The National Security Council (MGK), which brings together the civilian leadership and the top army brass, convenes for a routine monthly session Wednesday.

"In my oppinion everything is on track and there is no extraordinary situation," Culture Minister Erkan Mumcu told Anatolia.

The MGK meeting comes after army chiefs last week boycotted a reception by the parliamentary speaker whose wife wears the Islamic-style veil.

The powerful military, the self-declared guardian of the mainly Muslim country's secular system, has intervened in politics in the past and was behind the removal of the first Islamist government in 1997.

Justice Minister Cemil Cicek accused the media of fanning a climate of tensions ahead of the meeting.

"You are the one to partly provoke this expectation. There is no use of turning every MGK meeting into a derby match," Cicek told reporters.

The head of the parliamentary foreign affairs commission, Mehmet Dulger, said he talked to army chief Hilmi Ozkok Monday night and was not left with any feeling that tensions would cloud the MGK talks.

The MGK is the platform through which Turkey's military puts its weight in political decision-making.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the offspring of a banned Islamist movement, has recently attracted criticism for allegedly compromising secular principles.

Turkey's top generals, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and the opposition Republican People's Party -- all staunch secularists -- boycotted a reception hosted by Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc last Wednesday.

Arinc's veiled wife shunned the cocktail so as not to antagonize the pro-secular establishment, but the wives of several other MPs turned up wearing headscarves.

Though Islam is the majority religion, Turkey enforces a strict ban on Islamic-style headscarves in public offices and universities where they are viewed as a declaration of support for political Islam.

The controversy over the boycott was seen not only as a protest over the headscarf but a warning that the army and president were unhappy with government policies.

The AKP has recently come under fire for asking Turkish embassies to support an expatriate Islamist group suspected of promoting extremism and for allegedly appointing pro-Islamist cronies to government office.

At a landmark MGK meeting in 1997, the military launched a harsh secularist campaign that forced Turkey's first Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan to step down.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and many of his aides were members of Erbakan's movement.

They say they had broken with their past, but many here believe the AKP still harbors a secret Islamist agenda.

SPACE.WIRE