Turkey's Islamist-rooted government faced a wave of anger and calls for resignation after a deadly fundamentalist attack on the country's highest administrative court stunned a nation fiercely proud of its secular system.
The anti-government backlash Friday coincided with ceremonies marking the 87th anniversary of the start of the War of Independence, which ushered in a secular republic on the ruins of the theocratic Ottoman Empire.
On Thursday, tens of thousands of Ankara residents took to the streets in protest against the attack on the Council of State by an Islamist lawyer whose shooting spree killed one judge and wounded four others.
Alparslan Arslan, 29, shouting "I am a soldier of Allah", sprayed the judges' meeting with handgun fire, saying later that he wanted to "punish" the court for upholding a ban on the Islamic headscarf.
Friday, May 19, 2006
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