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The general line

• Mark Mardell
• 20 Jul 07, 02:06 PM

Rojin bounced up and down on the stage, wiggled her hips, grabbed the mike and let rip with her powerful voice, her long dark hair flying...

It’s the hair, you understand, that interested me, because in front of the Kurdish singer was her large and enthusiastic audience, and in the very front rows, yes, looking up adoringly, swaying with the music, arms outstretched, was a sea of women wearing tight white headscarves with a sort lacy fringe.

This is a Kurdish rally, so maybe things are different, but while the headscarf issue divides the men of power, the women who are wearing the things don’t seem that fussed by people who don’t.

Not a democracy

But I am now back in Istanbul after a late flight.

An early morning drive across the Bosphorous to talk to a couple of retired senior military men, three-star generals. Many here believe it is the army that really calls the shots, without needing to fire any. Incidentally, when you say β€œretired military” in Turkey you are not talking about old buffers living out the last campaign from an armchair in the Turkish equivalent of a bungalow in Bournemouth, but vigorous men at the height of their powers, extremely intellectual and thoughtful, in the most senior positions in private enterprise after a distinguished career.

I’m not going to name them, not that I think they would mind, but because this was the result of a chat after an interview and I didn’t take notes, so what follows is a summary, not exact quotation.

They argued Turkey was not a democracy, despite the fact it goes to the polls on Sunday in what appear to be free and fair elections, with multiple political parties and a free-ish and vociferous press. Their arguments strike me as rather Leninist. The masses are uneducated and illiterate so can be deceived by unscrupulous politicians. Only when they are better educated will Turkey be a real democracy. It is the army’s job to intervene if there is any deviation on the path to this true democracy.

They make a similar argument about "ethnic issues"... which means the Kurds. Poverty and bad education is the problem. The solution may need a tough military component but it's really about developing the south-east of Turkey until people stop worrying about issues of identity.

I put it to them that the , which I’ve described to the ire of some as mildly Islamic, doesn’t seem very threatening. They have no hesitation in labelling the party's leaders as β€œextremists” who want to turn the clock back and make the whole of Turkey subscribe to the values of the uneducated rural areas. They argue, and this is a very common point of view, that political Islam has to end up with Sharia law. It's in the Koran. To believe anything else is not to be a Muslim. Although they do add that one can be devout and a secularist as long as faith is kept separate from politics.

More tanks?

That seems to me either a contradiction or a suggestion that Islam is not static and can take different guises. Why is it not possible for their to be another position, half way between Sharia law and the privately devout secularist? I add that it's possible for me to argue from the Bible that it is impossible for any Christian to kill or go to war, but we all know that is not actually the case. They say the difference is that Christianity does not contain a body of rules, of laws that are practical rather than moral, and that is the big difference.

I end up asking if we could ever see tanks on the streets of Turkey, imposing the army’s will. "No," says one of them, quickly and firmly, before adding that of course it's always a possibility if secularism is under threat, and it can’t be ruled out.

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