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Erdogan remains president of the Justice and Development Party
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With
Additional Reporting By Saad Abdel-Meguid, IOL Turkey Correspondent
ANKARA, October 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The leader of
Turkey's popular Islamic party, the Justice and Development
Party (AK), and a front-runner in upcoming legislative elections, has
resigned as a founding member of the party.
Recep
Tayyip Erdogan's decision came in the wake of a demand by Turkey's
Constitutional Council in April that he steps down as founding member
of the AK by October 19, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported Thursday,
October 17.
Erdogan,
48, announced his decision at a meeting of the party late Wednesday,
October 16.
Erdogan
told a popular rally in northern Turkey Thursday that he will remain
president of the party until November 3, although lawyers are divided
on whether he can hold one post without the other.
He
asserted that the court ruling was related to his founding membership
in the AK and not his presidency of the party.
Turkish
Prosecutor General Sobeih Qanad Uglo announced Thursday he would file
a new lawsuit before the Constitutional Court to force Erdogan to
resign the leadership of the AK based on the conviction issued against
him in 1999 which banned him from practicing political activity for
three years, to expire November 3.
In
an televised interview Thursday, lawyer Artageil Yagien Pabier, an AK
parliamentarian and former chairman of the Turkish parliament
legislative committee, underlined that the Constitutional Court would
not heed the public prosecutor's pretexts to force Erdogan into
resigning his leadership of the AK.
Opinion
polls suggest that general elections scheduled for November 3 will see
the victory of AK, an offshoot of the banned Welfare party.
However,
he made a political comeback last year at the helm of the AK on the
grounds that a 1999 amnesty and other reforms had rendered the ban
invalid.
Erdogan
has taken a fresh moderate Islamic approach with his agenda mainly
focused on Turkish youths programs.
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.
Turkish
Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit warned October 10 that the European Union
might close its door to Turkey if an opposition party suspected of
harboring an Islamic agenda came to power following the election.
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