The election, in fact, was provoked by Mr. [Recep Tayyip Erdogan]'s proposal to name his foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, as successor to President Ahmet Necdet Sezer. Mr. Gul's wife, in the Islamic tradition, wears a headscarf, as does Mr. Erdogan's. It is a measure of the Islamist-secular divide in Turkey that the idea of the president's wife wearing a headscarf in the presidential palace prompted riots and demonstrations in Ankara and Istanbul. The crisis raised fears that the military might once again mount a coup, as it has done before when it feared that the country's secular democracy was threatened.