The latest move in the long game between Turkey’s hardline secularists and its moderate Islamist government is perhaps the most worrying yet. The chief prosecutor in the country’s constitutional court has filed a petition to close the governing AK Party and ban its leaders from politics for five years, including Prime Minister Tayyip Erdo?an and President Abdullah Gul. The reason? Anti-secular activities, apparently, and in particular AK’s lifting of the headscarf ban in universities. Some think a more likely cause is the government’s bid to root out Turkey’s shadowy “deep state“, an extremist group of nationalists linked to the army, many of whose alleged members were arrested in January (the last time a religious-leaning government was banned, in the 1990s, it had been conducting a similar investigation).
Turkey has been doing pretty well since the AK Party came to power, but shares plunged as news of the prosecutor’s move leaked out and the European Union has warned that the country’s bid to join it will be jeopardised if AK is banned. Your move, Mr Erdo?an.
