TURKEY’S SECULAR CONSTITUTION – SEE YOU IN COURT
Economist
rope/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10881280
March 19 2008
UK
A state prosecutor wants to ban the ruling party
Hands off our mildly Islamist partyAUTOCRATIC regimes in the Muslim
world often ban religious parties, which then go underground and turn
violent. Turkey’s Islamists have taken a different path. Despite being
repeatedly outlawed and ejected from power, pious politicians have
shunned violence, embraced democracy and moved into the mainstream. No
Islamic party has been as moderate and pro-Western as the Justice
and Development (AK) party, which catapulted into government in 2002
promising to lead Turkey into the European Union.
Yet the country’s secular elite is still fighting to oust the
AK government, on thinly supported charges that it wants to wreck
Ataturk’s secular republic. A senior prosecutor has made the charges
official, by asking the constitutional court to shut AK down because
it has become "a centre for anti-secular activities". In a 162-page
indictment, Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya argued that AK is using democracy
as a vehicle for imposing sharia law. He asked the court to slap
a five-year ban on more than 70 AK officials, including the prime
minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the president, Abdullah Gul.
The court, dominated by pro-secular judges, said it would decide by
April whether to proceed with the case. Already jittery financial
markets have taken fright. On March 17th the Istanbul Stock Exchange
plunged by 7.5% and the Turkish lira fell by 3.5% against the dollar.
Should the court decide to take up the case, the battle could last
for a year, pushing Turkey into a prolonged period of instability,
hampering reforms and jeopardising membership talks with the EU.
Mindful of all this, TUSIAD, the main business lobby, has denounced
the case. "Shutting down parties is not compatible with democracy,"
said its president, Arzuhan Yalcindag. America and the EU have also
rushed to AK’s defence. A combative Mr Erdogan has opined that AK’s
legal woes will only raise its popularity. He is probably right. The
most recent challenge to AK rule came a year ago when he nominated
Mr Gul for the presidency. The prospect of a president whose wife
wore the Islamic headscarf and who would not veto AK-inspired laws
galvanised the generals into threatening a coup. Many believe the
army’s meddling helped AK to a bigger share of the vote (47%) in
last July’s election. So why has the prosecutor chosen to act against
AK now?
Some see it as a last-ditch attempt by Turkey’s old guard to cling
to power. A new and pious class of Anatolian entrepreneurs, who
have thrived under AK, is challenging the elite. One such group,
Calik, which employs Mr Erdogan’s son-in-law, has acquired a media
conglomerate, whose assets include a television channel, ATV, and
the third-biggest daily, Sabah. "The reign of the Bosporus princes
is over," says a Western banker.
Ertugrul Gunay, the culture minister, has another explanation. He
believes the case is connected to the recent arrests of generals,
academics and journalists linked to a string of murders, including
that of an ethnic-Armenian editor, Hrant Dink. Proponents of this
theory note that Turkey’s first Islamist-led government was ejected
in 1997 after it began investigating links between the army and
organised crime. Another theory is that the case was prompted by AK’s
efforts to ease the strict secular ban on the Islamic headscarf in
universities. This move is cited in Mr Yalcinkaya’s indictment. Other
"evidence" is said to range from the AK-run Istanbul council’s
censoring of bikini ads to an AK official’s observation that "asking
a pious girl to remove her headscarf is akin to telling an uncovered
one to remove her underpants".
It is hardly the stuff of an Islamic revolution. Yet even AK’s closest
allies agree that Mr Erdogan should have done more to reach out to
secular opponents. On the headscarf, he might have worked harder to
protect the rights of women who choose not to cover their heads. He
might also have scrapped Article 301 of the penal code, which has
been used to prosecute scores of Turkish writers and academics for
"insulting Turkishness". With much of Mr Yalcinkaya’s case built
on things that the prime minister and his lieutenants have said, Mr
Erdogan should see the value of free speech. His secular opponents,
meanwhile, would do better if they left their ivory towers and spent
more time with the ordinary people of Turkey.