Turkish PM holds emergency meeting after headscarf defeat

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will hold an emergency meeting with senior aides Friday after Turkey's top court upheld a ban on the Islamic headscarf in universities, dampening his party's hopes of surviving a pending closure case.Erdogan cancelled his programmes in Istanbul and was to return to Ankara to chair the meeting of his Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) at 3 p.m. (1200 GMT).He also scrapped a trip to Switzerland on Saturday where he was to have watched Turkey's first Euro 2008 match against Portugal.The Constitutional Court Thursday annulled an AKP-sponsored law allowing women to wear Islamic headscarves in universities on grounds it violated Turkey's secular system, enshrined in an unchangable constitutional article.The law was a principal argument advanced by Turkey's chief prosecutor when he asked the Constitutional Court in March to ban the AKP on charges that it is seeking to install an Islamist regime in the mainly Muslim country.The ruling was largely seen as strengthening the prosecutor's hand in his bid to outlaw the party and bar 71 party officials, among them Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul, from politics. The verdict is expected later this year.Since the court "sees the headscarf amendment as a breach of the republic's basic principles, it will give the gravest punishment to the party which is responsible for this act," the Vatan newspaper wrote."A decision to close down the AKP has become inevitable," it said.At Friday's meeting, AKP leaders were to discuss their response to the ruling, with some members even suggesting Erdogan should call snap elections, media reports said.The annulment of the headscarf amendment is Erdogan's "greatest political defeat" since the AKP came to power in 2002, the liberal Radikal newspaper wrote. Overriding fierce objections by secularists, the AKP pushed the amendment through parliament in February, boosted by its re-election for a second five-year term in July with nearly 47 percent of the vote.The party, the offshoot of a now-banned Islamist movement, says it is committed to secularism, but argues that the headscarf ban in universities violates both the freedom of conscience and the right to education.But hardline secularists-among them the military, the judiciary and academics-see the headscarf as a symbol of political Islam and defiance of the secularism system.Easing the restrictions, they say, will increase social pressure on women to cover up and encourage challenges against similar bans in high schools and government offices.The AKP, backed by a number of jurists, slammed the Constitutional Court Thursday for overstepping its jurisdiction, saying it can examine only procedural flaws in constitutional amendments, and not their essence. With the pending closure case in mind, one AKP lawmaker called the ruling a judicial "coup."The military, a staunch defender of the secular system, welcomed the ruling.Army chief Yasar Buyukanit urged respect for the court's decision, while air forces commander Aydogan Babaoglu said any other outcome would have been "abnormal."The AKP has disowned its Islamist roots and embraced Turkey's bid to join the European Union, but maintains that rigid interpretations of secularism in Turkey breach religious freedoms.Opponents argue that moves such as the headscarf amendment and a ban on alcohol sales in restaurants run by AKP municipalities indicate a secret Islamist agenda.Many fear that outlawing the AKP, a coalition of religious conservatives, pro-business liberals and mainstream centre-right politicians, would trigger political chaos as the party still enjoys solid popularity in the face of a weak and fractured opposition.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080606094931.to8lw8s3&show_article=1

As in the days of Noah...