ISTANBUL - From ex-hookers to Christian evangelists, pop stars to Olympic champions, legislative elections in Turkey Sunday will feature a grab bag of unusual candidates bearing messages ranging from the tragic to the ridiculous.
Ayse Tukrukcu's cheeks are awash in tears as she tells of her abusive and violent alcoholic father, her rape at age nine, her life on the streets before ending up in a brothel where, she says, she was "sold" by her husband.
An activist for the past decade for an association that seeks to help people living on the fringes of Istanbul, she and a comrade in misfortune are independent candidates for parliament in order, she says, "to provide a voice for women whose lives were stolen from them."
"If I'm elected," she said, "I'll take all these women out to lunch at the parliament restaurant -- we suffered enough, it's time we had some fun."
Habib Ekrem Celik, an evangelical protestant, decided to run after ultranationalists slaughtered three Christians, one of them a friend of his, at a missionary bookstore in April in the eastern city of Malatya.
The forty-something Celik says he wants to end prejudice against Christians converts in this 99-percent Muslim nation.
"They covered building facades around our church with Turkish flags to intimidate us," he said, "but, hey, brother, I'm a Turk too -- I respect the flag."
Nil Demirkazik is determined to fight for the many causes she believes in and has done so over the years with little or more success -- mostly little.
An Ankara socialite with a Sorbonne degree and a penchant for provocative dress, she was paparazzi fodder during the 2002 election as she offered her services to the Islamist-rooted, conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The AKP gingerly kept her at arm's length and she reappeared in 2003 as a human shield in Baghdad, then as a Turkish "peace mediator" with Cypriot President Thassos Papadopoulos on the divided island.
On Sunday, she says, she will defend the rights of the Kurds as an independent candidate from Diyarbakir -- although the Kurdish-majority region's main political party, also fielding independents, has politely declined her services.
"They think you have to be a Kurd just out of jail to be elected in Diyarbakir," said Demirkazik, who campaigns in the southeastern province's villages on donkey-back. "But I have great support from the people."
The media here, meanwhile, believe it would be criminal if independent Hasan Cetin, from Denizli, in the western Anatolian highlands, were to fail in his bid for parliament.
The youthful electronics engineer's serious face gazes from campaign posters, promising, if elected, to transform Denizli, 175 kilometres (110 miles) as the crow flies from the nearest shore, into a seaside town.
Once he is in parliament, he vows, it will not rain if you have washed your car and the Rio de Janeiro carnival will be held in Turkey every year.
Turks like their music and no election would be complete without a singer or two running for office.
The populist Youth Party convinced folk song superstar Ibrahim Tatlises to renounce running as an independent from his eastern province of Sanliurfa and is presenting him at the top of their list in an Istanbul district.
Tatlises (his name, appropriately, means "sweet voice") is a regular in the people columns of Turkish newspapers, as much for his outrageously macho antics as for his art.
He has told the Turkish media that he wants the (non-existant) ministry of women's affairs when his party comes to power, which would send feminists into a frenzy, if only they took him seriously.
He is rivalled by a lesser figure on the folk-pop scene, Namik Ugurlu, better known as Namik from Ankara.
But what with his ribald lyrics ("Five bucks in the car, 15 at home") and, media reports say, a police record that includes traffic violations and two arrests this year for cocaine possession and threatening bodily harm, Namik is unlikely to be backed by conservative voters.
Last but not least, two Olympic legends are also in the fray:
The famed "Pocket Hercules," three-time Olympic gold medallist Naim Suleymanoglu, considered by many the greatest weightlifter pound for pound the world has seen, is running as a candidate from the extreme right-wing Nationalist Action Party.
The AKP has countered by running legendary eight-time European and double Olympic greco-roman champion Hamza Yerlikaya, named in 1996 a "wrestler of the century" by the sport's world governing body, FILA.

07/18/2007 03:42 GMT