Two epic court cases are being played out in Turkey this week. The Constitutional Court, established as guardian of the secular constitution in the 1960s, is convening in the wake of a deadly double bomb explosion in Istanbul to decide whether to outlaw the ruling Islamic party.
Another court is hearing a case against a clandestine terror gang known as Ergenekon, accused of plotting to overthrow the government by force. A decision against the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has ruled for six years, would be the “nuclear option”, says Nicholas Birch in The Independent. More than 70 AKP members, including the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the President, Abdullah Gul, could be banned from office.
The Constitutional Court charged the AKP with violating the constitution by being too Islamic. The party briefly tried to criminalise adultery and has moved to lift the ban on female students wearing headscarves.
The secularists are overplaying their hand, says The Independent. Despite its roots in the Islamist movement, the AKP has “done a good job”. It has, says Daniel Howden in the same paper. And the project to create a country that is Muslim, democratic, secular, financially stable and connects Europe with the Middle East makes Turkey “possibly the most important political experiment in the world today”.
The AKP has overhauled the legal system and the economy, fostered a growing middle class and driven the country’s bid for EU membership. That project is now “on the brink of collapse”. A ban would be disastrous, agrees The Guardian’s Stephen Kinzer. It would scare off foreign investors, destroy its chances of EU membership and send Muslims around the world the “inflammatory message that democracy is Islam’s enemy”.
Instead, a court decision allowing the AKP to remain legal along with convictions in the Ergenekon case would do nearly as much to strengthen democracy as Ergenekon has done to subvert it. The judiciary and army generals should weigh carefully the political and economic cost of their actions, says the FT. Banishing the AKP “might tip Turkey in to a chasm from which there is no return”.