Turkey’s government – its most successful in decades – is on its way out. Last week, the Constitutional Court overturned the recent lifting of the ban on headscarves in universities. Female students are once again being told what to wear by the secular establishment.
More importantly, this means the Court is almost certain to kick the AK Party out of government and ban its leaders from politics for five years. The country’s chief prosecutor, backed by the army, opposition parties and the liberal intelligentsia (all of whom are miffed about losing their long grip on power), filed a petition to ban the party in March, on the flimsy grounds that relaxing the headscarf ban showed that Tayyip Erdo?an and his colleagues wanted to turn Turkey into an Islamic theocracy. This despite Turkey looking more like a modern, thriving democracy now than it ever has; the AK Party’s time in power has coincided with rapid economic growth, growing proximity to the European Union and significant progress in improving human rights. AK’s predecessors achieved none of this.
The secular fundamentalists accuse the government of attempting to take Turkey back to the past. Such an accusation could at least as justifiably be levelled at them. The EU has warned that banning the government, which was re-elected with an overwhelming majority this spring, will jeopardise the country’s membership prospects. The economy is going backwards as the government diverts all its attention to fighting the court action. And if AK is closed, Turks will again be saddled with the ineffective, corrupt secular parties they were so keen to get rid of. A return to the dark ages indeed.
