Ankara, Turkey - Turkey's top court voted unanimously to hear a case to ban Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan from public life and shut down his party for mixing Islam with politics.
Legal charges brought by chief prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya to ban the ruling Justice and Development Party are admissible, the court's deputy chief Osman Paksut told reporters in Ankara today.
The party, rooted in an Islamic movement outlawed by the Constitutional Court a decade ago, is accused of trying to introduce Islamic law in secular Turkey. Erdogan, who denies the charges, President Abdullah Gul and about 70 other party officials may be barred from politics for five years.
``This is a last-ditch effort by groups in the secular establishment to keep their influence in Turkish politics,'' said Metin Heper, an author and political scientist at Ankara's Bilkent University. ``The government's opponents haven't been able to beat them in the polls, the army hasn't lifted a finger, so the last thing they can do is to use the judiciary.''
Turkey's main ISE National 100 share index extended losses after the decision, falling as much as 3.1 percent in Istanbul. It fell 1.8 percent at 3:23 p.m. The trial may last up to six months.
EU Talks
Erdogan's party, which was re-elected with the biggest share of the vote in four decades at a nationwide ballot last July, has won Turkey membership talks with the European Union and its policies have attracted record foreign investment to the $659 billion economy.
In his 162-page indictment, Yalcinkaya focuses on efforts to lift a ban on the Islamic-style headscarf in universities, a move he says demonstrates that Erdogan and his party are seeking to impose Islamic values on the country.
Justice may ask lawmakers to revise the constitution in order to halt the court case, Nihat Ergun, deputy chief of the party's group in parliament, said in televised comments to the NTV news channel. The changes, which would make it more difficult to close political parties, may then be put to voters in a referendum, he said.
Erdogan and several of his ministers were members of the Welfare Party, part of a coalition government pushed from power by the army in 1997. Welfare was later shut down by the Constitutional Court, as was its successor, the Virtue Party, in 2001.
European Commission spokeswoman Krisztina Nagy had no immediate comment on the court's decision. The EU is watching the case with ``growing concern and disbelief,'' Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said on March 29.
Turkey's first president and founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, established the secular Turkish republic in 1923 from the ashes of the theocratic Ottoman Empire.