On paper the Turkish economy should be falling apart in face of political turmoil. It’s not. The currency is getting stronger and foreign investors seem to think they are still onto a good thing. Even the Turks, who have seen massive political and financial upheavals several times in the past 50 years, are not panicking. Yet US-based Turkish political analyst Soner Cagaptay describes the conflict between the country’s Islamic-rooted government and staunch secularists in the courts, army and parliament as “Turkey versus Turkey”. The current “crisis” found its feet in the ides in March, when Chief Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya brought forward a case for banning the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to the Constitutional Court. Yalcinkaya accused it of being a “hotbed of anti-secular activities”, specifically because of the government’s move to lift the ban on women wearing headscarves in public universities. The case would see more than 50
