Turkey's top court agreed Monday to rule on whether the governing AKP party should be banned for anti-secular activity, in a case that could threaten national stability and Ankara's bid to join the EU. The 11 judges of the Constitutional Court unanimously decided that they could hear the case against the Justice and Development Party (AKP) filed by the country's top prosecutor on March 14. A final verdict is expected to take up to six months. The judges ruled by a majority vote that President Abdullah Gul, who belonged to the AKP until he was elected head of state in August, should be included in the legal proceedings. In his petition to the court, the chief prosecutor of the Court of Appeals, Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, accused the AKP of undermining Turkey's secular order as part of a plan to replace it with an Islamist system. As well as a ban on the party, he also asked the Constitutional Court to bar 71 party officials, including Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, from politics for five years. The AKP now has one month to present its initial defense to the court, which has banned more than 20 parties since the 1960s. Founded in 2001 as the moderate offshoot of a now-banned Islamist movement, the AKP has disavowed its religious roots, pledged commitment to the secular system and embraced Turkey's EU membership bid. The prosecutor argued that moves such as the abolition of a bar on the Islamic headscarf in universities last month and an alcohol ban in restaurants run by AKP municipalities indicate the party's aim to establish a state based on Sharia. “All actions and rhetoric of the party are aimed at establishing an Islamist society in which Islamic rules and values have the priority... and then carrying out legal arrangements to move towards Sharia,” the indictment said. __
