Turkey’s Islamist Party removing power from the courts.

The ruling Islamist party in Turkey, the AKP or ‘Freedom and Development Party,’ is attempting to abolish the power of Turkish courts to remove political parties from office. This is in response to the 2008 attempt by the courts to abolish the AKP as unconstitutional. Whilst the AKP were found in favour of, the vote was extremely narrow. Along with rumours of a military coup d’état, the democratically elected AKP is not a politically secure executive under the current legislative system.

This saga reflects a deep cultural and political tension at the heart of the Turkish political system. It has a democratically elected religious party yet a secular constitution. In other words its constitutional values and democratic values are directly in conflict.

Whilst the AKP are Islamist in that they do extrapolate many of their values from the Koran, they neither advocate a return to Ottoman type rule, nor the imposition of Sharia like Afghanistan under the Taliban.

For certain secular elites however, this move by the AKP reinforces their belief that they are attempting to remove the current checks and balances on their power in order to secure their Islamist agenda in Turkey. The reality is however far less sinister. It is a move to advance democracy, something it will need to do if it is ever to achieve its aim of gaining full membership of the European Union. The AKP advocate this policy which is hardly what you would expect from a band of religious extremists.