Why sigh rather than celebrate?

Let me explain. Both the country and the world concerned with Turkish affairs were shocked when the Supreme Court of Appeals' chief prosecutor appealed to the Constitutional Court on March 14 to close the AKP for having become a "focal point of activities against secularism." The AKP was the governing party which not only achieved the reforms that paved the way for the start of accession negotiations with the European Union but also earned the party no less than 47 percent of the national vote in last year's parliamentary election. Most of those who read the indictment against the party concluded that the evidence was not at all convincing and that the case was purely political. Still, considering the Constitutional Court's strict adherence to norms of an authoritarian form of secularism, no one doubted that the AKP would be banned. When the chief justice declared on May 19 that the Constitutional Court's decision would serve to strengthen "both democracy and secularism," very few took it as a sign to the contrary. And when the court ruled on June 8 to declare null and void constitutional amendments adopted by Parliament last February to lift a ban on wearing headscarves that applied to university students, no doubts remained as to what the coming verdict was going to be.

The Constitutional Court, however, at the end of the most hastily resolved party closure case in its history, decided not to ban, but to fine, the AKP. No less than 10 out of 11 justices agreed that the party had indeed become a "focal point of activities against secularism," but only six of them (one less than the required majority) voted in favor of closure. The decision meant, in the words of the chief justice, that the Constitutional Court had issued a "very stern warning" to the government party not to meddle with the principles of secularism of the Turkish state. Was the six-to-five vote the result of a careful design or not? We will not know for a long time to come. We can, however, refer to a number of factors that may explain the highly unexpected outcome of the case.

As stated by Professor Oktay Uygun to Today's Zaman (July 28), in such a highly political case it was only natural for the members of the Constitutional Court to be influenced by the political environment. The merits of the case were hotly debated not only inside but also outside of the country. The public debate must have warned at least five justices that a decision to close the governing party would not only result in dangerous political and economic instability, but also seriously damage the country's foreign relations -- particularly with the EU and the Council of Europe. The same justices may have also considered that in the case of closure, the party to replace it could soon go to polls and win by an even bigger margin than the AKP. They may have also reasoned that rather than banning the AKP, rendering stricter the rules political parties have to abide by was a more effective option for the reinforcement of Kemalist secularism.

We will have to wait and see the judicial grounds of the Constitutional Court's verdict (which is said to be made public no earlier than September) to determine whether he will be proven right or not, but deputy Prime Minister Cemil Çiçek is justified in suspecting that the verdict in the AKP case may further narrow the space for politics in Turkey by even more strictly defining the conditions for parties to avoid becoming a "focal point for activities against secularism."