Lifting the veil on Islam and democracy

NEXT Monday, millions of Turks will wake up to a new, post-elections Turkey. What will happen is hard to foresee. Turkish politics is full of surprises that only foreigners find surprising. Today, and this seems to surprise most people outside Turkey, it is women, not men, who are at the heart of political debate. Indeed, in these elections, the number of women candidates from all parties has visibly increased and so has overall female political activism.

This election is taking place because, when the AKP - the conservative party now in power - designated foreign minister Abdullah Gul as its candidate for president, the country's secular elite cringed. Gul was not the issue; the issue was his wife. H...