Details of the party’s defense arguments were disclosed to the media on Tuesday, almost a week after the defense was submitted to the Constitutional Court.
Turkey’s top prosecutor accuses the party, which has an Islamic history, of violating constitutional protections of secularism, and wants the party disbanded. He also demands that 71 people, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul, be barred from politics for five years.
The party, generally referred to with its Turkish acronym AK, argues in its defense that it helped masses to embrace secularism rather than violate it. «The AK Party not only respected secularism ... but it also contributed to the large masses embracing the state’s secular character,» the defense arguments read.
«Thus, the AK party is not a movement that is against secularism, instead it spreads secularism.»
Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya filed the case against the party in March after the government moved to change the Constitution to allow Islamic head scarves to be worn at universities.
Yalcinkaya also cited the government’s efforts to lift obstacles facing religious school graduates who want to take university entrance exams, to roll back restrictions
on courses in the Quran and to curb the consumption of alcohol.
Supporters of Erdogan, who is also the governing party’s leader, say the prosecutor’s argument ignores a record of Western-style reforms and say the prosecutor’s efforts amount to an assault on democracy.
The party won a new mandate in July, with nearly 47 percent of the vote, and says the case harms Turkish democracy.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has warned that banning the party would have a «major impact» on Turkey’s ties with the EU, which Turkey wants to join.
