Turkey Ruling AKP Sought to be Shut Down.

The Turkish parliament recently adopted a government bill lifting a decades-old ban on wearing the hijab - a headscarf used by Muslim women to cover their hair. The secularists rightly understand that the repeal on the ban on head scarves would just be the beginning of an unstoppable trend that has overtaken Iran, Iraq and now Turkey.

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Official wants Turkey's ruling party shut down
By Vincent Boland in Ankara FT
March 15 2008 02:00

Turkey's top prosecutor yesterday asked the constitutional court to close the governing Justice and Development party (AKP), in a dramatic and unexpected heightening of tension between the socially conservative government and the country's secularist establishment.

Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, chief prosecutor of the Turkish court of appeals, accused the AKP of being "the focal point of anti-secular activities". The move appears to be linked to the government's decision last month to ease the ban on wearing the Muslim headscarf at Turkey's universities.

The AKP has its roots in political Islam and is viewed with suspicion by the judiciary, the military and the republican opposition - three bastions of Turkey's secular constitutional order. It is the successor to parties inspired by political Islam that were shut down by the courts in the 1990s. Mr Yalcinkaya's move appeared to take both the AKP and the opposition by surprise, and there was no immediate comment from either.

Abdullah Gul, Turkey's president and former high-ranking AKP official, speaking in Senegal, where he is attending a meeting of Islamic nations, said: "Everyone should very carefully assess what Turkey would gain or lose by an attempt like this against a ruling party with such a majority in parliament."

The AKP won a landslide victory in a general election in July last year, gaining 47 per cent of the popular vote and winning 340 of parliament's 550 seats. The party first came to power in 2002.

Simmering tensions between the AKP and the secularists first exploded into the political arena in April last year, when the military intervened in the process of electing Mr Gul to the presidency, a post the army had long used as its conduit into politics. Mr Gul's wife wears the headscarf, which is banned in public buildings, and senior generals accused the AKP of presiding over a "creeping Islamicisation" of Turkish public life.

Commentators said they were shocked by Mr Yalcinkaya's action. Some said the move against the government was significant because it came from one of the state's top officials rather than from a renegade ultra-nationalist prosecutor with a grudge against the party. It was unclear last night whether the constitutional court, Turkey's highest legal body, would consider the request or throw it out.

According to the Anatolia news agency, the court will undertake a preliminary investigation of the prosecutor's case and send its findings to the AKP for a "preliminary defence", which the party has to submit to the court within a month. It is likely to take at least several weeks, if not months, for the case to go to a full trial, if that is what the court decides.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008