Turkish leader says Ataturk office won't become toilet (Reuters)

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Abdullah Gul denied on Friday he planned to turn the palace office of modern Turkey's founder into a toilet.

A columnist in staunchly secularist Cumhuriyet newspaper had said Gul, a former Islamist and ex-member of the ruling AK Party, was converting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's old office in the presidential palace in Ankara into a toilet.

"Such a shameful fabrication, whose author dares even to abuse Ataturk's name in the ugliest way, is deplorable for press ethics," Gul said in a written statement.

Ataturk founded the modern Turkish republic in 1923 as a secular state after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Secularist critics of the ruling AK Party, which is fighting a court case to have it closed down for Islamist activities, accuse the party of seeking to undermine the secular state.

The closure case also aims to ban Gul, a respected former foreign minister, from belonging to a political party for five years, along with Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

Since Gul was elected president last year he has begun renovating the presidential palace in Ankara.

(Reporting by Selcuk Gokoluk; Editing by Timothy Heritage)

Source

Related Posts by Categories