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| Europe |
| Turkey's ruling party escapes ban, gets sanctions |
| 2008-07-31 |
| Turkey's Islamist-rooted ruling party narrowly escaped being banned Wednesday for undermining secularism as the Constitutional Court decided to punish it with financial sanctions instead. Six of the court's 11 judges voted in favour of closing down the Justice and Development Party (AKP) -- just one short of the seven required to implement a ruling, court president Hasim Kilic said.. But he added that the court was still sending the party a "serious warning" by cutting half of the treasury funds it was entitled to this year. The ruling appeared to offer a compromise solution to Turkey's political problems, sparing the country the sort of turmoil a full ban might have unleashed, while also urging the AKP to toe the line. "I hope the party in question will evaluate this outcome very well and get the message it should get," Kilic said. The judges who supported the financial sanctions said the AKP had become a "focal point" of anti-secular activities as the country's chief prosecutor argued, "but not that serious," he said. The AKP, which won a resounding re-election victory last year, was quick to hail the court decision as a victory for democratic principles. Democratic bar lifted: "With this decision, the bar of democracy has been lifted up," parliamentary speaker Koksal Toptan was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party was accused of seeking to replace Turkey's secular system with a regime based on Sharia law. Chief prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya had also called for the court to bar President Abdullah Gul, Erdogan and 69 other AKP officials from party politics for five years. Closing down the AKP, which dominates parliament and is still the country's most popular party, could have sparked political chaos, wrecked Turkey's EU accession talks and hit the economy. |
| Posted by:Fred |