You might think that Suleyman Demirel, the portly, rather clomping 75-year-old who occupies the presidency of Turkey, would soon be leaving the job. Until the other day, Mr Demirel seemed bound to retire in May, when his term of office ends. The Turkish constitution says that presidents can be elected by parliament for only one seven-year term. It also says that the president, in domestic affairs at least, should keep his feet out of the mud of politics. Yet Mr Demirel, who was prime minister a record seven times before winning the presidency in 1993, has repeatedly waded in. He may even have prevented the country's fourth military coup in less than 40 years when he persuaded modern Turkey's first Islamist-led government to leave office voluntarily in 1997 rather than risk doing so at gunpoint.
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