Fireworks

Music

01.00.00

George:  Istanbul has something to celebrate - it has successfully hosted the last big UN conference of the millennium.

At dinner this evening, the atmosphere is convivial, but the laughter is apprehensive.

Group of women at table

Woman:  You know power is so wonderfully mysterious, and it gets into your blood.

00.29

Fireworks

George:  The conversation is laced not with celebration, but with foreboding.

Woman at table

Woman 2:  They cannot change my personal life. I come here and I drink.

Fireworks

George: Turkey is going through one of the most dramatic changes in its modern history.

00.44

Women at table

Woman 3:  I am worried. We don't realise how serious it could be.

Fireworks

Man at microphone/Political rally

All right! We 're starting! Our nation's health and Islamic liberation!

George:  Turkey is a secular State - it deliberately excluded religion from its constitution 73 years ago - but today Islam has become a major political player.

01.08

Last week, the Islamic Welfare Party - known as Refah - took power as the major partner in a coalition Government injecting, by turns, hope and fear in the population.

01.24

Street in Turkey

George:  Refah's rise began two years ago with men like Mayor Nusret Bayraktar who showed a new face of Turkish Islam - a crusading, reforming administrator breathing new life into a once derelict part of Istanbul.

01.46

George: In a city notorious for political corruption, within two years the mayor has transformed these streets from once-violent slums, and he did it on schedule and on budget.

Music

George: Mayor Bayraktar is the friendly, competent, tolerant face of Islam. A member Refah, which swept Turkey's municipal elections almost two years ago.

02.31

Nusret:  The previous administration didn't serve the people with the understanding of a love of religion, or conscience or enthusiasm.

Nusret interview

They wanted only position and fame. After a while they got together with special interest groups and thought only about their own future.

Mayor greeting constituents in office

George: Unlike the autocratic predecessors from Turkey' s secular political parties, Refah's success lies in  staying close to the people.

03.06

Every week the mayor opens his office to those who want to bring their problems to him personally. At first he got hundreds nowadays, there seem to be fewer complaints.

Sultan in mayor's office

Sultan:  My neighbour's wrecking my building. He 's building an ironmongers depot there. That's my place and he shouldn't be there at all.

03.29

Sultan's complaint is typical in a chaotic city where building permits have always been an exception rather than a rule.

Mayor: So what do you want me to do?

Woman: I want you to demolish that place

Mayor: Let's take her letter of complaint and send it immediately and tomorrow we'll look at it. Meanwhile, enjoy your tea and I 'll deal with your problem.

George walking on street with Sultan

George: A couple of days later, we catch up with Sultan and find her delighted.

04.18

This was a problem that really bothered me.

George: So this is it here, is it?

Sultan's building

George: The council's already been around to demolish the tiny shop, persuading Sultan of the Mayor's and the Refah Party's - honest intent.

Translator for Sultan: I thank you and the mayor that next day they came and solved my problem.

George: So you didn't vote for Refah in the last election, will you in the next ones?

Sultan:  God knows. But I think I might vote for him, because my own party did nothing for us.

Sultan at market

George:  Sultan's a long time Istanbul resident who's seen the chaos and poverty of the city grow with the neglect of self-serving politicians whose fingers were always deep in the till.

05.10

Sultan at home with Guler

For Sultan, Refah is a breath of fresh air but like millions of Turks, her daughter, Guler, is afraid that beneath the benevolent surface lies an Islamic extreme.

05.29

Guler:  I can tell you, I 'm a bit worried because I 'm the type who wears modern clothes and I go to work wearing sleeveless dresses. Up until now I've had no problem but when Refah comes, things might change.

Guler making tea

George:  Guler tells a story about an attack in the newly-restored streets of which the mayor is so proud.

05.57

Guler:  A man in a turban attack a married couple when the woman was wearing revealing clothes. There are people in Refah like that. They stabbed the husband and broke the woman's teeth.

George with Gul outside Parliament

George:  Refah's national leaders protest such intolerance is an aberration. They say fears of social repression are baseless.

06.21

Gul: First of all we are a democratic party, and in Turkey, of course, people are Muslim.

Gul interview

Super:  ABDULLAH GUL

Dep. Leader, Refah Party

Gul:  99% of the people are Muslim here.  Some of them are practicing Muslim some of them are not practicing Muslim, okay. But we can't use force against someone if he doesn't share our idea, okay. We are not going to limit any rights in Turkey.

Music

People in bar

George:  For those who cherish the secular life, suspicion of Refah runs deep.

07.10

Gulsun: If they get the majority, I mean the power I don t think they will act gently and nicely and smoothly.

Woman at table

George:  They 'll be forceful will they?

Woman:  They will. At least they will try. 

Gokturk:  They cannot do anything about my personal rights. You understand?

George with Gokturk

George:  Gulay Gokturk's suffered once already fighting for her beliefs - she spent two years in jail as a Communist - but she's ready to fight again.

07.41

Gokturk:  If they try to change my life, I will struggle for it.  And I think a lot of people in Turkey will struggle to do the same thing.

George:  They say the utter failure of major secular parties to address Turkey's underlying problems - especially poverty and corruption - has opened the way to Refah.

Woman:  All these people that are voting Refah used to vote the leftist parties...ten years ago. They were hoping to get a better life with the leftist government which they didn't find, so now Refah is promising. Promising and promising.

08.11

Men walking down country road

George:  While Refah power grows apace in the cities, its traditional heartland is in the conservative rural villages.

08.39

Music

Villagers dancing/Bride in house

George:  Like countless women before her, 17-year-old Arzu is awaiting an arranged Islamic marriage, sequestered from the celebrating menfolk below.

09.00

By tradition, dancers from the city are brought in for the special pleasure of the men, but the village women continue to take their customary back seat.

Groom arriving at wedding

George:  Marrying off a daughter is an important and serious event and when the groom arrives late, there' s considerable anger at this perceived affront.

09.42

Refah's appeal to such traditional mores is strong amongst those clinging to village life.

Bride and groom

As the young migrate to the cities they take their conservative values with them - building a new base from which Refah has now risen to power.

10.05

Parliament

Erbakan:  Until today, our people couldn't get what they wanted.

George:  Necmettin Erbakan, Refah' s leader, Turkey's new Prime Minister.

Erbakan:  After 50 years of hard work, we've reached a point where we 're approaching our goal.

George:  After years of being shut out by secular parties, Refah has at last stitched together a shaky coalition Government - the first ever led by Islamists.

10.53

Gul in audience

Members like Abdullah Gul say Refah can now attack problems that Turkey's secular elite has failed to deal with - financial and social corruption.

Gul

Gul:  This corruption is everywhere in the world. Unfortunately in Turkey it is very wide. People are suffering economically. In fact when we took over the municipalities they were all corrupt. Now during this almost three years time, no one can say that.

11.15

George climbing stairs

George:  Pious talk but it cuts no ice up here above Istanbul, in an artist's garret where fear of a wholesale Islamic assault on democracy reaches its height.

11.39

Baykarn painting

Baykarn:  Art in this country is a matter of life and death.

11.57

George:  Bedri Baykarn is one of Turkey's most well known painters. He' s also one of its most extreme opponents of Islamic politics

George:  So have you ever been threatened by the Islamists?

12.12

Baykarn:  Of course I've been threatened by the Islamists. I carry a gun myself at all times

George:  Why?

Baykarn:  Well, because many of our friends have been killed by Islamic terrorists.

George:  Baykam believes the Islamics could wreak havoc - targeting not just women, but artists, writers and intellectuals. And though as a leftist, he' s protested past military coups, he thinks the army may now have to step in.

12.27

Baykarn

Baykarn:  I would want democracy to survive with the help of political parties and political pressure groups but if any party including Refah wanted to overthrow democracy of course I prefer a military intervention that stops democracy for three years as opposed to going back 1, 000 years. It's incomparable.

Military parade

George:  Talk of military intervention is not so far-fetched. 73 years ago when Turkey became a secular state, the army was given the job of protecting the constitution and three times it's stepped in to unseat the politicians, often brutally suppressing any dissent.

13.10

George:  At what stage would the army feel forced to intervene, do you think?

Interview

Super:  METIN HEPER

Prof. Political Science, Ankara Uni

Heper:  This is a very tough question I wish I knew well I mean Refah party starts to amend some critical laws which really uphold a secular democratic state in this country, then you would never know what the military would do.

13.35

Demonstration

George:  In the centre of Istanbul, a peaceful demonstration in support of political prisoners turns into a rout.

14.06

Turkey's security forces have a fearsome reputation - torture, political murder, police intimidation and brutality - all supposedly to preserve democracy.

Such extreme displays of secular power are far more frightening than any Islamic threat from Refah for human rights activists, like Shanar Yurdatap.

14.27

Yurdatap on street

George:  In the end if they were in government, would do you really think they'd be any worse than the secular extremes that we've seen in Turkey?

Yurdatap:  No I don t think, I don't think they can be any worse So I'm really afraid of this team, not the result.

George on street at demonstration

George:  As if to prove a point, Shanar takes me to another peaceful demonstration within minutes the police move in.

14.54

Yurdatap:  This is legal. We didn't have to take any permission and they're taking or making a demonstration so they don't have any permission for that.

George:  So what the police is doing is illegal?

Yurdatap:  Yes, of course what the police is doing is illegal.

Shanar being arrested

George:  For Shanar, it's off to the police station yet again.

15.25

In the face of such extremes, dissidents and Islamists actually find common cause against entrenched secular power.

Gul

Gul:  In Turkey, there are some groups, elitists, they don t want to see us in power, because they got used to authority. They don't want to lose authority.

Dancers in village

George:  It's the weekend - Away from Turkey's political intrigues, half a dozen rural villages join together for a picnic.

16.14

Village picnic

Many are Refah supporters - but like most Turks, observant or secular, scarved or bare-headed, ordinary people mix easily together.

Singing

George:  They celebrate past glories - a Muslim Ottoman empire once noted for its prosperity and the tolerant way in which Islamic and secular laws operated side by side.

Turkish history has already shown that the meeting between east and west, between modern and traditional values, does not have to be a painful clash, and that' s the challenge to which Refah now has a chance to rise.

Singing

ENDS

17.47