Last week's assassination of a high-ranking Turkish judge reignited long-smouldering tensions between the moderately Islamist government and the power secular establishment, reports Gareth Jenkins from Istanbul Long-smouldering tensions between Turkey's moderately Islamist government and the country's secular establishment last week erupted into the most serious domestic political crisis in recent years after a gunman assassinated one member of Turkey's highest administrative court, the Council of State, and wounded four others in what appears to have been a protest against the continuing ban on women wearing headscarves in state institutions. The attack took place last Wednesday morning when Alparslan Aslan, a 28-year-old qualified lawyer and member of the Istanbul Bar Association, managed to smuggle an Austrian- made Glock automatic pistol into the Council of State building in Ankara. After evading detection at the metal detectors at the door, he walked up to the stairs to a room where members of the court were holding an informal meeting, sprayed the judges with bullets and calmly walked back down the stairs. He was arrested as he tried to leave the building after one of the members of the court, who had managed to avoid injury by diving under the table, raised the alarm. One of the judges, Mustafa Yucel Ozbilgin, aged 64, was hit in the head and died later that day after unsuccessful brain surgery. Four others were wounded, including the court president Mustafa Birden. Eyewitnesses reported that Aslan had shouted 'Allahu Akbar' ('God is Great') before opening fire. Over the next few days Turkish police arrested eight more suspects in connection with the attack, although under interrogation Aslan continued to insist that he had acted alone, had no connections with any organisation and had bought the Glock pistol on the black market. He claimed that he had been incensed by a decision by the Council of State in February 2006 to block the promotion of Aytac Kilinc, a primary school teacher, on the grounds that she wore a headscarf not in the classroom, which is anyway forbidden by law, but outside school, on the grounds that she was 'setting a bad example' to her pupils. Ozbilgin was the highest ranking Turkish state official to be assassinated for nearly 30 years and his death provoked a furious reaction from Turkish secularists, particularly the military and the judiciary, with many effectively accusing all those who advocated the lifting of the headscarf ban -- including the JDP government -- of being accessories to murder. To make matters worse, instead of expressing their horror at the killing even of someone with whom they disagreed, members of the JDP went on the offensive, accusing a conspiracy of 'dark forces' of trying to blacken their name and destabilise their government by staging the attack. While the organisations which had been formed to lobby for the lifting of the headscarf ban -- almost all of whose members were undoubtedly appalled by the killing -- remained silent. Most extraordinarily, as high-ranking bureaucrats and politicians -- including leading members of the JDP such as Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul -- cancelled their official appointments in order to attend Ozbilgin's funeral, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan traveled to the Mediterranean coastal resort of Antalya to attend a local meeting of the JDP youth wing and open a new road. Erdogan's decision reinforced long-standing doubts about his political acumen and allowed his secularist opponents to claim that he was insulting not only Ozbilgin's family but also the Turkish state. Led by Chief of Staff General Hilmi Ozkok, the entire Turkish high command walked through cheering crowds of secularists to attend a commemorative ceremony for Ozbilgin at the Council of State followed by his funeral at Ankara's Kocatepe mosque. The funeral turned into a secularist rally as tens of thousands of mourners chanted slogans such as 'Turkey is secular and secular it will remain' and even 'Murderer government, murderer prime minister'. Those government ministers who, in an act of considerable bravery, attended the funeral bore the full brunt of the crowd's anger, being jostled and pelted with plastic bottles as they tried to pay their respects to Ozbilgin and his grieving family. For a man who prides himself on his courage and his sensitivity -- and who famously wept at the sight of children crying for their slain fathers at the funeral of five Turkish policemen killed by Kurdish militants in 2004 -- Erdogan's refusal to attend Ozbilgin's funeral remains difficult to understand and has seriously damaged his political credibility with a large section of the Turkish public. The absence of an effective parliamentary opposition means that Erdogan would almost certainly be reelected if he was to choose to hold early general elections ahead of when they next fall due in early autumn 2007. But the lack of any viable alternative to the JDP amongst the other political parties in Turkey has made it more likely that Turkish secularists, infuriated and galvanised both by Ozbilgin's assassination and Erdogan's reaction to it, will look outside the political party system. A joint statement issued after Ozbilgin's death by all of the various elements in the Turkish judiciary called on "those forces responsible for protecting secularism to do their duty." No one doubts that the judiciary was referring to the Turkish military. General Ozkok is due to retire in August this year. Both of his possible successors are known hardliners who are likely to be much more assertive than General Ozkok in their dealings with the JDP. The Turkish military has no wish to topple the civilian government, much less to seize power itself. But in the months ahead, in the continued absence of an effective political opposition, Turkish secularists are likely to turn increasingly to the military; if not for an explicit intervention but for leadership in resisting what they now see, rightly or wrongly, as a direct threat to the secular Turkish state.
