Turkey:Turkey's neo-Islamist Justice and Development (AK) Party came to power five years ago, but it was only this year that it consolidated its advantage over the secularists and military, by winning legislative elections in July, the country's presidency in August, and appointing a supporter to the head of the supreme court in October.
In April the prime minister, Recip Tayyip Erdogan, nominated Abdullah Gul, a British-trained economist and the Turkish foreign minister who spear-headed the drive to begin EU membership negotiations, as presidential candidate. Erdogan and Gul were co-founders of AKP.
On April 27th Gul received 367 of 550 votes in the Turkish parliament in the first round of the presidential election. Since a two-thirds majority was required in the first two rounds, but only a simple majority in the third, he would have been elected in spring had the military not staged an "e-coup" by posting a threatening message on the internet that same night.
The army would not stand by while the foundations of modern Turkey were endangered, the statement from the general staff said. Turkish generals have overthrown four governments since 1960, so the threat was taken seriously. The constitutional court aborted the election and changed the rules.
Up to two million Turks marched in the streets of Istanbul and Izmir to protest the possibility of Gul becoming president. AKP leaders say they could have mobilised far more in a counter-demonstration, but held back to avoid civil strife.
The fact that Gul's wife, Hayrunisa, like Erdogan's wife, Emine, wears the "turban" (which covers the neck as well as the hair) was anathema to secularists. The westernised elite didn't care when peasant women and cleaning ladies wore Islamic covering. But the thought of the first lady wearing a headscarf in Cancaya palace horrified them.
Erdogan and Gul repeatedly promised to respect the secularism enshrined in Turkey's constitution. But a move to legalise the wearing of headscarves on university campuses further inflamed the issue. Kemalists believe AKP is a fundamentalist party with a "hidden agenda" to Islamicise the country. Erdogan insists they are conservative democrats who can be a model for the Muslim world. He rejects the labels "Muslim democrats" or "neo-Islamists".
Erdogan called the military's bluff by staging an early election in July, in which AKP increased its share of the vote from 34.3 per cent in 2002 to 46.5 per cent. The second-ranking party, the opposition CHP, founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1924, scored only 20.8 per cent. On August 28th, Abdullah Gul became president of Turkey.
The young, former treasury minister Ali Babacan was moved to the ministry of foreign affairs, with responsibility for pursuing EU membership. Turkey enacted a multitude of reforms in the first years of AKP rule, but has made little progress since negotiations started in October 2005.
In Turkey's quest for EU membership, 2007 was a wasted year because of the electoral battles, and because Turkey's leaders were distracted by twin Armenian and Kurdish crises described by the Turkish Daily News as "Cornered Turkey fighting on many different fronts" in October.
The first crisis, over a US congressional resolution that would have recognised the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Turks as genocide, dissipated when a full House vote was postponed after Turkish threats to cut off the US's main supply route to troops in Iraq.
The second crisis, a flare-up in the 24-year-old war with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which killed some 40 Turkish civilians and soldiers between September and November, continues to bubble away. On October 17th, parliament authorised Erdogan to send the Turkish army - the second largest in Nato - into northern Iraq, confronting the US with the possibility of war between its Turkish and Iraqi Kurdish allies.
Erdogan ordered a few bombing raids and a minor incursion at the beginning of December, but stalled major military action. High-ranking Turkish sources say President George Bush and the Turkish prime minister concluded a secret agreement when they met at the White House on November 5th. Since their meeting, journalists in Iraq have not been taken to PKK training camps, the PKK has ceased cross-border attacks and the group's offices in Erbil were shut down. But the US supports an off-shoot of the PKK called PJAK, which attacks Iran, and the border region remains extremely volatile.
The EU's annual report on enlargement, published on November 6th, regretted Turkey's "limited" progress this year. Turkey must infuse negotiations with new dynamism, commissioner for enlargement Olli Rehn said.
The EU was particularly disappointed that Ankara did not follow through on promises to abrogate or modify article 301 of the penal code, which makes "insulting Turkishness" a crime - 72 people were prosecuted under article 301 in 2006. The law was a factor in the assassination of the Armenian-Turkish writer Hrant Dink in January.
