ANKARA (AFP)
Prosecutors asked Turkey's constitutional court to impose a ban on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on Friday, the Anatolia agency reported.
Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya's motion accused the AKP, an offshoot of a now banned Islamist movement which defines itself as a party of conservative democrats, of infringing Turkey's strict official secularism, it said.
The complaint alleges that the party has become "a home for activities that violate secularism", which is guaranteed by Turkey's constitution.
The move comes after the AKP and a smaller opposition party had combined to vote through a controversial law allowing female university students to wear the Islamic headscarf to classes, a practice which was formerly banned.
The dispute over the headscarf, which some universities still forbid in defiance of the new law, has become symbolic of the struggle between Turkey's secular and religious factions over the direction of their republic.
Secularists -- who remain strongly represented in the ranks of the army, the legal establishment and academia -- fear Turkey, whose population is 99 percent Muslim, could fall under the sway of Islamism.
Yalcinkaya, a prosecutor from Turkey's appeals court, had previously warned that he would oppose the headscarf law, which he alleged was intended "to alter the secular character of our republic".
The AKP has defended the reform, arguing that women have a constitutional right to education regardless of whether they wear a headscarf, and has called for university vice-chancellors who enforce a ban to be prosecuted. |
