A modern religiously minded Turkey is emerging

ANKARA, July 20 (Reuters) Muslim Turks often complain that their country, which votes for a new parliament on Sunday, is wrongly portrayed as veering towards an Islamic state just because some women want to wear headscarves more freely.

They say outsiders fail to understand the large democracy that spans Europe and Asia because it has a rare blend of state secularism and a predominantly Muslim population.

''Turkey is pretty unique with its public secularism and private piety,'' Hugh Pope, an author on Turkey, told Reuters.

Amid the minarets of its cities, newsstands sell papers plastered with scantily clad models and bars offer any kind of alcohol. Some women wear the scarf, others don't.

The role of Islam has come to the fore in this election and has highlighted deep divisions as a growing middle class of pious Muslim Turks gain influence.

Secular opposition parties say the ruling AK Party, whose leaders have a history in political Islam, as seeking to undermine the status quo and turn Turkey into an Iranian-style theocracy based on Sharia law.

The AK Party laughs off the charges, saying its record in office proves the contrary. Its policies have actually been more pro-Western than most secular parties and it has been careful to avoid being seen as favouring more religion in public life.

Opinion polls are showing the AK Party winning around 40 percent -- up several points on 2002 -- with only two other parties, from the centre-right and nationalist far-right, entering parliament.

A series of mass pro-secular, anti-AK Party rallies across Turkey rattled the government in recent months but that anger seems not to have turned into more votes for the opposition.

The army, which has ousted four governments, most recently Islamists a decade ago, also threatened to intervene in politics if the republic's values were at risk.

RISING MIDDLE CLASS Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, a devout Muslim, was forced to call early elections after losing a battle against the secular elite, which includes army generals, judges and opposition leaders, over the appointment of the next president.

Secularism has dominated Turkey since 1923 when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the modern republic out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire and removed religion from public life.

His followers later built an ideology around him, which centred on secularism, nationalism and a central state.

In the 1980s control over religion was tightened further with a ban on wearing the headscarf in universities and public offices.

Authorities said the cloth was a powerful symbol.

The secular elite has long controlled state institutions and businesses, but over the past decade a growing religiously minded middle class has emerged in the cities.

''Secularists claim they are afraid that their lifestyles will be controlled but I don't think it's a sincere argument. I think they don't want to share their power with an emerging group of people who are trying to practise their religion,'' said Fatma Disli, a columnist at daily Today's Zaman.

''My mother, who wears the headscarf but never went to university, is not seen as a threat for the secularists, but I am because I wear the headscarf, went to university and now work for a newspaper,'' she said.

Some liberal Turks are also expected to vote for the AK Party, not because they back their religious beliefs but because they acknowledge the AK Party delivers on the economy and the issue of the headscarf is not such a problem for them.

''The question is whether the (secularist) ideology matches where most Turks want to go and this is what this election is partly about,'' said Pope.

Statistics differ as to whether more Turks are now wearing the headscarf but if the AK Party returns to power it will have a mandate to relax restrictions on religion, something which is likely to raise fresh tensions with the secular establishment.

Reuters CS GC1937