Posted on 04/14/2008 9:52:18 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
The Turkish government may launch a pre-emptive strike to stop the Constitutional Court from banning the president and prime minister from politics, and closing down the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP).
Ali Babacan, Turkey’s foreign minister, said the government was “about to decide” whether to introduce a “medium-sized package” of legal amendments that would, among other “urgent issues”, rewrite criteria for shutting political parties.
Such a move would also give the court “a new legal basis to make its decision”, he told the Financial Times in an interview on Monday. “We could make the court’s job easier by defining the legal framework better.”
Turkey and its financial markets have been gripped by a political crisis since the Constitutional Court agreed two weeks ago to hear a case brought by the chief prosecutor accusing the party, which has its roots in political Islam, of subverting the country’s secular system.
Mr Babacan said the government – which last year won a battle of wills with the generals by calling elections when they tried to derail the candidacy of former foreign minister Abdullah Gul as president – fully supported the “separation of the state and religion”.
But Turkish laws were out of step with Council of Europe provisions that allowed the closure only of “parties that advocated violence or used violence to destroy democratic constitutional systems”.
At the same time, Mr Babacan was careful to stress the importance of preserving “the independence and the credibility of the courts” – things “that have to be in place so we can move on”.
Supporters of Turkish accession to the EU have been dismayed by Ankara’s apparent loss of momentum in pursuing EU membership. A case in point has been the government’s failure to repeal the notorious article 301 – the law widely used to restrict free speech.
But Mr Babacan, who said fresh revisions to the law could be adopted as early as next week, argued that the challenge was to change attitudes in an elite that could find “other laws to give a hard time” to people.
“We still have the same police...the same judges. We have to go through this mental transformation... people have to adapt to a new way of thinking,” he said. “It does not happen overnight.”
“There is now a shift of power from certain circles to the people,” he added, in a coded reference to the arch-secularist elite that resents the rise of the AKP since it came to power in 2002. “Some circles will lose their privileges...It is a painful transformation we are going through and it is not easy.”
But Mr Babacan said the government is determined, whatever the obstacles thrown in its path at home or in a few hostile EU capitals, to adopt the acquis communautaire – the body of EU laws would-be members must embrace.
“We will not lose anything...it will help raise the quality of life in Turkey,” he said.
But he predicted that even when the reforms were completed “in 2013”, Ankara would face a further wait before all EU countries “were ready for Turkey”.
In the meantime, he admitted that the uncertainty stemming from the case against the government “makes Turkey a less predictable country” at a time of global financial turmoil.
Although it was still being decided what sort of agreement Turkey would conclude with the International Monetary Fund once its current standby agreement expired next month, he said co-operation with the fund “helps us strengthen confidence in the economy”.
Although no country was immune from the global crisis, he said Turkey’s banks and financial system were a lot stronger than they were after the devastating devaluation in 2001.
He said it would be a ”big success” if Turkey achieved its 5 per cent growth target for this year. The economy grew 4.5 per cent last year, down from 6.9 per cent in 2006, partly because last year’s domestic political turmoil had affected private sector investment, he said.
The EU would be nuts to let Turkey in. Unfettered access and travel to any EU country with no passport by millions of Muslims. It's a nightmare.
A lot of people don’t understand something basic about Turkey’s government today.
People assume that Turkey today is inherently secular, because it really was say 10 years ago.
But today the situation is totally different.
People do not understand that the current government of Turkey, was formed out of TWO ISLAMIST PARTIES PREVIOUSLY BANNED.
Today’s government is inherently islamist, not secular, though stealthily so to avoid a confrontation with strong secular elements.
So as to avoid confrontation with the military. Kinda like Pakistan.
yitbos
One difference is that the Turkish military is a truly professional military that believes in defending the secular state. The islamiacs are overplaying their hand here (as usual). If they squelch the Court’s actions, that will be the trigger for the military to step in and impose a secular government by force. The left-leaning EU and UN will make a lot of noise defending their islamiac allies, but they won’t try to get in the Turkish military’s way — it would be WAY too bloody. So, either the Court will pull Turkey back from the brink and back to a secular state by fiat, or the military will by force. At least, that is how a couple friends of mine who are very familiar with the situation explained it to me...
The EU is not interested in Turkey as a member for exactly the reason it is Muslim.
yitbos
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