Turkey: Suit to Ban Governing Party Threatens to Plunge the Country into Crisis

Turkey is teetering on the brink of a constitutional crisis, as the nation's highest court grapples with a motion to shut down the governing party. The Constitutional Court is now expected to consider the case on March 31.

If the high court decides that the case can go forward, experts predict newfound political and economic stability in Turkey would quickly crumble. The suit has already further undermined the country's troubled bid for European Union membership. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Turkey's currency, the lira, hit a seven-month low on March 28, amid the suit's uncertain outcome.

A rapporteur assigned to evaluate the merits of the suit to close down the Justice and Development Party (AKP) reportedly submitted his findings late on March 27, according to Turkish media outlets. That cleared the way for the high court to consider taking up the case. "If the rapporteur completes the report [by March 28], we can work on the report on Saturday and Sunday [March 29-30]. Then it becomes possible for us to start discuss the case on Monday [March 31]," Hasmi Kilic, the Constitutional Court's chief judge, told journalists in Istanbul.

The court has the potential to cause profound upheaval, asserted Sahin Alpay, a professor of political science at Istanbul's Bahcesehir University. "This would definitely hinder the government in many ways. It would really take its energy away," said Alpay.

"There are so many things to be done, such as issues relating to the EU, Cyprus and the economy, and the government would no longer be in a position of authority," Alpay continued. "What the people going after the party [AKP] are doing is really shooting the country in its own feet."

EU officials have criticized the closure move, calling it anti-democratic. "We respect the separation of powers. The executive shouldn't meddle in the courts' work and the legal system shouldn't meddle with democratic politics," EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn told journalists at a Brussels news conference on March 16. "I hope this incident does not consume much political energy and that it does not delay or distract attention from EU reforms." [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Turkish law gives the judiciary broad powers to shut political parties down. The Constitutional Court, Turkey's highest, has closed 24 parties since it was established in 1963. The court is currently deciding on a motion to close the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP), accused of promoting ethnic separatism.

The indictment against the AKP, filed on March 14, calls for the party to be permanently shut and for 71 of its leaders – including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul – to be banned from politics for five years. "The AKP is founded by a group that drew lessons from the closure of earlier Islamic parties and uses democracy to reach its goal, which is installing Shar'ia [Islamic law] in Turkey," the indictment reads. "There is an attempt to expunge the secular principles of the Constitution."

Among the evidence the 162-page motion cites are numerous speeches of Erdogan's, as well as descriptions of municipal AKP actions, such as banning alcohol sales, and the party's recent successful parliamentary effort to lift a ban on the wearing of headscarves in universities. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

"A lot of the attempts of the government and their public statements are aiming to make Turkey an Islamic country rather than a secular country. There are a lot of indications that we are going from a western-style country to an Islamic state," says Onur Oymen, deputy chairman of the secularist Republican People's Party (CHP), which itself was once been shut down.

"We would prefer to compete with our political rivals in elections, but Turkey is a country where the law prevails. All political parties should respect the rules of the constitution," he added.

Critics of the closure motion, both inside and outside of Turkey, are looking at it as another attempt by the country's secularist establishment to stop the growing influence of the AKP. The party gained 47 percent of the vote in last summer's parliamentary election, despite efforts by its rivals to characterize it as intent on undermining Turkey's secular foundations. And, after much political maneuvering, the AKP was also able to get Gul, one of its founders, elected president by parliament. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

The AKP case before the Constitutional Court could mark a turning point, one way or another, for Turkey. "There is a struggle between the old elites and the new," says Dogu Ergil, a professor of political science at Ankara University. "The state and the state bureaucracy, the old elites, are trying to protect their turf. They are losing ground. Even the judiciary, in this case, has become politicized."

With the secularist establishment unable to beat the AKP at the ballot box, and perhaps unwilling to call for the military to intervene, the prosecutor's motion is being described by some observers as a kind of "judicial coup."

"This case may be seen as a political attempt by the state [secularist] elites to remove a democratically elected government from power," says Zuhtu Arslan, a constitutional law expert who has advised the government on the drafting of a new constitution.

"I don't think there is strong evidence to support the idea that the AKP party has become a center for activities against secularism," he continues. "But this is a political case, not purely a legal one, so you cannot say [with certainty] the party will not be dissolved because the evidence is too weak."

Erdogan and other AKP leaders have already promised to introduce constitutional reforms that would limit the judiciary's ability to close parties, and that would allow the party to evade closure. "This case is a step taken against the national will," Erdogan recently said in a televised AKP rally in southeast Turkey. "Nobody can deflect us from our path. We will continue our democratic march with the same determination."

Experts, though, believe that any constitutional reforms passed by the AKP would be challenged by its secularist opponents in parliament, setting the stage for continuing legal and political tensions.