Words in the News Monday 04 November 2002 Vocabulary from the news. Listen to and read the report then find explanations of difficult words below.
Elections in Turkey Summary: The people of Turkey are trying to come to terms with a completely new political landscape following Sunday's parliamentary elections. The main questions revolve round what the Justice and Development, or AK Party, which has strong Islamic roots, will do with its landslide majority. This report from Nick Thorpe.
The first task of the Justice and Development Party is to reassure the wider Turkish society and the international community that it is what it says it is: a party of the democratic centre. In his first comments the party leader Tayyip Erdogan has stressed exactly that point and said his priority is Turkey's relations with the European Union. A crucial summit on EU enlargement will be held in Copenhagen in mid-December and the prize which has eluded previous Turkish governments is the setting of a date for membership negotiations to start.
Key figures in the new opposition have already said they support that goal. In domestic politics the big question is how the AK Party will satisfy its more than ten million voters without alarming the army and other organs of what are usually referred to in Turkey as the 'deep state'. The new interior minister can be expected to try to end political manipulation of the police and the justice minister to end the practice of endless prosecutions of suspected enemies of the state. Supporters of the party hope for a new era of pluralism and tolerance including a new tolerance of religion in Turkey.
