Turkey is the only considerably secular country in the Muslim world. In the July 2007 General Election Turkey's ruling AK Party won a resounding victory scoring 47% of the vote.
The win for the pro-business, Islamist-rooted party was a major blow to secularism within the country. AK party officials have promised to maintain Turkeys secular political system. In reality the movement has moved towards a limited form of Islamisation. A ban on female students wearing Muslim headscarves in Turkey's universities has been lifted.Parliament approved the constitutional amendments by 411 votes to 103. This led to an outcry among secularists. Thousands of people waving Turkish flags and chanting secularist slogans staged a protest rally against the changes in Ankara. Secularists suspect -probably correctly- that the AK Party wishes to dismantle the secularist political system in a gradual manner.
It is against this backdrop that the Turkish Constitutional Court has announced that it will hear the closure case against the ruling AK Party. The case accuses the party of seeking to undermine the secular state and includes a possible political ban of five years for Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Constitutional Court's decision to accept the closure case against the ruling Justice and Development Party, called the AK Party, was given in a short announcement by the deputy chairman of the court, Osman Paksut.
With increasing political instability inevitable military intervention cannot be ruled out. So far the army has remained quiescent. However a major constitutional crisis may be about to unfold. In such an eventuality the army may intervene to maintain stability. Is is doubtful if the secularists can withstand the Islamist tide in the long term.
If the AK Party is banned it could reform under another name. AK's predecessor was the Refah Party.
A strongly Islamist Turkey would have little prospect of joining the EU. Could this save secularism?
No comments:
Post a Comment