Secularists gaining in Turkey elections

ISTANBUL, Turkey – Turkey’s Islamist-leaning ruling party easily won municipal elections across most of the country Sunday but appeared close to losing in Istanbul, the capital and most cosmopolitan city.

The vote, a week before a planned visit by President Barack Obama, highlighted the ongoing struggle between secular-minded Turks and their more devout compatriots.

Turkey is overwhelmingly Muslim but since its founding has observed a strict separation of mosque and state. A NATO ally, it is regarded as a bridge between the West and the rest of the Muslim world.

National elections are not due to take place again for another three years, and midterm votes are an important barometer of public sentiment. Analysts said the results suggested that secularists, while lagging overall, were gaining ground.

In the country as a whole, ruling-party candidates took the largest share of mayors’ posts and local council seats, garnering about 40 percent of the vote, with the remainder split among smaller parties, according to unofficial returns.

But in Istanbul, the main secularist opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, or CHP in Turkish, surged to a stronger-than-expected showing. By early today, no clear victor had emerged in the mayor’s race.

“It’s different out in the countryside,” said Zeynap Guler, a marketing executive who was following late-night results with her friends in an Istanbul cafe. “Here we like to live as we please, dress as we please.”

Many secularists are still bitter over the decisive 2007 victory in national elections of the Justice and Development Party, known in Turkey as the AK Party.

Opponents went to court last year to try to have the party outlawed for allegedly subverting Turkey’s secular constitution.