TURKEY: A Turkish gunman, proclaiming his Islamic faith, killed one judge and injured four others in a shooting in a top court, an act which Turkey's president condemned as an attack on its secular establishment.
The top administrative court's deputy chairwoman said the assailant described himself as a "soldier of Allah" as he carried out the attack. President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said it would go down as a "black mark in the Republic's history".
The court, the Council of State, has faced fierce criticism in Islamist circles for hardline implementation of secular laws such as a headscarf ban in universities and state offices. The attack is a stark reminder of the great divide between Turkey's secularists and those they perceive as Islamists bent on reviving the influence of religion in national life.
The attacker, a young lawyer, burst into the court's second chamber and started shooting with a handgun during a committee meeting at around 10am.
The CNN Turk website reported the assailant as saying he had targeted the judges because of a ruling in February preventing a woman from becoming a head teacher because she wore a headscarf.
"It is seen that this is an attack against our Republic and our Republic's irrevocable democratic and secular character," Mr Sezer, a staunch secularist, said in a rare comment to reporters after visiting the court.
Islamic militants, Kurdish separatists and far-leftists have all carried out attacks in Turkey, which began European Union accession talks last October. Suicide bombings for which al-Qaeda has been blamed killed more than 60 people in Istanbul in 2003.
Secularists accuse the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of having an Islamist agenda. The AKP denies this.