Turkey prides itself on its secular political system that was established in 1923 under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, following the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I. On Monday, the country’s top court began deliberations to decide whether the AKP, the current ruling party, should be disbanded.•What is the controversy in Turkey all about?For the first time in a fiercely secular Turkey, a closure case has been brought against a governing party with a huge parliamentary majority. The chief prosecutor has charged the current regime with steering the country towards Islamic rule and more than 70 AKP members, including President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, could be banned from political activities for five years. •Why is Islamism seen as unconstitutional in Turkey?The formation of a secular democracy was one of the most revolutionary changes introduced by Kemal Atatürk. This new, secular state ideology was to become known as Kemalism, and it is the basis of the democratic Turkish republic. The process was characterised by a struggle between progressive Atatürk’s reform-minded liberal elite and the conservative mass of uneducated, common people. Under Kemalism, Islamic courts and Islamic canon law gave way to a secular law structure based on the Swiss Civil Code. •Who enforces this secularism?Since the establishment of the republic, the military has perceived itself as the guardian of Kemalism, and it has intervened in Turkish politics to that end on several occasions. Since the 1960s, more than 20 parties — mostly pro-Islamist or pro-Kurdish — have been shut down by the courts for allegedly posing a threat to ‘secular’ and ‘unitary’ Turkey. •What is Erdogan’s political background? Erdogan joined politics with the National Salvation Party, which was disbanded following the 1980 Turkish coup d’état. He re-entered politics through the Welfare Party, founded by former members of the National Salvation Party. He rose to prominence when he became the mayor of Istanbul in 1994. Islamist politics entered a period of chaos during this period and Erdogan himself added to this with his various pro-Islamist statements, which finally led to his conviction in 1998. In 1997, the Welfare Party was declared unconstitutional and was shut down on the grounds of threatening the secular nature of the state. Erdogan’s current party, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalknma Partisi or AKP) is the descendant of the Welfare Party. •And Abdullah Gul?In 2007, Erdogan selected Abdullah Gül as a presidential candidate, drawing strong opposition from ardent supporters of secularism in Turkey. In May 2007, Gül’s first bid for presidency was blocked by the Constitutional Court in a climate of secularist concern regarding views Gül had expressed during his Welfare Party years, and the fact that his wife, Hayrünnisa Gül, wears a headscarf, seen by some as a symbol of political Islam.
