Surprisingly European

摘要

The government now enthusiastically leading Turkey towards EU membership is an unlikely candidate for the job. Its two most powerful figures, the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, have strong Islamist roots. Mr Erdogan, the son of a sea captain, was born and raised in a poor district of Istanbul. He earned his political spurs as mayor of the city in the 1990s, when he was notably successful in cleaning up its dreadful pollution and getting its grid-locked traffic moving. As chairman of the one-year-old AK Party when it surprisingly but convincingly won the general election in 2002, Mr Erdogan was unable to take a seat in parliament immediately because of a 1998 conviction for inciting religious hatred by reading a poem in public. In the months it took for him to change the rules and obtain a parliamentary seat, Mr Gul stood in as prime minister.