Turkey’s Chief Prosecutor Sues to Shut Down Governing Party

Whatever other qualities Abdurraham Yalcinkaya may possess, audacity must be first among them. He is the Chief Prosecutor in Turkey, and he has brought suit in the Constitutional Court against the ruling party, the Justice and Development Party [AKP by its Turkish initials]. He argues in his 162-page petition that the AKP is undermining Turkey’s secular system, and he wants the party abolished as well as the prime minister and 69 members of parliament banned from politics for five years. Tomorrow, the government is expected to give its defense. It takes some nerve to try to get the governing party’s very existence declared unconstitutional.

The AKP doesn’t deny that it has roots in Islam. The dispute lies in whether the AKP is operating as a religious political party in a nation where such are unconstitutional. It is one thing for a party to operate based on values derived from religious teachings, but it is quite another for a political party to want a theocratic system. Under Islam, there never really has been the separation of religious and political power that Europe saw after the Reformation, thus the situation is further complicated.

For example, the AKP has taken up the issue of females wearing headscarves in public. Until recently, there was no question that students, wives of presidents etc. could not do so. The AKP argues that freedom of religion is rather a big deal (rightly so), and the party maintains that those women who wear headscarves out of religious obligation are discriminated against as a result -- no university education for headscarf wearers.

Mr. Yalcinkaya believes that there is a hidden (or not-so-hidden) Islamic agenda hiding in the AKP’s policies. In his submission to the court, he wrote, “This risk has been increasing every day. The danger is clear and concrete. There is no other way to protect society than to close the party down.” In his verbal argument yesterday, he said the AKP had become a “focal point of anti-secular activities.”

Nico Hines writing in The Times, noted “Turkish courts have banned more than 20 political parties for alleged Islamist or Kurdish separatist activities and a predecessor to the AK party was banned in 2001. A governing party has never before faced dissolution.” If banned, the AKP will likely reform under a new name with new leadership, but it will create a constitutional crisis and jeopardize Turkey’s pursuit of EU membership. Mr. Yalcinkaya is nothing if not audacious.

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

Kensington Review Home