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I think that the main reason for the position of the EU officials is that they can only think that a political system has to converge to the one that they have in the EU. They just can’t get it that if there is a Muslim majority there has to be system that guarantees the civil rights and freedom as we understand it in the West. In Turkey this guarantor is the Turkish Armed Forces. I think that there will be a new general election soon.

Impressive pictures from the million rally in Istanbul /thanks BBC/:

Hundreds of thousands of people have marched in Istanbul in defense of Turkey's secular system of government.

The demonstration was prompted by a row over the ruling party's candidate for Turkey's president, amid fears of a drift towards Islamist influence.

Turkey is a Muslim-majority country, but has been officially secular since Kamal Ataturk founded the republic in 1923.

One sign called for the candidate, Abdullah Gul, to stand down unless he distanced himself from his Islamic roots. The sign reads Goodbye Gul.

The police said as many as one million people took part in the demonstration.

Turkey's powerful military has already warned that any candidate must ensure a secular state.

Whatever his faults, Erdogan has tried to walk down the white line in the middle of the road; his first major humiliation was his (mostly unexpected) inability to deliver a favorable vote on the use of Turkish bases for the US-led liberation of Iraq. The Muzzie fundies want to drag him and Turkey their way, and a very large part of the country (including most of the military) does not want to go. Since he couldn’t count on his supposed supporters and coreligionists when it counted, and since the rest of the country didn’t vote for him in the first place, the past couple of years has seen a shift toward the view that his party won’t hold on to power.

This business with the EU opposing the intervention of the Turkish military is analogous (but not identical) to the situation where Carter (or Europe) didn’t lift a finger to keep the Shah in power. His toppling was the tipping point for the Middle East. There are three possible outcomes, IMHO: one, that the fundies will take over everywhere (apart from Israel); two, that the fundies will be smashed by US forces and/or their own internal internecine conflicts, ushering in a return to a containment mode; or three, the annihilation of Islam. I think two is best in the short term, provided it leads to number three. Number one is unacceptable, because the long term of that is world domination.