TURKEY'S CONSTITUTIONAL court yesterday upheld a ban on headscarves in universities, in a controversial decision many see as a dry run for an ongoing closure case against the government.
In a brief explanatory note, the court stated that constitutional changes the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government made in February to sidestep headscarf bans contradicted constitutional articles upholding secularism.
The decision - in line with earlier court decisions on the headscarf - does not come as a surprise. For many secularists, the headscarf symbolises what they see as the religious-minded AKP's efforts to Islamise the country.
In a country deeply divided over the visibility of Islam in society, the 11 judges, eight of whom were appointed by a staunchly secularist former president, came under immediate fire.
"This was a political decision, not a legal one," constitutional expert Serap Yazici told the privately-owned CNN-Turk.
AKP spokesman Cemil Cicek declined to comment until the court published reasons for its decision. Behind closed doors, though, government MPs are fatalistic, convinced the AKP's days are numbered, and have been predicting such a ruling for some time.
They point out that the AKP's efforts to remove the headscarf ban occupied a central place in the indictment a senior prosecutor brought against the government in March for "anti-secular activities". Had the court ruled today to uphold an end to headscarf bans, one senior AKP member said, "it would knock the stuffing out of the closure case against us".
Quoted yesterday in the daily Vatan, another lawmaker took the point a step further, saying that claims of "anti-secular activities" are the only stick the opposition has to beat the government with. Should the Constitutional Court take that stick away by failing to close AKP, he said, "nobody will get close to us for a decade at least".
The decision comes amid what, to all intents and purposes, is open warfare between the government and judiciary. Following claims a fortnight ago that one of the Constitutional Court judges was being tailed by pro-AKP police, members of Turkey's two other highest courts issued unprecedented statements last week accusing the government of trying to undermine the rule of law.
The spat led many Turkish commentators to warn of a "regime crisis". Turkish expert at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Bulent Aliriza, thinks the regime crisis started a long time ago.
"People in Turkey are used to living on a cliff edge, they're experts at fixing broken engines with bits of chewing gum," he said.
"Sooner or later they'll have to come to terms with the fact that there's something seriously wrong with the basic political system."
Meanwhile, it emerged yesterday that Turkey's military is co-operating with Iran by sharing information and co-ordinating strikes against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas in northern Iraq.
"We haven't done it for one or two months, but we would do it if necessary," Gen Ilker Basbug, head of the land forces and the second most powerful man in the Turkish military, told reporters at a security conference.
The Turkish military has regularly attacked (PKK) rebel positions this year in the mountains of northern Iraq, where several thousand are believed to be deployed.
Turkish troops conducted a large-scale incursion across the border in February.
Iranian forces have often clashed in Iraqi border areas with rebels from the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), an offshoot of the PKK. - (Additional reporting Reuters)