ISTANBUL — Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Wednesday for early parliamentary elections in Turkey, offering a plebiscite on his ruling party’s brand of populist, religiously rooted politics, which the country’s secular elite regards as an entry for political Islam. Erdogan’s call to move elections to June 24 from Nov. 4 capped a tumultuous week in which his choice for president was approved by a parliament Erdogan’s party dominates, only then to be annulled Tuesday by Turkey’s highest court, a bastion of the secular establishment. Hundreds of thousands turned out for a protest in Istanbul, fearful that Erdogan’s choice would represent a rollback for liberal individual freedoms, and the military, calling itself ‘the absolute defender of secularism,’ bluntly threatened to intervene. Erdogan told a televised gathering of his party Wednesday that the court decision was ‘a bullet aimed at democracy.’ ‘The parliamentary democratic system has now been blocked,’ the prime minister added. ‘To get rid of this blockade and lift the rule of the minority over the majority, the only door to go to is the nation.’ Officials of the ruling Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish acronym AKP, cast Erdogan’s decision as a […]