October 7, 2002	Monday	Rajab 29, 1423

ANKARA, Oct 6: Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said on Sunday he suspected the front-runner in upcoming elections, the Justice and Development Party (AK), of having a “secret” Islamic agenda that could pose problems for the strictly secular Muslim nation, Anatolia news agency reported.

AK chairman Recep Tayyip Erdogan was barred from standing in the November 3 polls last month on the grounds that his 1998 conviction for “inciting religious hatred” made him ineligible under Turkish law.

Erdogan has disavowed his hardline Islamic views in the past and his party, which is expected to win a clear victory in the elections, says it is a centrist force favouring Turkey’s secular system.

But Ecevit said AK had a secret ideology and its members were known to entertain anti-secularist views.

“This brings to mind very intensively the possibility of hidden intentions,” Ecevit told TV8 television, according to the text of the interview carried by Anatolia.

He also cast doubt on the agenda of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party (HADEP), which risks being outlawed in a pending court case on charges of links to armed separatist Kurdish rebels. “Be it AK or HADEP, these two parties could create trouble for Turkey,” Ecevit said.

Turkey’s secularist establishment has clamped down on Islamic political movements since 1997 when the country’s first Islamist prime minister Necmettin Erbakan was forced to resign. Erdogan and many activists in his AK party were members of Erbakan’s Welfare Party, which was banned in 1998.—AFP