PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan (AP)
"Shutting down the party and banning its leaders from politics could set off political and economic turmoil in Turkey."The March 31, 2008 decision of Turkey’s Constitutional Court to hear a case that could bring down the governing Justice and Development Party (also known in Turkey as AKP) has provoked a constitutional crisis. The Court must decide if their allegedly anti-secular activities warrant shutting down the AKP and/or banning Prime Minister Erdogan, President Abdullah Gul and sixty-nine members of the party from politics for five years.
The Court has banned other parties and politicians from politics in the past, including the previous two Islamist parties. This case, however, represents an increased threat to the democratic process and a thwarting of the popular will. The moderate Islamist AKP received 47 percent of the popular vote in the elections of July 2007, giving it a parliamentary majority and entitling it to run the government.
Shutting down the party and banning its leaders from politics could set off political and economic turmoil in Turkey. Anticipated reactions range from potentially violent popular protests that could invite intervention by the Turkish military to a set back for Turkey’s economic recovery and further cause for the Europeans to block Turkey’s accession to the European Union.
The Court is also considering a ban on the Kurdish political party, the Democratic Society Party (DTP). If both the DTP and AKP (which garnered a large number of Kurdish votes) are kept out of politics, this could increase support amongst Turkey’s Kurds for the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Turkey desperately needs to address the Kurdish issue in its southeast and the PKK terrorism emanating from northern Iraq. This constitutional crisis diverts the governmental efforts needed to address those issues.
Political chaos in Turkey could also upset U.S. foreign policy objectives in Iraq and the greater Middle East. The administration has only recently begun to repair the relations with the republic that were ruptured over the Iraq war. Washington has shared intelligence over PKK havens in northern Iraq and permitted limited military intervention to root them out. The United States needs a stable Turkey that can cooperate with respect to the war in Iraq, Iranian nuclear proliferation and other issues affecting Gulf security.
This crisis has its roots in the very foundation of the Turkish Republic. Its founding father, Kemal Ataturk, promoted the principle of secularization in order to further the goal of modernizing the new Turkish state. The Turkish military considers itself the guardian of this Kemalist concept of a secular state. It has not hesitated to take action against what it views as the increasing Islamization of Turkish politics under the majority rule of the AKP.
The AKP first achieved majority rule in 2002. Even though it won only 34 percent of the popular vote, AKP gained a parliamentary majority because of the peculiarities of the Turkish electoral system. Among those who voted for the Justice and Development Party were people who were not necessarily Islamist but were seeking an alternative to the allegedly more corrupt, ineffective and splintered secular political parties.
The AKP subsequently sought to consolidate its position of power by electing then Foreign Minister Gul as President of Turkey. The Turkish military opposed this move and attempted an “electronic coup” by issuing an online statement warning against Gul’s election. This backfired. In a showdown with the military, Prime Minister Erdogan won the elections in July 2007 and secured Gul’s election as President of the Republic.
What spurred the public prosecutor to bring the case to the court was his belief that the AKP was using its parliamentary majority to aggressively promote an Islamist agenda. The AKP-led parliament has passed legislation allowing women to wear headscarves in universities. It has also unsuccessfully attempted to allow students who attend secondary religious schools (Imam Hatip schools) to more easily enter the general university system. Other actions by AKP-dominated municipalities include the banning of alcohol and the separation of men and women in parks and at festivities. The prosecutor is concerned that the AKP will be able to amend the constitution to allow the accelerated Islamization of Turkish politics.
Ironically, by bringing the case, the prosecutor put the Constitutional Court in an untenable position. The Court has the power to impose the harsh remedy of shutting the AKP and its politicians out of the political process. It could also impose a lesser remedy of limiting state funding for the party. If it orders the ban, the Court will be viewed as interfering with the will of the people and the deepening of Turkish democracy. If it orders a lesser remedy, it will be viewed as approving the AKP’s actions. Whatever the Court’s ruling, AKP politicians may gain even greater popular support as happened when the military challenged it in 2007.
The immediate solution to this lose-lose situation is for the Court to fashion a compromise remedy that will restrain what the prosecutor believes is the AKP’s aggressive pursuit of an Islamization agenda, while at the same time permitting it to participate in the Turkish political arena.
The real answer to Turkey’s crisis is to be found in its political system. A compromise judicial outcome would enable a longer-term win-win solution. The constitutional crisis should sound a wake-up call to the opposition political parties in Turkey; they need to reform themselves and Turkey’s political system. Party leaders are autocrats who make all financial decisions and choose the candidates who run for office. The main opposition party, the Republican Peoples Party, in particular, needs to reform its leadership if it seeks to regain its credibility in the Turkish polity. Turkey’s opposition parties need to overcome their divisive politics and structure a coalition that has both the platform and the grassroots organization that can challenge what many see as the Islamization of Turkish politics, by democratic contest in the political arena and not by judicial or military intervention.
