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Erdogan’s party under threat

Turkey was thrown into crisis on Monday when the country’s Supreme Court moved to oust the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and close down his political party, the country’s biggest and most successful.

The 11-judge court, a bastion of the secularist establishment, decided unanimously to hear a case calling for the closure of Mr. Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) as well as banning the Prime Minister and President from politics for five years on the grounds that they were trying to impose Islamic law in the overwhelmingly Muslim country of 70 million.

The decision followed a failed attempt by the country’s military leaders to mount a coup by stealth last year against the Prime Minister and to stop the former Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gul, from becoming President.

Mr. Erdogan, backed by many domestic and international politicians, says that the court and state prosecution moves are anti-democratic and that his opponents are attempting to overthrow Turkish democracy through the courts because they cannot win at the ballot box. “History will not forgive this,” he said on Monday. “Those who couldn’t fight the AKP democratically prefer to fight with anti-democratic methods.”

State prosecutors claim Mr. Erdogan is slowly seeking to turn Turkey into a theocracy and want to ban 71 politicians, while the Prime Minister responds that his party is one of Muslim democrats enjoying overwhelming popular support.

Last year, Mr. Erdogan called the military’s bluff when it threatened to bring him down because of his nomination of Mr. Gul for President. He ordered early elections, a gamble that resulted in a landslide when his party took 47 per cent of the vote securing the biggest election victory in Turkey in 40 years. He then had Mr. Gul installed as head of state.

Osman Paksut, deputy chairman of the Supreme Court, said all 11 judges had resolved to hear the case following last month’s 162-page indictment of the AKP by the country’s chief prosecutor, Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, although four of the judges dissented from including Mr. Gul in the case. The AKP has a month to respond to the decision and Mr. Erdogan is threatening to change the constitution to make such bans impossible.

But the power struggle between Ankara’s secularist elite and the new class of conservative, reformist Muslims represented by Mr. Erdogan and his party is likely to last into next year, consuming most political energy, undermining Turkey’s EU ambitions and discouraging foreign investment.

“This episode has revealed a system error in Turkey’s constitutional framework that may need to be addressed through a constitutional amendment,” said an official dealing with Turkey’s attempt to join the union, said. If last year’s crisis was ostensibly triggered by Mr. Gul’s presidential bid, the latest attempt to oust the government was precipitated by the government’s move, earlier this year, to open up higher education to women wearing Muslim headscarves.

Turkey’s constitution bans the headscarf in universities in line with the constitution’s stipulation that Turkey is a secular republic. Mr. Erdogan changed the constitution to overturn the headscarf ban, arguing that this was a victory for liberty — ©Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

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