Chaotic developments in Turkey‏

Turkey's government
Courtroom drama

Apr 3rd 2008
From The Economist print edition

The constitutional court's case against Turkey's ruling political party is a dangerous mistake

Reuters

IN A modern democracy, the notion that a court might ban a political party that has been in government for over five years and was re-elected only nine months ago seems bizarre. Yet it may happen in Turkey. On March 31st the constitutional court decided unanimously to take up a case brought by the chief prosecutor to ban the Justice and Development (AK) Party and to bar 70 party officials, including the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, from politics for five years. By a majority, it decided to pursue a similar case against Turkey's president, Abdullah Gul.

Outlandish as this case appears, there are plenty of precedents in the strictly secular Turkish republic created in the 1920s by Kemal Ataturk. Indeed, a forerunner of today's AK, the Welfare Party, was banned only ten years ago, shortly after the army had forced out its leader (and prime minister at the time), Necmettin Erbakan. Then, as now, the prosecutor's case asserted that the avowedly Islamist governing party was guilty of “anti-secular activities”. Mr Erdogan himself, at the time the Welfare mayor of Istanbul, was caught in the judicial net when he was briefly jailed for reading an Islamist poem in public.

Yet the circumstances today are very different from 1997-98. The AK, though mildly Islamist, is more moderate than Welfare. It has a big parliamentary majority, where Welfare was in a shaky coalition. Moreover, it has given Turkey its best government since the war. It has modernised the penal code, given new rights to Kurds, other minorities and women, brought the army under civilian control and presided over a stable, fast-growing economy—a record unmatched by any of its secular predecessors. And it has capped this by securing in 2005 a prize sought by Turkish governments for over 40 years: the opening of membership talks with the European Union.

It is no wonder that Turkish voters re-elected Mr Erdogan and the AK by a landslide last July. Yet the party has incurred the wrath of the army and of staunch secularists. The army fears that it may lose its privileged status if the government goes ahead with plans to produce a new constitution. The secularists fret that the AK leadership has a hidden agenda to turn the country into an Islamic republic, complete with sharia law. They cite various statements made by Mr Erdogan and Mr Gul (for instance, Mr Erdogan's claim that democracy was a train from which one should disembark on reaching one's destination). Most recently, they have objected vociferously to the government's plan to lift the ban on women wearing the Islamic headscarf at public universities.

Ataturk's secular tradition has proved the best way to preserve liberal democracy in a mainly Muslim country. It is a tradition worth preserving. But Mr Erdogan and Mr Gul have explicitly undertaken to stick to it. And it is absurd to assert that the lifting of a headscarf ban that was strictly enforced only a decade ago will lead to sharia law. Moreover, the reforms that the AK promises in order to prepare Turkey for possible EU membership, including the new constitution, would make the establishment of an Islamic republic impossible.

None of this has appeased the army and the secularists, whose own belief in democracy looks feebler. The generals openly threatened a coup last April in a bid to stop the AK installing Mr Gul as president. When the party then won re-election in July, the army backed down, allowing him to become president after all. The prosecutor's case against the AK in the constitutional court is just the next stage in this cynical game.

Bring forth a new constitution

Will it succeed? Since the case so plainly lacks merit a wise court would simply throw it out. The fact that the party enjoys strong electoral support makes proceeding even more perilous, and the financial markets have already taken fright. Unfortunately, however, the court is itself part of the fiercely secular establishment, as it showed by its strange decision to overturn Mr Gul's election by parliament last May. There is every chance that, after months of argument and political paralysis, it will rule against the AK.

To avert a prolonged crisis, Mr Erdogan should bring forward his plans to replace the constitution the army wrote after a coup in 1980 with one that makes it harder to close down peaceful political parties. The AK has a three-fifths majority in parliament, so it can propose changes for approval in a referendum. Only by showing once and for all that democracy matters more than secularism will Turkey become a truly modern European country.

The secularists fight back

Apr 3rd 2008 | ISTANBUL
From The Economist print edition

Illustration by Peter Schrank

The constitutional court takes on Turkey's ruling party

THE long battle between Turkey's mildly Islamist ruling party and its fiercely secular establishment is coming to a climax. The outcome could decide the country's future direction, and in particular its hopes of one day joining the European Union. On March 31st the constitutional court decided unanimously to hear a case brought by the chief prosecutor, who is seeking to ban the Justice and Development (AK) Party, and to bar 70 individuals, including the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, from politics for at least five years. By a majority vote, the court also decided to hear a similar case against the president, Abdullah Gul.

Turkey is no stranger to bans on political parties. Its court has shut four Islamic ones since 1970, including (in 1998) the Welfare Party, of which Mr Erdogan was a member. The argument is that such parties subvert the strictly secular constitution of Ataturk's republic by promoting anti-secular activities. Yet the prosecutor's case against the AK is overtly political. His 162-page indictment is short on detailed facts, instead making much of lurid comments by local AK officials. It concedes that the party's programme and statutes are constitutional. But it asserts in its introduction that the party “uses democracy to reach its goal, which is installing sharia in Turkey.” It goes on to cite statements made some years ago by Mr Erdogan and Mr Gul, even though both men have since insisted that they support the secular republic.

The prosecutor's biggest gripe is the AK proposal to lift the ban on women wearing the Islamic-style headscarf at universities. Indeed, the chief prosecutor explicitly warned the government in January that, if it proceeded with its plan, it might invite “sanctions”. Yet the ban on the headscarf was strictly enforced only after a suggestion by the constitutional court when it banned Welfare in 1998. Its lifting would hardly herald an Islamic revolution.

The truth is that the prosecutor is attempting what might be called a “judicial coup”. This follows the attempted “e-coup” that Turkey's overbearing generals hinted at last April, when they tried to stop the AK government from making Mr Gul (whose wife wears the headscarf) president. During the ensuing row, the constitutional court showed clearly which side it was on by overturning Mr Gul's election by parliament on a thin technicality. Mr Erdogan hit back by calling and winning an early election by a big majority, after which Mr Gul duly became president. The goal of the secular establishment now may simply be to get Mr Erdogan to quit.

That explains the broad condemnation of the court's decision to take up the case. Most media were highly critical. The stockmarket and the currency both tumbled. Turkey's biggest industrial lobby, Tusiad, called the case “unacceptable”. The European Union's enlargement commissioner, Olli Rehn, said it was “difficult to see that this lawsuit respects the democratic principles of a normal European society.”

What will Mr ErdoThe next few months are going to be tricky for Turkey.gan do? Mr Gul has promised to “carry on with business as usual”. Mr Erdogan will not back down over the headscarf ban. He has predicted that popular support for the AK Party will rise thanks to the case, as it did after the army's intervention last year. But he knows that a ruling against AK by the court, which is quite likely, would plunge Turkey into a deep political crisis.

His advisers want Mr Erdogan to respond by stepping up the pace of Turkey's EU-inspired reforms. He has been slower about these in his second term than he was in his first. The lack of enthusiasm for Turkish membership in many EU countries has not helped. Nor has his war with the secularists, some of whom want to derail Turkey's EU hopes because, as a report by the European Stability Initiative, a Berlin-based think-tank, puts it, they “prefer international isolation to giving up their traditional power and privileges.”

The most likely course Mr Erdogan will pursue is to accelerate his plans to change the constitution, which was written after a military coup in 1980, to make it harder to ban parties. He needs a two-thirds majority in parliament if he is to do this unilaterally, which would mean getting the backing of either the nationalists or the main pro-Kurdish party. If he cannot secure that, he can use AK's three-fifths majority to propose constitutional changes that must then be ratified in a referendum. The EU wants the constitution to be modernised. But even if he manages it, the court may prove intractable.