Turkey’s Ruling AK Party Avoids Ban by One Vote
Incoming breaking news has it that Turkey’s highest court has ruled against closing Turkey’s ruling AK party but cut its state funding by half in response to charges that it threatened the country’s secular regime during its six years in power.
Closing the AK Party required an affirmative vote by seven of the eleven Constitutional judges hearing the case. In the end, six justices voted in favor of banning the party, four voted for financial penalties and one justice rejected the case.
According to a court spokesman and one law professor, the ruling is not a complete vindication, but a stern warning to the ruling party.
“There is no verdict on closure because the seven votes required by the constitution for closure were not reached,” the spokesman, Hasim Kilic, said. “However, in this ruling, a serious warning has been issued to the party, and I hope this conclusion will be evaluated and actions will be taken accordingly.”
“This ruling doesn’t mean that the party has been cleared of charges,” said Mithat Sancar, a law professor of Ankara University. “Cutting the party’s treasury funds means that the evidence for their anti-secular activity was there but not substantial enough to impose a ban. Therefore they warned the party to be careful in their actions to avoid closure in the future.”
And, here’s an interesting note about the indictment against the AK Party which was included in the NY Times.
Mr. Erdogan, the indictment said, had bragged that he was co-chairman of the ”Middle East Initiative,” which it called ”a U.S. project aimed at installing moderate Islamic regimes in countries.”
The question now is will the AK Party respond to the warning given?
Rather than continuing to engage in the “us v. them” rhetoric by calling those who want to maintain Turkey’s secular democracy intact “secular elitists”, will the AK Party move to heal the divide they’ve sewn? And yes, they have been primarily responsible for sewing the divide. Last year, many of those that the AK Party now call “secular elitists” actually supported them based on the AK Party’s message of moderation.
They should take it seriously Kemal, there is no other alternative for them. Otherwise I do not think that army will take it any easy.
The result in my opinion is the best that could come out, a clear warning to the party without undermining the 47% who voted for the party.
Suppose one minute that the party was closed, there would be this Güneş Party (or in whatever name it would be) popping out of nowhere being puppeted by Erdoğan in the background until he would serve his period of being banned from politics and they would get a lot of sempathy votes at the same time. Nothing would change much for Turkey, rather it would go worse because of the seperation between AK Part supporters and opponents.
At least now they can not play the victim and have to take responsibility of their actions.