Thousands of Turks rally against government in port city

The demonstration in Samsun follows massive pro-secular protests in Turkey's three largest cities — Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir — and comes ahead of the July 22 general elections that will pit Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party against the secular opposition.

The protest in Samsun, a city of some 1.2 million inhabitants, drew smaller crowds than previous protests, but was highly symbolic: It was here that Turkey's secular founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, launched the country's war of independence against occupying powers after World War I, on May 19, 1919.

"Turkey is secular and will remain secular!" the demonstrators chanted, waving Turkey's red national flag and posters of Ataturk.

"I owe my identity, my rights as a woman, everything to Ataturk," said Sezer Ozdogan, a retired teacher. "I am here to tell (the government) that they cannot undo what he did."

The leaders of Turkey's two main secular parties, which formed an election alliance last week, attended the demonstration in Samsun together in a show of unity. Police estimated the crowd at between 50,000 to 60,000, according to the private Dogan news agency.

The demonstrations began in early April to pressure Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government against nominating Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul for president over fears that the party would expand its powers and govern unchecked.

Secular opposition parties then boycotted the presidential voting process in Parliament, creating a political deadlock and forcing Gul to abandon his bid.

The deadlock, along with increasing pressure from the public and the military, led Erdogan to call for early parliamentary elections. Legislators also passed an amendment to allow the president to be elected directly by the people, rather than by Parliament, which currently is dominated by members of Erdogan's party. President Ahmet Necdet Sezer has yet to endorse the amendment.

Parties from Turkey's fractured secular opposition have been scrambling to unite to challenge Erdogan's party at the polls.

The main opposition Republican People's Party, led by Deniz Baykal, agreed this week to form an alliance with the Democratic Left Party. And two small parties — True Path and Motherland — joined forces to form the new Democrat Party.

On Sunday, Democratic Left leader Zeki Sezer told protesters the parties had found "a formula to take Turkey toward enlightenment and prevent those who want to take Turkey toward darkness."

Erdogan spent time in jail in 1999 for reading a poem at a political rally that the courts said challenged Turkey's secular system, and many of his party's members, including Gul, are pious Muslims who made their careers in the country's Islamist political movement.

Erdogan rejects the label "Islamist," however, and says he is committed to Turkey's secular traditions, and his government has done more than most previous governments to advance Turkey's European Union membership bid.

Turkey's secularism is enshrined in the constitution and is fiercely guarded by the judiciary and by the powerful military.

"We are here to cry out loud that we are against Shariat," or Islamic law, protest organizer Turkan Saylan said.

"And we are against military coups," she said, referring to the military's threat last month to intervene to preserve Turkey's secular system. The Associated Press

/The International Herald Tribune/