ANKARA (AFP) — Turkey's top court agreed Monday to rule on whether the governing AKP party should be banned for anti-secular activity, in a case that could threaten national stability and Ankara's bid to join the EU.
The 11 judges of the Constitutional Court unanimously decided that they could hear the case against the Justice and Development Party (AKP) filed by the country's top prosecutor on March 14.
A final verdict is expected to take up to six months.
The judges ruled by a majority vote that President Abdullah Gul, who belonged to the AKP until he was elected head of state in August, should be included in the legal proceedings.
In his petition to the court, the chief prosecutor of the Court of Appeals, Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, accused the AKP of undermining Turkey's secular order as part of a plan to replace it with an Islamist system.
As well as a ban on the party, he also asked the Constitutional Court to bar 71 party officials, including Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, from politics for five years.
The AKP now has one month to present its initial defence to the court, which has banned more than 20 parties since the 1960s.
The government sought to play down the court ruling, insisting that its focus remained on running the country.
"We are more concerned with issues like reforms, economic development and the process of EU accession," Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek said after a cabinet meeting.
Founded in 2001 as the moderate offshoot of a now-banned Islamist movement, the AKP has disavowed its religious roots, pledged commitment to the secular system and embraced Turkey's EU membership bid.
The prosecutor, however, argued that moves such as the abolition of a ban on the Islamic headscarf in universities last month and on alcohol in restaurants run by AKP municipalities indicate the party's aim to establish a state based on Sharia, or Islamic law.
"All actions and rhetoric of the party are aimed at establishing an Islamist society in which Islamic rules and values have the priority... and then carrying out legal arrangements to move towards Sharia," the indictment said.
The AKP slammed the prosecutor's move as a snub to democracy and a fresh attempt by hardline secularists to curb the party after its re-election in July to a second five-year term with almost 47 percent of the vote, a rare feat in Turkish politics.
The AKP announced last week that it is working on an amendment making it more difficult to ban political parties, drawing criticism that it is seeking to circumvent constitutional checks and balances.
Legal experts are divided on whether such an amendment would help the AKP fight an eventual ban, with some saying the constitution forbids parliament from debating or ruling on issues under judicial review.
The EU has urged the Constitutional Court to take Turkey's interests into consideration when making its decision, warning that the case could hit Ankara's drive to join the bloc.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said he saw no justification for banning the AKP.
"Such a measure may only be justified in the case of parties which advocate the use of violence or use violence as a political means to overthrow the democratic constitutional order," he said in a statement, according to the Council of Europe, a top rights authority.
"The prohibition or dissolution of political parties is a far-reaching measure which should be used with the utmost restraint."
Rehn said Saturday, after a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Slovenia: "I hope the judges will consider Turkey's long-term interests... to be an important European democracy respecting all democratic principles of the EU."
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