Turkey's ruling party has begun to expect that the Constitutional Court will close it down in the next few months and ban President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan from politics for five years.
Currently, the Constitutional Court is looking for ways to implement its plans by using the so-called "legitimate way".
"The AK Party will be closed, Erdogan is expected to be banned and as well as some other members," a government minister, who wished to remain anonymous, told Reuters. "This view is shared by many in the cabinet."
"I'm very worried about Turkey's future, but our fate lies in the hands of the 11 judges and we can only predict what they will decide," the senior AK Party member told Reuters on the condition of anonymity.
We would also like to remind our readers that Turkey was plunged into political turmoil on March 31, 2008, when the Constitutional Court accepted a case by Chief Prosecutor of the Court of Appeals, who seeks the closure of the AK Party. Within a month, in compliance with the law, AKP will have to speak in court in its defense. If the claim is satisfied, then the ruling party will cease to exist as a political organization, and all of its assets will be confiscated by the state.
March 14, 2008 Turkey's Prosecutor General demanded to dismiss the ruling party "for violation of secular regime" of the country.
In the opinion of the Prosecutor General Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, the activities of AKP and Prime Minister Erdogan "violate the secular nature" of modern Turkey.
He demands that 71 party members are suspended, including President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan from politics for 5 years.
According to Prosecutor General, investigation of AKP's activities lasted for about six months. The catalyst for the closure case was the Parliament's decision made on February 9, 2008 to lift a ban for female students wearing Muslim headscarf at universities, which was in force for about for 80 years.
Prosecutor General Yalcinkaya counted a total of several dozen sins of the ruling party against "secular laws of Turkey". Many of the "charges" against Erdogan and his party are frankly absurd.
Thus, the General prosecutor accused the AKP (AK Party) that the title of the party had "a secret Islamic sense". Prosecutor had the title AKP - AK Party read as "Party of Allah and Koran" from the first letters: A and K.
Yet another demonstrative absurd that was adopted by the Constitutional Court as the accusatory argument was the statement made by Prosecutor General that Prime Minister Erdogan is a fan of Fenerbahce football club because of the quote: 'if the flag of the football club is dipped into nitric acid and left for 15 minutes, the flag will turn green', which is of course the color of Islam.
Almost all of the accusatory argumentation of Prosecutor General abounds in such or similar absurds. In this connection the Turkish generals, who really run the country instead of the government or the president (who have only formal authorities for the most part), have apparently decided to show plain boldly, with no pretexts or decency, that the reasons for the dismissal of the country's Premier and President may be of any sort, even as far as their names. For instance, the name of Turkish President is Gul Abdullah (translated from Arabic it means 'servant of Allah'), which is much more "incriminating" than the name of the ruling party, AKP, or the AK Party.
Ruslan Sinbarigov,
Kavkaz Center
Our button
print version
