Secular-religious rift is source of Turkey's woes: analysts

The decision by Turkey's Constitutional Court not to outlaw the ruling party on charges of steering the country towards an Islamist regime is the latest episode in a long-running conflict, analysts said Wednesday.

Chief prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya had called on the court to ban Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) on grounds that it is seeking to replace Turkey's secular system with a regime based on Sharia, or Koranic law.

He also asked the court to bar President Abdullah Gul, Erdogan and 69 other AKP officials from party politics for five years.

Six of the 11 judges voted in favour of closing down the AKP, short of the required majority of seven, but the court decided to send the party a "serious warning" by halving the treasury funds it was entitled to this year.

Banning the AKP, which dominates parliament and is the country's most popular party, could have sparked political chaos, wrecked Turkey's European Union accession talks and hit the economy.

Hardline secularists claiming to be the inheritors of the line laid down by Mustafa Kemal, founder of the Turkish republic, and religious conservatives have struggled for power and influence for decades.

"It's a very old issue going back to the foundation of the republic in 1923," said Rusen Cakir, a commentator on the Vatan daily.

"While the actions leading up the decision of the Constitutional Court were all legal, the problem here is that it concerned the ruling party which secured 47 percent of the vote," he added.

The struggle for power pits a new class, more religiously inclined, which has taken political and economic control, against the secularists who want to retain the power they have traditionally held.

However the two camps are not precisely definable.

The pillars of secularism are the army, which has always posed as the guardian of Kemalist ideology, which it interprets strictly, and the judiciary, headed by the Constitutional Court.

But political expert Nuray Mert, who writes for the daily Radikal, stressed, "It's not just an elitist minority clinging to power.

"Secularism has deeper roots and a larger social base including the urban middle class and the Alevis, (a moderate Muslim sect) who also see conservative Islam as a threat."

The new arrivals in power, symbolised by the AKP, have religious roots but reject the epithet Islamist. Their supporters can be found among both the rural masses of Anatolia and in many cities, including Istanbul and Ankara, where the AKP is the leading party.

Economic as well as political power is at stake.

Mehmet Altan, an economics professor at Istanbul's Bahcesehir University, noted that the 50 newest members of Istanbul's Chamber of Industry all came from the Anatolian heartland.

Similar newcomers have also entered the Tusiad, the employers' organisation, Altan said, thanks to economic liberalisation of the country under President Turgut Ozal in the 1980s.

"The movement of this new capital is changing the culture of Istanbul and Turkey, with the arrival of Muslim conservatives who have a different way of life," he added.

According to Mert, the crisis between the two camps was prompted by the election of Gul as the country's president in 2007.

"In the eyes of secularists, within a decade, Gul may choose like-minded people as new members of the Constitutional Court," she said.

"This is the last stage of losing power."

The answer, Mert said, is an agreement by the rival camps to share power.

"If the government insists on being stubborn and not sharing political power, the crisis will not stop," she said.

"Both sides have to be more sensible and to compromise. Either they will compromise, or the tension will increase."

Altan said the essence of the Turkish State was changing. "But it is not an Islamist essence, it is an evolution from the Kemalist republic to a democratic republic."