Erdogan

ANKARA, November 1 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Turkey's popular Islamic party, the Justice and Development Party (AK), expected to win Sunday's general elections, was spared a major judicial blow Friday, November 1, when the country's top court adjourned a bid to ban it until after the vote.

The AK, which the military-led secularist establishment suspects of fundamentalist leanings, will now take part in the election without fear of immediate sanctions, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Public prosecutors, who want the AK party to be banned, called on the constitutional court to immediately suspend Recep Tayyip Erdogan as party chairman pending a final decision on the future of the party.

However, the constitutional court adjourned hearings on whether to suspend the charismatic Erdogan, 48, and gave the party 15 days to submit its defense - nearly two weeks after the election.

Turkey's chief prosecutor is seeking to ban AK on the grounds that it allowed Erdogan to stay on as party leader, despite the conviction issued against him in 1999 which banned him from practicing political activity for three years, to expire November 3.

The case, however, will be hanging over the AK party as a sword until the court completes lengthy deliberation, which could take months.

Erdogan has already been barred from running for parliament because of his conviction.

The judicial onslaught against the party attracted criticism from Turkey's top ally the United States at a time when Washington is pressing the European Union to accept Turkey as a member.

"We oppose the banning of political parties that are expressing their views in a peaceful and democratic manner," U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Thursday, October 31.

Criticism was even harsher at home.

The country's most influential rights group, the Human Rights Association, declared Friday that the ban on Erdogan and several other prominent figures made the elections undemocratic.

"The will of the people is being obstructed with bans and restrictions unseen in any democratic country," Husnu Ondul, the head of the group, said.

"Turkey is going to another election as a country with anti-democratic and authoritarian qualities," he added.

The E.U. has also criticized the bans as damaging to Turkey's aspirations to start membership talks next year.

Erdogan was jailed in 1998 when he was mayor of Istanbul for reciting a poem at a rally which ran: "Mosques are our barracks, the minarets our bayonets, the domes our helmets and the believers our soldiers."

He has not committed any violent act.

Erdogan has taken a fresh moderate Islamic approach with his agenda mainly focused on Turkish youths programs.

The AK party has refused to name its candidate for prime minister in the place of Erdogan until after the elections.

The Turkish military, which has carried out three coups since the 1960s, led a harsh secular campaign against the country's first Islamic Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan in 1997 and forced him to resign.

Erdogan and most of his supporters were members of Erbakan's now banned party.

But AK says it learned from the past and presents itself as a center-right movement.

AK's rising popularity reflects a growing frustration among the impoverished masses with the fractured secular mainstream parties, which produced weak governments over the years and failed to resolve economic problems, according to Turkish observers.

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