Turkish opposition rides nationalist wave in elections

0 Comments | AFP, July, 2007

ANKARA (AFP) — A politician brandishes a noose and calls for a jailed Kurdish leader to be hanged; another accuses the prime minister of being a coward for not invading Iraq, a third says the premier is the biggest obstacle to Turkey's anti-terror effort.

With the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) leading the opinion polls for legislative elections Sunday, opposition parties are lashing out at Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's failure to quell renewed bloodshed by separatist Kurdish rebels in the southeast.

The secularist army, often at odds with the AKP's Islamist roots, has upped pressure on Erdogan with public appeals for an incursion into neighbouring Iraq, where the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and...