Events in Turkey improve AKP’s survival chances

Rapporteur is against ruling party’s closure

If the Justice and Development Party is closed and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan removed from power, analysts expect an early parliamentary election will follow.

By Paul de Bendern - Reuters

ISTANBUL - A call by an official of Turkey's Constitutional Court not to ban the ruling party has made it harder for the court to justify any such move with political tensions already high.

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) is on trial on charges of seeking to introduce Islamic rule in predominantly Muslim but officially secular Turkey. A chief prosecutor wants the party closed down and leading members, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, banned from party politics for five years.

The potential closure of a democratically elected party has deepened political and economic uncertainty, wiped billions of dollars off Turkish stocks and raised questions about the future of Turkey's European Union membership negotiations.

Constitutional Court rapporteur Osman Can recommended on Wednesday that the AKP, which has roots in political Islam but has pursued a pro-reform, pro-business agenda since first coming to power in 2002, not be closed down.

«(The report) will add to the growing mood that the chances of not banning the party are higher than a month ago,» said Cengiz Candar, a leading Turkish columnist.

But he added: «The report is not binding and the judges did not heed his calls before. I still expect the party to be closed, but the odds are getting closer.

«If it is banned it will push Turkey into instability. That kind of perception might reflect on the judges,» he said. A ruling is expected in early August.

The AKP says the charges are politically motivated and have no legal merit, and the case is an insult to democracy.

Senior AKP members, political analysts and diplomats have long forecast that the party would be shut down in what many Turks saw as a political case rather than a legal one fought between the country's old establishment and a rising new religious-oriented power base represented by the AKP.

Some 20 political parties have been banned for Islamist or Kurdish separatist activities in the past few decades, but none of them have been as popular as Erdogan's AKP.

As one senior AKP member, who declined to be named, put it: «The risks are now too high for Turkey.» Another senior AKP member remained pessimistic, saying the judges, known for their hardline secularist views, would be hard to sway.

If the AKP is closed and Erdogan removed from power, analysts expect an early parliamentary election will follow.

The closure case comes amid a separate potentially explosive case involving the shadowy ultranationalist group, Ergenekon, accused of seeking to overthrow the government by launching a series of violent actions that would force the army to step in.

Last week a chief prosecutor indicted 86 people, including retired army officers, politicians, lawyers and journalists. Two senior retired generals - the first senior officers to be detained in the country's history - have also been arrested, although they have not yet been indicted.

Turkey has had four military coups in the last 50 years, only two involving armed force. The most recent was a 1997 «soft coup,» when the generals edged from power a government they considered Islamist using a combination of public and behind-the-scenes pressure.

Some opponents of the government call the controversial coup case revenge for court moves to outlaw the AKP. Turkish media are ripe with theories that the two cases are linked.

The AKP has denied any links.

A powerful elite of military, judicial and academic officials see themselves as custodians of secularism.

This elite is accused by critics of failing to come to terms with changes in society and using undemocratic means to push its agenda, while some say the AKP has helped polarize the country.

«We have extreme polarization in this country. When you talk to people on the street or at a cafe - if you are against the AKP you are a bad guy, if you talk against Ergenekon you are for a sharia (Islamic law) regime and vice versa,» said Cengiz Aktar, a political scientist at Istanbul's Bahcesehir University. He still expected the party to be closed.

Turkey's top court has in the past surprised legal experts with its rulings. Eight of its 11 judges were appointed by former President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a staunch AKP opponent.

But shutting down the AKP might only boost public support.

If elections were then held its successor might potentially win enough seats to change the constitution, some analysts say.

«If the AKP is kept alive it will no longer try to cross any red lines (like lifting the headscarf ban) and so will not be able to continue some of its previous policies opposed by the hardliners,» said leading Turkish columnist Mehmet Ali Birand.

«The closure of the AKP may actually give the party members more power.»