The steadily dhimmi Wall Street Journal sees this as averting disaster and notes that "investors cheered the ruling." But the disaster that has been averted may not be as bad as the disaster that has been enabled. For details on the disaster that could be coming, see this story.
"Turkey Averts Crisis as Court: Rejects Attack on Ruling Party," by Farnaz Fassihi and Andrew Higgins for the WSJ, July 31:
ISTANBUL -- Turkey's highest court struck down an attempt to outlaw the country's Islamic-rooted governing party Wednesday, averting for now a political crisis that could have destabilized a key Western ally in the Middle East.In a historic decision, the Constitutional Court levied a relatively minor penalty against the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, cutting in half the funding it receives from the state. The party had been charged with introducing Islam into Turkey's stern secular laws by, for instance, attempting to lift a ban on headscarves on university campuses. A conviction could have led to the banning of the party.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday his party would continue to uphold the country's secular values.
Investors cheered the ruling. After the verdict, the local currency climbed to a four-month high, and some bank shares enjoyed a double-digit lift. The decision "has avoided a calamity," said Chris Scicluna, an economist at Daiwa in London.
The court in Ankara said six of its 11 judges favored banning the AKP, one vote short of the seven required. While a victory for the AKP, the close vote suggests the struggle between the party and Turkey's secular establishment hasn't yet run its course.
The court's chairman, Hasim Kilic, said Wednesday that he hoped the narrow call and the financial penalty would serve as a wake-up call for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party and that "this outcome will be assessed and that the necessary measures will be taken."
Still, the verdict -- which arrived on the third day of court deliberations -- considerably de-escalates months of political tensions. The court case against the government called for a ban of the party and 71 of its members, including its top leaders, the prime minister and president.
While the politicians could have regrouped under a different banner, a ban would have forced early elections. Heightening tensions, a double bombing Sunday night -- on the eve of the first day of the court's deliberations -- killed 17 and injured more than 100 people in Istanbul. No one has claimed responsibility for the blasts.
"We are certainly very much relieved that a sense of reality and wisdom has returned," said AKP Parliament member Suat Kiniklioglu, reached by phone in Ankara. "We are obviously not happy that half of our state funding will be cut off, but it's a penalty we can live with and absorb." The party will lose about $15 million this year, the Associated Press reported.
"The great uncertainty that was blocking Turkey's path has been lifted with this decision," Mr. Erdogan said after the verdict, the AP reported. "Our party, which was never the focal point of antisecular activity, will continue from now on to defend the republic's basic values."
The claim that "our party...was never the focal point of antisecular activity" doesn't quite speak to the issue at hand. Does Erdogan want Sharia in Turkey, or not? Will the AKP impose it, or not? Whatever the answers may be, nothing has been done in this ruling to stymie the Sharia supremacists in Turkey.
The AKP has suddenly backed off from its demand to allow headscarves in universities.
The cutting edge of Islamization is always how women dress and behave -- sometimes enforced by acid, mutilation, rape or murder attacks, sometimes by dress regulations.
They'll be back. Watch for the PR, the weeping "I-love-my"-hijabis whose dreams of Nobel Prizes in medicine have been so cruelly quashed, simply because no one else believes their hair radiates overwhelming laser beams of sexual availability.
The close decision is testament to the fact that Erdogan has had a hand in placing at least one judge on this court.
"You cannot be both secular and a Muslim! You will either be a Muslim, or secular!...For them to exist together is not a possibility! Therefore, it is not possible for a person who says ‘I am a Muslim’ to go on and say ‘I am secular too.’ And why is that? Because Allah, the creator of the Muslim, has absolute power and rule!"
-Turkish PM Erdogan
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday his party would continue to uphold the country's secular values.
"Our party, which was never the focal point of antisecular activity, will continue from now on to defend the republic's basic values."
So does this mean that Turkey's "basic values" are secular? In what statement was this man lying? They can't all be true.
Taqiyyah on full display!
In all the news reports about Turkey's "secularists" there has been no discussion, none, about what those "secularists" are worried about,except in the vaguest of terms, much less if they have good reason to worry.
Why, for example, one might have expected a good reporter to ask, did Ataturk so systematically constrain Islam in the first place? What was he worried about? And what about those constraints on Islam -- did they have any effect on life, as it is lived, in Turkey? When a Westerner goes to Turkey, does he feel something different in the atmosphere, something that makes him better able to get along with so many, without that constant strangeness, that always slight-unpleasantness beneath the surface of every meretirious smile, in Arab countries, or in Pakistan? Did Ataturk's reforms make possible the development of a class of Turks -- alas, only about one-quarter of the population and not the highly-desirable majority -- who live in the same universe, more or less, as Western man?
Why don't reporters ask what it is about the hijab that so alarms Turks, Muslim but secularist Turks? What do they know about the hijab that makes them so eager to keep a ban on it in government-funded universities? Are they simply hysterical islamophobes? What is it that they may know, being born into and raised within Islam, but not really sharing fully the beliefs of their more credulous and as a result primitive fellow Turks, that makes them so alarmed?
Shouldn't these quuestions be asked, and intelligently discussed?
I have an idea on how to fix the effort to islamcize our strong ally turkey. Give them more money and make them part of the E.U. If you don't believe me, just look at how well it works in Pakistan. /sarc
In all the news reports about Turkey's "secularists" there has been no discussion, none, about what those "secularists" are worried about,except in the vaguest of terms, much less if they have good reason to worry.
Spot on Hugh. If there is nothing to fear from Islam, why has Turkey worked so hard over the years to keep it contained to the mosque?
"The great uncertainty that was blocking Turkey's path has been lifted with this decision," Mr. Erdogan said after the verdict...
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"Blocking Turkey's path" to what, exactly? Did the Wall Street Journal reporter ever think to ask? I think it most likely that Mr. Erdogan thinks that Turkey's path leads right to a Shari'ah state.
PMK, thanks for the very telling "You cannot be both secular and a Muslim!" quote from Erdogan. And I very much agree with Hugh--whatever movement Turkey has made--uneven and partial though it has been--to being a full, modern nation, with some possibility of leading a progresive life for its citizens, has been due to its constraints on Islam.
Turkey is not a US ally. Turkey is a US kiss-ass.