Turkey's Great Divide

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Against that backdrop, the rise of Erdogan's AKP did not at first seem a serious threat. Its landslide victory in 2002 caught many by surprise, but even that victory was chalked up to a protest vote against the incompetence of established political parties, notably the secularist Republican People's Party (CHP). But unlike previous parties with Islamist roots, the AKP has so far steered clear of the kind of overt Islamist doctrine that got its predecessors in trouble. Instead, it has built a record based on reforming Turkish democratic and economic institutions to fit E.U. standards. The ostensible aim has been to boost Turkish prosperity and to bring the nation into Europe. A side effect has been to weaken the role of the military in Turkey's political life and to strengthen religious and minority rights. The result: a de facto challenge to the secular establishment that has dominated Turkish society since the country's foundation.

Secularists are now rising to meet that challenge. The almost visceral response they have to the AKP focuses less on what the party has done than on who its leaders are. Even staunch opponents of the government concede that Erdogan has done some things right. A buoyant economy growing at a 7% clip, lower inflation and joblessness, and the opening of E.U. membership talks after 40 years of waiting would be a credit to any government. Instead, critics stress the alleged long-term Islamist agenda of the party's leaders. The current e-mail and blogging campaign by the young Istanbul Kemalists, for example, is focusing on claims that leaders like Erdogan and Gul are conservative Muslims who have in the past flirted with political Islam.

Both leaders were members of the Welfare Party that was banned in 1997 for undermining Turkey's secular regime. Erdogan was imprisoned a few months later for reading, while mayor of Istanbul, a poem that likened minarets to bayonets. "Democracy is like a street car," Erdogan is alleged to have said in one mailing. "You only ride it to get to your destination." The Kemalists' blogs remind skeptics of the Islamic notion of takiye, according to which it is permissible for devout Muslims to dissimulate in order to achieve their goal. The fact that the party has not yet pursued an Islamist agenda on a national scale is, secularists argue, not proof that it never will. To bolster their argument, the secularists' newspapers zealously publish stories about municipal officials who have imposed Islam on public life by, for example, segregating the sexes at public pools.

Young secularist women say they are particularly worried. Pinar Ozkan, 23, an events organizer who is a member of the Kemalist Politics Group, says her company recently organized a gathering for several junior AKP officials in Istanbul. When she offered them a tray of tea, she claims, they refused to be served by a woman whose hair was uncovered. "I felt like a second-class citizen," says Ozkan, dressed in gold lamé heels, a miniskirt and white tank top. "As a woman in Turkey, my freedom is very important. We owe that freedom to Ataturk. I will never give that up to anyone." Later that night, she gets ready for an antigovernment rally in Istanbul, donning a Halloween-style mask of the mustachioed Turkish founder. "I want to see the world through his eyes," she says. Ozkan, like most secularists, is backing the CHP, which was founded by Ataturk; others support the Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, though neither has a chance of winning on its own.

AKP officials acknowledge their roots in Islamist parties. But they insist that they have changed, and that they respect Ataturk's separation of mosque and state. Secularist charges of creeping fundamentalism are just a way to scare voters, they say. "It's a witch hunt," says Ali Kemal Eksioglu, 30, an AKP youth leader who has been working to get out the vote in Kadikoy, Istanbul's largest, wealthiest and most traditionally secularist voting district. "I mean, it's 2007, and they are still asking, 'Why is that woman wearing a head scarf?' It's too much." As he sees it, what his party is really about is "tolerance of different lifestyles and economic stability."

Swiftly moving from underdog to favorite in just six years, the AKP has become the party to beat. But its rise, supporters say, has bred misunderstanding. The party appeared on the scene in 2001 as a grassroots movement, going door to door to introduce itself to people individually. But Eksioglu's small army of volunteers in Kadikoy has stopped canvassing like this, he says, because the atmosphere has become too tense. That doesn't mean they're no longer active in the neighborhood, however. Indeed, the party recently opened a branch office in Kadikoy — its bright orange-and-blue party flags fluttering conspicuously over the local Starbucks and its well-heeled clientele. The office is not far from where the Kemalist group meets to plot the AKP's downfall. Eksioglu says he likes to go there to listen to the catcalls from the street: "I don't care about them. I believe in what I am doing."