vote has shifted towards MHP. The Great Union Party (BBP), a spin-off grouping that displays even more extreme right-wing tendencies than the MHP (if such a thing is possible), had done rather well by taking the town of Sivas in last year's local elections. GENAR's latest poll suggests support for the BBP has halved. In response to another question, nearly 10% gave MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli as their "favoured politician of 2009", placing him second only to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (27%) and ahead of CHP leader Deniz Baykal (8%).
- Abdüllatif Şener, leader of the low-profile Turkey Party, does have some limited recognition. He also featured on the "favoured politician of 2009" list. 1.5% of respondents mentioned him by name; a third of them were CHP supporters, more than any other party, even Mr Şener's former AK.
- Valley of the Wolves: Ambush, the programme at the centre of the past week's diplomatic spat with Israel, topped the list of favourite television dramas for 2009.
has nationalist vote. BBP got just 1.6 percent.

GENAR interviewed 2095 people in 17 Turkish provinces between 02 and 11 January 2010. The full survey can be found here. * Figures compared with the defunct Democratic Society Party.

Why, oh why, could anyone possibly think that this is a good idea?

Part of the government in Britain, where I appear to be invariably based at the moment, seems obsessed with dispensing with its prime minister after less than a year in the job. "We're not popular, we'll probably lose the next election, it's not working out for us," they mutter behind closed doors, before adding: "Off with his head and bring in a new one." Or something to that effect.

The instinct in Turkey is precisely the opposite. When things go wrong, the prevailing mood is one of either stagnation or regression. Stagnation is the case with the Republican People's Party (CHP), which recently re-elected its directionless leader, unopposed, in an appalling example of democracy (see my outdated entry on the CHP for some back story). Regression appears to be what is happening to the Democrat Party (DP), which is trying to bring back its former leader and last prime minister, Tansu Çiller.

Mrs Çiller assumed the vacant post of prime minister in 1993, after Süleyman Demirel moved up to the presidency. She wasn't particularly high-ranking - a mere state minister, certainly not senior in the cabinet - and she contested her party's leadership against such heavyweights as İsmet Sezgin and Köksal Toptan. Her victory was credited largely to Turkey's media, including the fledgling private television channels, which made much of the idea of a first woman prime minister.

If you asked her what her greatest achievement in office was, she would probably tell you it was that Turkey entered a Customs Union with the European Union under her watch. Or that the military's funding was stepped up to combat the mounting PKK threat. She wouldn't be one to talk of the banking crisis of the early 1990s, her alleged corrupt practices (including tenders that favoured her wealthy businessman husband), or the fact that she never won a election.

Mrs Çiller was a staggeringly ineffective leader. Under her, the party won a successively smaller share of the vote, finally failing to cross the electoral threshold in 2002. Her first election, in 1995, saw her lose to Necmettin Erbakan's Welfare Party (RP). It was a shock to Turkey's secular establishment for the overtly religious RP to do so well; what shocked them more was Mrs Çiller joining them in coalition. During the campaign, she had declared Mr Erbkaban "a smuggler of heroin" and herself "the safeguard of secularism", but after six months and a hefty libel fee the two leaders were in a "power rotating" scheme whereby Mr Erbakan would be prime minister first, and Mrs Çiller would follow in a year-and-a-half.

She stood silent as her senior partner spurned the west and made highly publicised visits to Iran and Libya. She was genuinely surprised, upon Mr Erbakan's resignation, not to be asked to form the next government. She was not a good leader, and now her old rump party wants her back.

To bring back a former, supposedly succesful leader is a delusional byword for political recovery in Turkey. Party leaders are effectively sanctified in the country - most party conventions, for instance, will feature large portraits of both Atatürk and the present leader - and they are a rallying point for genuine enthusiasm and unwavering loyalty. During a recent parliamentary debate on smoking bans, one Nationalist Action Party (MHP) MP spoke passionately about the charismatic style with which his leader, Devlet Bahçeli, could hold and smoke a cigarette. He was probably not even planted.

This near-blind degree of loyalty makes it somewhat easier to understand why Turkish parties tend not to blame their leaders for electoral failure. But it is still delusional: parties don't to recognise it even when the public have had enough of them. In the 1999 elections, having failed to cross the ten percent threshold to win seats in parliament, Mr Baykal resigned. It was widely hailed as an act of political maturity, but he was back in just six months. Mr Bahçeli, Mrs Çiller and Motherland Party leader Mesut Yılmaz all made similar pledges when their parties failed to cross the threshold in 2002; with this latest offer to Mrs Çiller, all have now returned to politics.

Turks have a long tradition of sanctifying their leaders. Any tourist to Turkey will tell you Kemal Atatürk is an obvious example, but it applies to more recent leaders too: the late Bülent Ecevit ousted CHP leader and War of Independence veteran Ismet İnönü in 1973. İnönü had been leader for thirty-five years, and Ecevit was widely credited with ending what was effectively a theocracy. But that same cult of personality came to apply to Ecevit, and it would be twenty-nine years before he was toppled himself.

Few outside the DP will celebrate Mrs Çiller's return. It will do little for the party's electability, as its traditional centre-right base has long been subsumed by the ruling AK Party. But it does have wider implications for Turkish politics: a year ago, I wrote that AK's electoral victory, while welcome, urgently needed to be balanced by an effective opposition. With stagnation in the CHP and regression in the DP, it does not appear to be happening. And that is not good for Turkey.

Headscarves at universities

As I write, a second round of voting is underway in Turkey for the easing of the headscarf ban in universities. The bill has the support of the governing Justice and Development (AK) and opposition Nationalist Action (MHP) parties. It will pass, just like a first round did earlier in the week. The real question is what happens next.

Normal procedure is for laws such as this - a constitutional ammendment - to be taken directly to the president, Abdullah Gül, who can either approve it or exercise his one-time veto. It won't be that simple this time, because the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) says it will take the bill to the Constitutional Court, arguing the bill itself infringes the constitution. Once again we return to a situation where a panel of judges hold a remarkable say over a major political issue.

But is it a political issue? The protestors gathered outside parliament today certainly think so. The MPs voting inside the chamber certainly think so. But we're talking here about relaxing a ban on a choice of clothing that prevents a group of women from attending university - it is surely a social question too.

To isolate the matter for just one moment: there should be no question of whether women should be allowed to wear their headscarves at university. If it represents a personal faith, it should be no obstacle to education. But like so many things in Turkey, this is a highly symbolic issue, and secularists say it goes to the root of everything Turkey stands for.

There is no doubt that secularism has made Turkey unique. From an empire that even at its weakest was the indisputed leader of the Islamic world, it was transformed into a nationalist republic, its religious element entirely removed, and set firmly on a westward course. The Turkey of today is an official candidate for EU membership. Never before has a country so predominantly Muslim been this close to a group of countries that so predominantly are not. There is no other country in the world like it, and secularists are rightly proud of that.

But for all its benefits, Turkish secularism does not help illuminate the boundary where public life ends and personal life begins. Universities represent part of that boundary: are they public spaces that should be religion-neutral, or centres of learning where personal faith is irrelevant?

Many headscarf-wearing women do, it is true, attend university. While some fumble with wigs, others just remove the scarf before entering the classrom and put it back on immediately after leaving. There was even talk last summer of lecturers at Sabancı University in Istanbul who cast a blind eye at those who sport it.

Two major issues that exist in Turkey have been exposed by this latest debate. They are issues that will not be resolved anytime soon.

The first is the secular structure itself. Many in Turkey would have you believe that secularism is the country's most important principle. It supercedes everything else, they say, including democracy if necessary. The army chief, Yaşar Büyükanıt, frequently warns that "secularism is becoming a matter for debate", implicitly suggesting that it shouldn't be. He is wrong.

Turkey's secularism is not sanctified, it should be justified. The concept of keeping apart mosque and state should be explored and debated, not committed to memory in endless platitudes. Part of the reason for hawkish generals and Ataturk statues is an intrinsic fear that the system could be lost. The way to prevent that is to talk about it rather than defend it with a gun.

The second issue is the oil-and-water manner in which politicians operate in Turkey. Today's response to the long-running headscarf debate has been typically Turkish: a decree from above is made, and those below are left to sort out the details. There was a small cry that the AK-MHP committee putting together the bill contained not one woman, but then again, there isn't a single woman MP in parliament who wears a headscarf. There couldn't be.

What politicians in this country have yet to understand is that social politics involves actually talking to those people whose lives you intend to change. This would mean public consultations, campus debates with ministers, perhaps even a televised seminar or two attended by the prime minister - the kind of thing at which European hearts beat a little faster. Mr Erdoğan himself attended a meeting with Turkish students and German chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin yesterday. He looked uncomfortable, but he was there. He wouldn't do the same thing in Turkey.

A crash course in Turkey's headscarf debate

Not for the first time in recent Turkish politics, the headscarf is all anyone can talk about. That piece of fabric that Muslim women use to wrap around their heads has been banned in universities and public buildings de jure since 1980, and de facto since 1997, meaning that Turkish women wearing it are not allowed to work in most civil service positions. Many, including the president's wife, were given a place at university but were unable to go because of the headwear.

The issue has been raised very often over the last decade, in particular since the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK) came to power in 2002. But for all the fierce political debate, there have been few attempts to find a political solution. That is, until a couple of weeks ago, when one party took the initiative. Perhaps surprisingly, it was not AK who piped up. If they had, it surely would have triggered accusations of a hidden Islamic agenda faster than it takes to wrap a headscarf.

No, it was Devlet Bahçeli and his right wing Nationalist and Action Party (MHP) who first said some arrangement had to be made. AK officials jumped at the opportunity and now, two weeks later, we have a bill that would lift the ban on wearing the most basic form of headscarf in Turkish universities.

The changes involve modifying two articles of the constitution, which concern equality before the law and the rights to education, to say that no person shall be deprived of an education except for reasons openly laid out in the law. There is a more explicit revision to the law for higher education, which says: "No-one shall be deprived of their right to higher education because their head is covered, nor can any enforcement or arrangement be made in this regard. However, the covering of the head must leave the face open and allow for the person to be identified, and must be tied beneath the chin."

Voting takes place in parliament at the end of next week. Together, AK and MHP have enough of a majority to pass the bill through, although they have been lobbying the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and the small left wing DSP to come on board. The CHP's Hakkı Suha Okay described the proposal as "insufficient", and added, somewhat bizarrely, that the AK and MHP had clearly not come to any consensus on how to solve the problem. He also confirmed a return to their tactics of last spring, saying that they would fulfil their duty of opposition by challenging the bill in the Supreme Court, after it passes. The DSP were a little more cooperative, refraining from comment until they had reviewed the proposal.

The process is by no means over - President Abdullah Gül has hinted at putting the matter to referendum even if the bill passes, and there is little appetite for that in any party - but it is nevertheless encouraging that the matter is being discussed, the CHP's guerilla threats aside, in such a mature manner.

The Turkish headscarf debate is complicated by the fact that there are more styles than just the loose headscarf and the full veil. Under the new arrangement, Mr Gül's wife, Hayrünnisa (pictured at the start of this article), would still not be permitted to enroll at a university, because her choice of headscarf covers the neck. Rather, it will be the so-called "traditional" style of headscarf that is permitted. No-one knows precisely what that is, although some media outlets have dubbed it the "grandmother headscarf", in reference to what is predominant among Turkey's OAPs.

A firm definition of what separates a headscarf (başörtü) from what Mrs Gül is wearing will not be decided until later. How, for instance, should the headscarf be tied under the chin: in a knot, as is popular in the countryside or in the home, or with a special kind of pin, which is more widespread in the cities and tightens the scarf around the face?

The word "secularist" in Turkey is a collective term that tends to refer to the Turkish state, the CHP, and the army, although definitions vary (the MHP would describe itself as 'secularist' too - but then again, so would AK). These secularists argue, with some degree of justification, that the headscarf has become a symbol of political Islam. They point to the fact that some women attend university wearing wigs over their headscarves which makes it not a symbol of faith but a blatant protest. CHP leader Deniz Baykal YESTERDAY described it as a "foreign uniform" and the entire issue as "an incident provoked from outside the country, an Arab symbol targetting the secular Turkish republic."

Part of the secularist position is that the whole point of a Muslim headscarf is to conceal a woman's beauty, rather than becoming an accessory for it. Why, they ask, is there a whole industry in headscarf fashion (see right)? They say the whole concept is paradoxical and only reinforces the argument that it is a political symbol.

There is also the open-ended question of where it will all end. Now that the first lady sports a headscarf, and universities might be permitting them, there is a fear that the next step will only further dismantle Atatürk's legacy.

That doesn't seem likely at the moment. Government spokesman Cemil Çiçek told this morning's Hürriyet in the clearest terms I have ever seen him speak that the restriction would be lifted solely for universities, and not for public offices or primary and secondary schools. He said the permitted headscarf would be tied beneath the chin, and revealed that they were even thinking of attaching photographs of a regulation headscarf to the law.

There is a lot of scaremongering going on, and Radikal's front page today played very effectively on it by modifying Edvard Munch's painting "The Scream" to wear a headscarf, under the headline "Republic of fear". With the army openly opposed, AK are being very careful. But in this ruling, they might succeed.

Headscarf photos from here, here, here and here.