Ankara - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has controversially turned religion into a campaign issue in the officially secular country's upcoming polls, which promise to be the biggest election challenge yet for the ruling party.
In an unprecedented gesture by a Turkish politician in recent times, Erdogan waved a copy of the Muslim holy book the Koran translated into Kurdish during a rally this week in the Kurdish-majority southeast.
"Turkey has never seen a president who leads an election campaign with a copy of the Koran in his hand," Professor Ilter Turan of Istanbul's Bilgi University, told AFP.
The ruling Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) -- co-founded by Erdogan and in power since 2002 -- is widely expected to win the June 7 legislative polls but faces an uphill struggle to win the two-thirds majority it needs to change the constitution.
One of the main obstacles could come from the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) and AKP leaders are bashing the party in the hope of keeping it well under the 10 percent quota needed to win seats in parliament.
Erdogan's repeated attacks on the HDP during a tour of the southeast this week were controversial since as head of state he is supposed to stay outside politics.
But his use of religion to deter Turkey's Kurds -- who account for some 20 percent of the population -- from backing the HDP has raised eyebrows in a country whose political system rests on the secular foundations laid by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk at its creation in 1923.
"Erdogan is trying to base his campaign on religion and melt down ethnicity-based policies in this particular region in order to boost the AKP's votes," Turan said.
"He (Erdogan) fears he will be isolated and weakened if the AKP loses support."
AFP
