Turkish Leaders Issue Pleas for National Unity
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Istanbul, Turkey — Turkey’s leaders were forced to issue urgent appeals for national unity yesterday as the country’s highest court met to consider banning the ruling party just hours after a devastating twin bombing in Istanbul.
Despite facing a fight for his political survival, the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, toured the site of an attack, widely blamed on Kurdish terrorists, which killed 17 people on Sunday night and called for the country to rally against instability. “Today is a day for unity,” he said. “Our problem at the moment is to keep our unity so our country will go in a different direction.”
The blasts came on the eve of the crucial court case involving the ruling AKP. Efforts to shut down the party and reverse its pro-Muslim policies were launched after it sponsored laws that eroded the strict division of religion and state imposed on Turkey by its republican founder, Kemal Ataturk.
