Military calls on Turks to keep up protests

TURKEY: Turkey's military, guardian of the secular state, has called on Turks to keep up their protests in defence of secularism…

TURKEY: Turkey's military, guardian of the secular state, has called on Turks to keep up their protests in defence of secularism after a suspected Islamist gunman shot dead a judge, the state-run agency Anatolian said yesterday.

The military, which has intervened in domestic politics in the past, made its call after protests on Thursday against the killing turned into a rowdy demonstration against the government, which has its roots in political Islam.

Anatolian quoted the head of Turkey's military general staff, Gen Hilmi Ozkok, praising Thursday's mass protests. "But it must not remain as a reaction of just one day, a one-off event . . . It must gain permanence, as something continuous, it must be pursued by everyone," he said.

The call is seen as a warning to the government from the army, which helped topple an Islamist-leaning government in 1997, and follows comments in leading papers that the government should learn lessons from the mass pro-secular protests.

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As Turks celebrated yesterday a public holiday set up by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk - founder of the modern republic who threw religion out of public life - Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan held a meeting of top ministers and security chiefs to discuss the shooting, an official at his office said.