ANKARA, Turkey - Omer Kaptan was a farmer. But fertilizer prices climbed too high, so he left his land and moved to the city, where he sold pots and pans on the streets until the economy collapsed last year and workers from peddlers to bankers lost their jobs.
These days, Kaptan strolls a poor neighborhood of illegal shanties hammered into a hillside here on the outskirts of Turkey's capital. There are wilting cabbage piles and chimney smoke and women knitting in the sun. Cats and children pick through garbage. And a man rants in the road because he has no way to feed his family. His neighbors shake their heads.
"There's no work in this country. We're finished," said Kaptan, a sturdy man with a graying beard. "Look," he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the equivalent of 60 cents. "This is all I have for my 10 children."
Disillusionment and anger are expected to sweep the current government from power in today's national elections. Turks want new faces who will resolve the country's economic crisis.
Leading the polls is the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, whose populist appeal and Islamic roots are a troubling sign for many, especially the military, that Turkey's avowed secularism is threatened.
The AKP bills itself as a westward-leaning party with a commitment to democratic principles. It has captured 30 percent support in recent opinion polls and leads a field of 18 parties. Running second with nearly 20 percent in the polls is the Republican People's Party, or CHP, with its charismatic economic reformer, Kemal Dervis. Many analysts predict that the AKP and CHP will enter into a coalition government. Such an outcome would please the military, which views the latter as an ideal counterbalance to the Islamic influence.
But nearly a third of voters polled have said they are undecided, making it difficult to predict what influence the rising popularity of radical groups such as the Young Party, which is promising free education and free land, will have on the outcome. Young Party leader Cem Uzan, whose family owns the nation's second-largest mobile phone company, is facing U.S. racketeering charges for allegedly defaulting on nearly $3 billion in loans from Nokia and Motorola.
"I haven't made up my mind yet. We don't trust any of these guys," said Hatice Kucuk, sitting with other women in Kaptan's shantytown. "They're all the same."
One thing is clear: Turks want to purge their government of old coalitions and the political corruption that has infected this nation for decades. While many are voting for the AKP for religious reasons, most Turks just want something different.
The AKP logo of a light bulb and its feisty leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have capitalized on the desire for change, even if the party has been vague on prescriptions for reducing a $200 billion national debt and leading the country toward its long cherished dream of entering the European Union.
The military is watching closely. The protector of secularism in a country that's 97 percent Muslim, it forced an Islamic party from power in 1997.
But the ruined economy - with an unofficial 20 percent unemployment rate and $16 billion in loans from the West - is proving a more immediate threat than Islam. The national intelligence service recently urged television stations to limit the airing of celebrity magazine shows featuring wealth and baubles. The government said such programs were "causing deep reactions among the masses who are in economic crisis."
The economic woes are propelling the AKP in the polls. Discontent is so strong that Prime Minster Bulent Ecevit's Party of the Democratic Left is not expected to win 10 percent of the vote, the minimum required to hold seats in parliament.
"If the AKP comes to power," said Kaptan, "Turkey will enter the European Union and I'll be able to go to Europe and find a job."
Most political analysts don't regard this election as the watershed Turkey needs to overhaul a history of government inefficiency, patronage and strong military influence. No party or politician is seen as possessing the skills to clean up the bureaucracy, stop torture and human rights abuses in the ethnic Kurdish southeast, and quickly lift Turkey into the fold of the West. But an AKP victory, according to politicians and analysts, could trigger the beginning of social change and more emphasis on democracy.
Despite being the party's energetic touchstone, Erdogan most likely would not have a place in an AKP government. His 1998 conviction on religious sedition has banned him from parliament and from serving as prime minister. Federal prosecutors are attempting to have him removed as party chairman.
The AKP was formed in 2001 when the Islamic Virtue Party split over disagreements between moderates and hard-liners. Erdogan, who in the mid-1990s opposed Turkey's entry into the EU, brought together young, Western-educated professionals to widen the AKP's appeal to secularists and to the United States and Europe, both crucial for improving Turkey's economy and stock market.
Jeffrey Fleishman is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.