ANKARA, March 14: State prosecutors on Friday asked Turkey’s constitutional court to ban President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan from politics and prohibit their Islamist-rooted party.

The president of the court, Hasim Kilic, confirmed that prosecutors had lodged a complaint banning Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which they accuse of endangering Turkey’s strict official secularism.

“Attached to the demand for the party to be banned is a demand that 71 individuals be banned from political activity,” he said.

Kilic said the names of Erdogan, Gul and a former parliamentary speaker Bulent Arinc were on the top of the list.

Earlier, prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya’s had branded the AKP, an offshoot of a now banned Islamist movement which defines itself as a party of conservative democrats, “a home for activities that violate secularism”.

Turkey’s constitutional court has in the past banned several of the Islamist opposition parties in which many of the AKP’s activists, including Erdogan, cut their political teeth before founding their current movement.

The case comes after the AKP and a smaller opposition party had combined to vote through a controversial law allowing female university students to wear the Islamic headscarf to classes, a practice which was formerly banned.

The dispute over the headscarf, which some universities still forbid in defiance of the new law, has become symbolic of the struggle between Turkey’s secular and religious factions over the direction of their republic.

Secularists -- who remain strongly represented in the ranks of the army, the legal establishment and academia — fear Turkey, whose population is 99 per cent Muslim, could fall under the sway of Islamism.

Yalcinkaya, a prosecutor from Turkey’s appeals court, had previously warned that he would oppose the headscarf law, which he alleged was intended “to alter the secular character of our republic”.

The AKP has defended the reform, arguing that women have a constitutional right to education regardless of whether they wear a headscarf, and has called for university vice-chancellors who enforce a ban to be prosecuted.

Gul, who was himself required resign from the AKP before he could take up his role as head of state, urged Turks not to overreact to the dispute.

“We should think about whether these demands, made about a party that is in power with such a parliamentary majority, will help Turkey or hurt her,” he told reporters at the Organisation of the Islamic Conference summit in Dakar.

“We should think about this carefully. That’s my only view,” he said, reacting before the news that his name had been included in the motion, and added that he would represent “the unity and the entirety of Turkey”.

Turkey’s main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, said it hoped the court action would dissuade its opponents from attempting to make any more changes to secularist laws.

“I hope the party in power will take this case seriously and rethink its hostile attitude to our constitutional principles, and in particular to secularism,” party spokesman Mustafa Ozyurek said.

There was no immediate word on when the court might address the complaint.—AFP