In This Article
30-Second Summary
Headline Link: ‘Court Stops Short of Banning Ruling AKP’
Background: Hard-line nationalists vie with Islamist-leaning politicos
Historical Context: Secularism in Turkey, 1997 ouster of Welfare Party, 1998 no-confidence vote
Key Players: Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Abdullah Gül
Opinion & Analysis: Constitutional Court ruling offers a middle road that satisfies neither side
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Burhan Ozbilici/AP
Tayyip Erdogan, leader of the pro-Islamic
Justice and Development Party
Tayyip Erdogan, leader of the pro-Islamic
Justice and Development Party
Turkey’s Constitutional Court Decides not to Ban Islamist-Leaning Party
August 01, 2008 03:33 PM
by
Anne Szustek
The country’s majority AK Parti missed judicial closure by a one-vote margin. But can the party overcome the tug-of-war between hard-line secularists and the more religiously minded?
30-Second Summary
Six of 11 jurors on Turkey’s staunchly secularist Constitutional Court voted to ban the AK Parti from national politics on the accusation that it was trying to undermine the nation’s legal tradition of secularism. The court instead opted to slap the party with 12 million euros in fines.
Had one more juror voted in favor of the measure, Prime Minister R. Tayyip Erdogan, President Abdullah Gül and 69 other party officials would have been forbidden from politics for five years. The Welfare Party—of which Erdogan and Gül were once members—saw a similar fate in 1997 when the military coaxed them out of power due to the party’s Islamist platform.
The AKP has been heralded in some Turkish circles and by many Western governments for economic liberalization. Within the country however, the party has instigated moves interpreted by some to run counter to the secular ideals instituted by national founder Atatürk at the country’s inception.
Intermittent bans on alcohol, a clampdown on pork production, a failed attempt to illegalize adultery and a parliamentary move to end the ban on the headscarf—which was eventually overturned by the Constitutional Court—were cited by chief prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya as evidence the AKP has an ulterior Islamist agenda.
The word on the street among Istanbul’s affluent elite is likewise critical of the AK Parti: “They are trying to brainwash people. They are fakes. They are wearing a mask to hide what they really are,” says one young woman.
See BBC coverage
Had one more juror voted in favor of the measure, Prime Minister R. Tayyip Erdogan, President Abdullah Gül and 69 other party officials would have been forbidden from politics for five years. The Welfare Party—of which Erdogan and Gül were once members—saw a similar fate in 1997 when the military coaxed them out of power due to the party’s Islamist platform.
The AKP has been heralded in some Turkish circles and by many Western governments for economic liberalization. Within the country however, the party has instigated moves interpreted by some to run counter to the secular ideals instituted by national founder Atatürk at the country’s inception.
Intermittent bans on alcohol, a clampdown on pork production, a failed attempt to illegalize adultery and a parliamentary move to end the ban on the headscarf—which was eventually overturned by the Constitutional Court—were cited by chief prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya as evidence the AKP has an ulterior Islamist agenda.
The word on the street among Istanbul’s affluent elite is likewise critical of the AK Parti: “They are trying to brainwash people. They are fakes. They are wearing a mask to hide what they really are,” says one young woman.
See BBC coverage
Headline Link: ‘Court Stops Short of Banning Ruling AKP’
The AFP points out that closure of the ruling party would have resulted in “political chaos, wrecked Turkey’s EU accession talks and hit the economy.” The AK Parti would have to disband, and its members would have to run as independents.
Source: France 24 (AFP)
Background: Hard-line nationalists vie with Islamist-leaning politicos
On July 14 the Turkish government indicted 86 people, including prominent journalists and retired military leaders, in connection with the Ergenekon scandal, an alleged plot to overthrow the country’s Islamist-leaning government.
Source: Turkish Daily News
Turkey’s parliament in January approved a draft constitutional amendment to allow female university students to wear Islamic-style headscarves on campus. Secularists feared that this move was part of a campaign by the current Islamist-leaning government to weaken the separation of mosque and state, and on June 6, the Constitutional Court upheld the ban. On Thursday the AK Parti decided not to contest the court’s ruling on the matter.
Source: findingDulcinea
In March Turkey’s chief prosecutor filed an indictment against the AKP for “subverting secularism.” The Christian Science Monitor writes that Prime Minister R. Tayyip Erdogan needs to institute more democratic freedoms—such as guaranteeing women’s and religious minorities’ rights—rather than pushing through an Islamist-leaning agenda. “Turkey is struggling to find the right balance between its secular tradition and an increasingly devout Muslim population,” writes the magazine.
Source: The Christian Science Monitor
As of April 10, Istanbul’s last pork butcher was down to his last month of stock. The country’s Islamist-leaning government has shut down all but two pork farms and taken away the licenses from slaughterhouses. The butcher, ethnic Greek Lazari Kozmaoglu, says, “I don’t know what I can do if they don’t give it to me; this business is my life.”
Source: Bloomberg.com
Famed for strong tobacco, Turkey nonetheless introduced in January one of the world’s strictest bans on public smoking. The government maintains the legislation is to promote health and bring the country in line with similar anti-smoking rules seen elsewhere in Europe. Critics say that an Islamist motivation, namely dissuading people from going to nightclubs and bars, lies behind the new law, however.
Source: findingDulcinea
Historical Context: Secularism in Turkey, 1997 ouster of Welfare Party, 1998 no-confidence vote
In 1923, amidst the ruins of the Ottoman Empire and World War I, military general turned national leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk sought to establish Turkey as a secular republic by founding the nation upon a number of Westernizing reforms. Religion was to be kept out of governmental institutions, except for one ministry dedicated to religion. A centralized education system akin to the one in France was put in place, and women were given equal rights under the law.
Source: Council on Foreign Relations
In 1997, Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, the leader of the outwardly Islamist Welfare Party, resigned in light of heavy pressure from the military in what some have termed a “soft coup.” Deniz Baykal, the leader of the Republican People’s Party, the party founded by Atatürk, said that the military was acting as a “democratic pressure group.” Stephen Kinzer, then The New York Times’ Istanbul correspondent, wrote, “Welfare has…become the political home of many villagers, migrants and poor people who feel themselves left behind by the social injustices that have accompanied Turkey's economic boom.”
Source: The New York Times (free registration may be required)
On Nov. 25, 1998, the government of secularist Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz collapsed under charges of mafia-related corruption. This marked a shift in the country’s political composition that paved the way for the 2002 parliamentary victory of the Islamist-rooted AKP. Representatives from the military criticized Yilmaz for lifting a ban on headscarves in public schools. The armed forces saw this as a serious affront to the secular republic, and were growing restless.
Source: findingDulcinea
Key Players: Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Abdullah Gül
Recep Tayyip Erdogan (1954–)
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was convicted in 1998 of “inciting religious hatred” due to his recitation of an Islamist poem. He was then jailed for a brief period. His new political party, the moderate but Islamist-leaning Justice and Development Party, has ruled Turkey since 2002. The country has since seen enormous economic expansion, although secularists criticize his party’s social reform policies, which include a failed attempt to illegalize adultery, a move to re-draft the constitution to allow female students to wear Islamic-style headscarves at universities, and stiff taxation on alcohol. The working classes from rural areas, however, herald his policies.
Source: The BBC
Abdullah Gül (1950–)
In August 2007, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül became the country’s first president to have an Islamist background, a victory that marks the increasing influence of Turkey’s religious middle class on a government with staunchly secular roots.
Source: The BBC
Opinion & Analysis: Constitutional Court ruling offers a middle road that satisfies neither side
Turkish columnist Ertugrul Özkök writes that neither hard-line secularists nor AK Parti supporters are likely to be happy with the Constitutional Court’s decision. “Does a decision that doesn't satisfy anybody can help Turkey to survive?” Decrying what he sees as Erdogan’s “us and them” mentality of blaming the Istanbul elite for standing in the way of national harmony, he says, “The prime minister should search the way for consensus not because ‘the others want this’ but ‘it is the necessity of democracy.’”
Source: Hürriyet
Well-to-do Istanbul residents polled in the fashionable, affluent district of Nisantasi generally did not support a Constitutional Court-backed closure of the AK Parti; they however remain skeptical of the party’s motives. "They are trying to brainwash people. They are fakes. They are wearing a mask to hide what they really are,” said one young woman.
Source: The BBC
“From a purely legalistic point of view, a possible closure of the AKP by the court has to be respected by everyone irrespective of whether we like it because there is such a penalty in our laws,” writes Turkish columnist Yusuf Kanli. “As long as a law remains in the penal system of a country it must be applied without discrimination.”
Source: Turkish Daily News
Yavuz Baydar argues that the Constitutional Court’s verdict is a message to “the AK Party that it is to proceed under suspicion. … The underlying message is: Take the sensitivities of the entire society into consideration and stop acting in arrogance and pretending that the vote given to you paves the way to mismanagement.”
Source: Today’s Zaman
© 2009 Dulcinea Media, Inc.
