4 December 2009 / TODAY'S ZAMAN WITH WIRES, İSTANBUL
The Constitutional Court will on Tuesday start hearing the case of the Supreme Court of Appeals vs. the Democratic Society Party (DTP), which demands the party’s closure on charges of separatism.
In November 2007 the Constitutional Court announced it had accepted an indictment from Supreme Court of Appeals prosecutors to shut down the DTP. The prosecution claims that the DTP has ties to the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The indictment also calls for banning from politics 220 DTP members, including deputies Ahmet Türk, Aysel Tuğluk, Sebahat Tuncel, Osman Özçelik, İbrahim Binici, Sevahir Bayındır and Fatma Kurtulan. The DTP has 20 members in the 550-seat Parliament. To shut down the DTP, the Constitution requires that at least seven of the 11 members of the Constitutional Court vote for its closure.
