And here is an amazing photo of the Blue Mosque in Turkey

Blue Mosque, detail, originally uploaded by Timothy Neesam.

The symbol of secularism in Turkey: The Hagia Sofia

Even More Hagia Sofia, originally uploaded by oberazzi.

The Hagia Sofia in Istanbul was a Christian church that was converted into a mosque by the Turks in 1453 after they sacked Constantinople, the seat of the Byzantine Empire.

In 1935, the founder of modern Turkey, the secularist Ataturk, who abolished the Caliphate in 1924, converted the mosque into a museum.

Islamist candidate fails in bid for Turkish presidency

From the Wall Street Journal:

Turkey's foreign minister [Abdullah Gul] withdrew his presidential candidacy Sunday because Parliament failed again to reach a quorum in voting that pitted the secular establishment against his religious-oriented party, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported.

...The presidential elections have exposed a deepening divide between secularists and supporters of Mr. Erdogan's party. Secularists oppose Mr. Gul's candidacy, fearing that Mr. Erdogan's party will expand its control and impose religion on society. Mr. Erdogan's ruling party, an advocate of European Union membership, rejects the label of Islamist and has done more than any other government to introduce Western reforms to the country.

Nevertheless, as the Journal goes on to report, it seems that many Turks don't share this benigh view of the Islamists:

On Saturday, more than 10,000 Turks gathered in the cities of Canakkale and Manisa, in western Turkey, to protest the Islamic-rooted government, calling for Turkey's secular system to be preserved. They followed pro-secular demonstrations in Ankara and Istanbul that were attended by more than a million people.

Are secularists revolting in Turkey?

Michael Rubin, editor of the Middle East Quarterly answers at The Corner:

What is going on in Turkey right now is perhaps the biggest underreported foreign affairs story. Between 700,000 and one million Turks staged a rally in Istanbul—apparently the largest in Turkish history—in defense of secularism. Photos here.

This follows the prime minister's selection of Abdullah Gul, a fellow Islamist, to be the only candidate for the presidency. Despite what many Western reporters are saying, what concerns Turks is much greater than whether the first lady wears a Saudi-style headscarf. It involves the future role of women, minority sects like the Alevis, the education system, and the judiciary, not to mention the question of whether Turkey can be bought. After the AKP failed to achieve a quorum, the left-of-center Republican People's Party has challenged the legality of the first round of the presidential vote. The Constitutional Court should rule on Wednesday.

I guess the message is don't publish Christian literature in "secular" Turkey

Al-Jazeera reports:

Three people have been killed in an attack on a Turkish publishing house which prints Bibles and other Christian literature.

Reports said the victims' throats had been cut and that police had detained six people in connection with the incident on Wednesady at the Zirve publishing house in Malatya.

Six suspects have been detained but no charges have been filed. But, as Al-Jazeera went on to note:

The manner in which the victims were bound suggested that the attack could have been the work of a local Islamic extremist group, said commentators.

No kidding.

Weren't these attacks supposed to have been about Iraq?

The Washington Post reports that about a week before the 9/11 attacks, members of the Turkish cell who carried out the Istanbul bombings in November 2003 - the four nearly-simultaneous truck and car bomb explosions that killed 58 people and wounded 750 that targeted Jewish and British interests - met with bin Laden and obtained Al Qaeda's support and blessing for the attacks.

The organization wanted to "take action against American and Israeli targets and break their dominance over Islamic countries," a suspect in the bombings told Turkish authorities. As the Post points out, this implies the attacks were being set in motion long before the U.S. even thought about sending troops into Iraq.

Like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda's franchisee in Iraq, at least for most of his "substantial collaboration" with Al Qaeda (to use a 9/11 Commission phrase), the Turkish cell was not required to pledge their fealty to bin Laden in exchange for the financial, spiritual, and logistical support, and explosives training they received in Al Qaeda's terrorist training camps then still operating in Afghanistan.

As one of the cell members told the Turkish investigators, "We are different from al-Qaeda in terms of structure, but our views and our actions are in harmony."

We'll be following the news of this trial, about to commence in Istanbul.