It all began on 14 March, when Prosecutor Yalcinkaya filed an indictment with the Constitutional Court. 168 pages long, it asked for the closure of the moderate-Islamic party due to anti-secular activities and aimed to divide the unity of the country. As well as closure, it also demanded the ousting of President Abdullah Gül and 69 other party leaders from political activities for five years, including various ministers from their current roles. On 31 March, the Supreme Court unanimously voted to hear the appeal, but the request of Constitutional Court President Hasim Kilic and three other judges to remove Gül from his position as President and Head of State was rejected. During the formal opening of the trial the financial markets fell, giving just a small taste of what could happen if the AKP were declared unconstitutional.

On 30 April, the AKP delivered its preliminary memorandum for the defence, edited by Cemil Cicek, the incumbent Deputy Prime Minister, former Minister of Justice and among the few strong supporters of the AKP who was not included in Yalcinkaya’s indictment. The tone of the defence, which is more than 90 pages long, was very harsh, just like that of the final defence. The proxy was accused of acting on an ideological basis rather than on constitutional rights, and of having gathered 75% of its material from the daily paper Cumhuriyet, an excellent source of information for secular Turkey and therefore one which would not be regarded as sufficiently impartial. There needs to be at least seven votes in favour from the eleven members of the Supreme Council. At present, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, the former and extremely secular president of the Republic, has nominated eight judges, so theoretically they should be in agreement with Yalcinkaya’s position.

Last year on 5 June the Constitutional Court unanimously overruled the disputed law which allowed women to wear the Islamic veil in Turkish universities, which the AKP voted for on 9 February together with the MPs of the MHP, the nationalist party. It was a decision which for many seemed to be a taste of what was to come from the ruling party. On 1 July the Constitutional Court will hear from the Chief Prosecutor, who is also trying to ban the DTP, the Kurdish Democratic Society Party. On 3 July it’s the AKP’s turn.

A year of Erdogan: a transient assessment

It could be questioned what President Erdogan and his party have done that is so bad as to deserve a trial of this nature, which has not been seen since the days of Necmettin Erbakan’s Islamic right, the political father of Erdogan, and his Refah Partisi, the Welfare Party, banned in the nineties. In the first eleven months of governing, the President’s politics have all been considered transparent, and if one really wants to find fault in Erdogan’s methods, one can simply accuse him of being a bit too hasty in bringing certain laws forward which were particularly important to him, the first being the liberalisation of the Islamic veil. On everything else after 22 July 2007, when he won a landslide victory in the political election, the Prime Minister did nothing but talk about democracy, entry into the European Union and the resolution of two of the major problems afflicting the country: the Kurdish issue and the Cypriot problem. During this first part of Erdogan’s second presidium two very important laws for Brussels were passed which they had been asking for for a long time.

In February, a law on religious establishments was approved, which allowed non-Muslim minority religious establishments to regain assets, especially property, captured by the State in past decades after the military coup of 1971. In particular, they will regain churches, schools and orphanages registered under the names of saints. Then April saw the end of Article 301 of the penal code, which no longer offends Turkish identity and which, according to the AKP, should no longer represent a threat to intellectuals and writers. Also, in the past 11 months, Erdogan promised new investments in the south-east of the country as a way of plugging a gaping economic but also cultural hole between Turkey’s most advanced and its poorest. He gave the army orders to attack northern Iraq and to try and resolve the problem of Kurdish terrorism, even continuing discussions with the people and promising new freedoms and cultural recognition in the next constitution, which, more than likely, he will not do in time for it to be approved. He lay the foundations for a peaceful resolution to the Cypriot problem, working for the reunification of the island under the protection of the UN. It’s an impenetrable and convincing programme for everyone, except for the most secular alignments of the State and the half of the population who really do not trust Erdogan.

Three questions

Now all of the attention is concentrated on three issues: if, when and how the AKP will be banned. The ‘if’ is clearly the greatest unknown, but also the ‘when’ and especially the ‘how’ hide important questions for the country’s future. With regards to the schedule, it seems that Erdogan’s party is doing everything in its power to finish this off before the summer. To heat the political environment up even more, as if it was not already hot enough, the President has declared that parliament will move forward with a vengeance, until the Court decides its political fate.

Even the President of the Supreme Court, Hasim Kilic, would like to close this case immediately, which is literally damaging the day-to-day life of the country like a bad dream. Yet the task seems more difficult than ever because in July the Constitutional Court will be on holiday until 1 September and because the AKP case seems extremely complex, especially due to the presence of the President of the Republic (the Head of State) as a defendant in the case. Although Kilic said that in an extreme case the Court could also work throughout July and August, all the consulting rights experts from various Turkish newspapers agree that a verdict will not be reached before September or October. Then one needs to consider how the AKP will be banned. Out of the 71 governors on trial, 38 are MPs. According to Article 78 of the Anayasa (the Turkish constitution), if 5 percent of MPs in parliament lose their seats, early elections are required. Parliament is currently made up of 549 MPs (one MHP parliamentarian tragically died a few days after the vote last July and his position was not replaced). Because elections are being held early, the result is that the Constitutional Court, besides banning the AKP, just needs to make 27 MPs lose their seats.

In this case, the election should be held on the first opportune Sunday after 90 days of the sentence have passed. However, many people think that if the AKP is actually banned, then there could be a huge ‘election day’ on 29 March 2009, the date that the country will vote in the administrative elections. And the surprises do not end there: according to Muammer Aydin, President of the Supreme Election Board (YSK) who was interviewed by the Star newspaper, even if the AKP is banned, Prime Minister Erdogan and the other AKP MPs could come forward as independent candidates to the electorate. Aydin also believes that President Gül could hold on to his position. To summarise, if on one hand declaring the majority party as anti-constitutional is a grave error from an economic point of view and for gaining the European Union’s trust, on the other hand it might not eliminate the asserted ‘Islamic threat’ perceived by the most secular part of the country and by all those who want Prime Minister Erdogan out of play. Whilst waiting for the Constitutional Court to ponder this, many people in Turkey wait upon an act of common sense, which repudiates the spectre of a new political crisis. A crisis which the country of the half moon can and should avoid.

Translation by Helen Waghorn