Transcript
AMB. MARK PARRIS: Our program this morning is going to focus, as we promised last time, on an event that has the potential fundamentally to change the way that Turkey looks and works in the years ahead—the selection of a new president.
One of the enduring legends of the founding of the Republic of Turkey is the story of how Atatürk decided he was going to build a new executive mansion on the hills overlooking Ankara, his new capital. After it was built he famously engaged in bouts of drinking and card playing and all kinds of distinctly secular activities in that famous mansion. It has acquired over the years sort of a symbolic status of Turkey's strong secular orientation and in recent years as a bastion of secularism as where to draw the religious-secular line has come under discussion increasingly in Turkish politics.
There's every likelihood that in next few weeks "Çankaya", as the Presidential mansion is known, will be filled by someone from the political party of the current prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose party, the Justice and Development Party—or AKP—is described by many in and outside of Turkey as "Islamist," and is described by AKP members themselves as "conservative and democratic."
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