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| March 18, 2008 | Tuesday | Rabi-ul-Awwal 9, 1429 |
Turkey’s stability, reforms at risk
ANKARA: Turkey faces a lengthy period of political uncertainty that could undermine its economy and European Union entry bid after prosecutors launched a case to shut down the ruling AK Party for alleged Islamist activities.
But many analysts predict the centre-right, pro-business AK Party will survive the legal challenge, which they characterise as the last stand of an unaccountable and discredited conservative secular elite out of step with modern Turkey.
“There will be a period of uncertainty, but it is 90 per cent certain the AK Party government will survive this,” said William Hale, author of books on Turkish politics and now teaching at Istanbul’s Sabanci University.
“The problem is it could all take as much as two years, though my impression is the court will act much more quickly in this particular case, perhaps within three to five months.”
A top prosecutor asked the Constitutional Court on Friday to close the AK Party and ban Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and some 70 other party officials from politics for five years on the grounds that they are trying to build an Islamic state.
Nato member Turkey is overwhelmingly Muslim but has a secular system. Its secularist elite, including the judges and army generals, has long accused the AK Party of plotting to erode the separation of state and religion, a claim the government denies.
Erdogan, Turkey’s most popular politician by far, has branded the lawsuit an attack on democracy and vowed to fight.
Prosecutors have been weighing an indictment against the AK Party for years, analysts say, but parliament’s recent decision to ease a ban on women students wearing the Muslim headscarf in universities gave them the crucial ammunition to act.
Secularists see the headscarf as a symbol of political Islam while the government says it is a matter of individual freedom.
The issue has deeply polarised Turkey and the Constitutional Court is due to rule shortly on whether that reform is legal.
The move to ban AK will rattle financial markets, already jittery over the global credit crunch, crank up political tensions and distract the government from urgent economic and political reforms sought by business and by the EU.
“Regardless of its final outcome, the lawsuit will seriously affect political stability,” said Wolfango Piccoli, a Turkey expert at Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy.
“If the court agrees to hear the case, then the choice will be between months of uncertainty followed by the case being dismissed (bad scenario) and months of uncertainty followed by the AK Party being closed down and its leaders being banned from politics (disastrous scenario).”
Much is at stake. The AK Party has overseen strong economic growth, buttressed by funding deals with the International Monetary Fund and the launch of EU accession talks.
AK emerged at 2002 polls, a coalition of religious, centre- right and nationalist elements. It swept to power as established ‘secularist’ parties were crushed by a public weary of personal and factional infighting, weak economic stewardship, and graft.It won re-election with an increased majority in last July’s polls after the army and the courts unsuccessfully tried to block its candidate for president, Abdullah Gul, an ex-Islamist.
Gul is among those the prosecutors want banned from politics.—Reuters
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