Stacy Innerst, Post-Gazette
	Click photo for larger image. More Next Is Turkey in Europe or what?

The call of the muezzin at 4:30 a.m. tells you that you are in a Muslim country. Beyond that, you are on your own, because Turkey defies categorization; it is, in fact, in a category of its own. It borders the European Union, the Caucasus and the Middle East. It has had full and even cooperative relations with Israel for many years but has recently hosted visits by the leaders of Syria and Hamas. Turkey has been a NATO member for more than 50 years but is not part of the European Union and has occupied a portion of a neighboring country since 1974.

Americans may know less about Turkey than about any other major ally. Even policy makers may not be sure what to make of a non-Arab Middle Eastern country that is both secular and Muslim, and that is 95 percent in Asia but has wanted for generations to become a part of Europe.

This month, historic elections in Turkey may reveal the extent to which Turkey still sees itself as secular and Western-oriented. Europeans will ponder once again where Europe ends. And Americans may have to reconsider how deep their commitment to democracy runs in a region where elections can produce regimes not to their liking.

A DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS
While most Baby Boom Americans learned about Turkey as the "sick man of Europe" in high school history, few of us knew how profoundly the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, had remodeled his nation. Among his most powerful bequests -- in addition to changing the alphabet, laws, customs and even forms of address -- was the separation of the government from Islam. This commitment to secularism has endured since the Turkish Republic was established in 1923, and the Turkish military has been its guarantor, intervening forcefully no less than four times since 1960 to prevent attempts at making the state more Islamic.

In 2002, with the policies of the center-left and center-right exhausted, an Islamic party, the Justice and Development Party (known by its Turkish initials, AKP) came to power. The prime minister, Recep Tayip Erdogan, had spent time in jail for Islamist activism, and some feared that he harbored a hidden Islamic agenda. The prime minister's attempt in 2004 to add adultery to the criminal code seemed to confirm this suspicion.

On the other hand, neither as mayor of Istanbul during the mid-1990s, nor as prime minister, has Mr. Erdogan pushed for Islamic rule. He has consistently voiced his commitment to secular governance and has presided over a period of vigorous economic growth, investor confidence and widespread (though unfinished) reforms designed to bring Turkish law and government in line with European norms.

This spring, with a comfortable majority in the Turkish parliament, the AKP also seemed set to name a new president, who in Turkey is elected by lawmakers. This did not happen, in part because the prime minister bungled by publicly floating himself as a candidate before settling on the current foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, and in part because of Mr. Gul. The foreign minister is well known in Europe, where he presents the AKP as a Muslim version of Germany's Christian Democrats, but he does not have the confidence of the military.

As in the United States, symbols are important in Turkish politics. Mr. Gul's wife, like the wife of the prime minister, wears a head scarf, signifying Islamic piety. To Pittsburghers with roots in East Europe, this adornment evokes images of kindly "babas" sneaking treats to their grandchildren. But in much of Europe and in parts of the Middle East, the wearing of head scarves signifies an assertive Islam that threatens both secular rule and the rights of women.

In Turkey, as in France, women are banned from wearing them in public schools -- a ban which was upheld by the European Court of Human Rights. Many Turks, including many in the military, worry that the AKP's real goal is revealed by those head scarves. "Remember Hitler was elected democratically," one Turk told me angrily while I was visiting Turkey last month.

To prevent the election of Mr. Gul as president, opposition members of parliament boycotted the vote, rendering it invalid in the judgment of the Constitutional Court. But the court itself was pressured by the military.

Near midnight on April 27, just before the court ruled, the military declared itself "a party to the debate" and warned that it would "carry out [its] duties stemming from laws to protect the unchangeable characteristics of the Republic of Turkey." But instead of sending tanks into the streets, the military made this not-very-subtle threat of a coup with a posting on its Web site.

Virtual though it may have been, the threat was taken seriously by the AKP. The prime minister called for new parliamentary elections but also moved to change the constitution so that the people could elect the president directly. This action was vetoed by the current president, Ahmet Sezer.

All this means that this month's elections will take place at an extremely tense time in Turkish politics. They likely will determine the composition of the parliament, the government and the presidency. And while they will express society's current view of Islam, they also will reflect the impact of changing demographics.

Recent economic changes have brought to prominence socially conservative middle-class entrepreneurs -- Turkish writer Soli Ozel calls them "market fundamentalists." These newly empowered regional elites are challenging Turkey's established powers in Istanbul and Ankara, whose influence has diminished because they were seen as corrupt, unresponsive and ineffective.

This leaves Turks on the horns of a dilemma. Supporting democracy means acknowledging the AKP's right to offer its choice as president and the subordination of the military to civilian rule, a bedrock democratic principle. But in the minds of many, the military is the only thing that keeps Turkey from becoming Iran. Recent huge demonstrations in the country featured the slogan, "Neither the Sharia [Islamic law] nor military coup." Many wonder how this can be achieved.

WASHINGTON'S VIEW: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME LATELY?
During the Cold War, Turkey, which shared a long border with the Soviet Union, provided military bases and political support for most U.S. policy initiatives. After the collapse of the USSR, Turkey supported U.S.-led efforts against the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in 1991 and against the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.

But when the United States moved to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein in 2003, Ankara refused to allow U.S. troops to use its territory to attack from the north. Turkey was worried then, as it is now, about the emergence of an autonomous Kurdish state in northern Iraq because it would exert a powerful pull on Turkey's 15 million Kurds, who have been pushing for full civil rights and greater economic investment.

Turkey's historical nightmare -- the carving up of the Turkish state -- may seem far-fetched. But a poll in 2005 found that two-thirds of Turks believe the Western powers would like to repeat their post-World War I attempt to divide the country into spheres of influence.

Even more troubling for the United States is another consequence of its "war on terror." When we were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, and lost nearly 3,000 people, we sent armed forces halfway around the globe to destroy those who attacked us. In Turkey, more than 10 times that number of people have died in the fight against the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), many of whose members now operate out of northern Iraq -- from bases in the virtually independent U.S.-supported region right on Turkey's southern border.

The United States and the European Union have designated the PKK as a terrorist organization. But when Ankara threatens to attack PKK bases in Iraq, the United States argues against it because Turkish incursions might destabilize the one relatively peaceful part of the country.

Is there "An American Double Standard?" asks The Turkish Weekly. If the situation were reversed -- if terrorists were attacking us from Mexico and Spain asked us not to intervene -- would we listen?

The Turks have. So far.

Washington's view of Turkey's future also is heavily blinkered by its somewhat unrewarding experience with democracy in the Middle East -- in the Palestinian territories, for example, where elections allowed Hamas to come to power. When the EU clearly warned the Turkish military against involvement in the crisis over presidential succession, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice agreed. But almost immediately, elaborations by U.S. officials suggested that America was at least as concerned about preserving secularism in Turkey as it was about preserving democracy.

"What matters," said Matthew Bryza, deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, "is the organic life of democracy in Turkey, however it plays itself out, as long as it plays itself out in accordance with secularism and constitutionality."

THE STAKES
What happens in Turkey in the next few months matters a great deal to its own people and to the United States and Europe.

Turkey is a country where the people are Muslim and the political system is democratic and tolerant. There is in Turkey a 25,000-member Jewish community, for instance. Turkey is a NATO ally and a potential member of the EU.

Turkey also sits astride one of the most strategic bodies of water on Earth, connecting the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. Through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, more than 5,000 oil tankers move every year, bringing vital energy to Western markets. Nearly one-third of Russian oil exports, destined for Europe and the United States, travel this route. In addition, Turkey is traversed by what so far is the only non-Russian-owned pipeline that carries natural gas from the Caspian Sea to world markets. Turkey has no energy resources of its own to speak of. But, as real estate agents always say, what matters is "location, location, location."

By virtue of its complex geography, mixed identity, compelling past and uncertain future, this will be a momentous year for Turkey and for its relationship with the West. As Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk said of Istanbul, in Turkey there is more yet to be seen.