EU aide raps Turkish bid to ban ruling party

By Paul Taylor and Mark John

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union's enlargement chief warned on Saturday that a Turkish prosecutor's move to seek a ban on the ruling AK party ran counter to European democratic principles required of candidate countries.

"In a normal European democracy, political issues are debated in parliament and decided in the ballot box, not in the courtroom," EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn told Reuters.

Asked whether Turkey's EU accession bid could be harmed if the lawsuit went ahead, he said: "It is difficult to see that this lawsuit respects the democratic principles of a normal European society."

He recalled that the principles of democracy and the rule of law were set out in the so-called Copenhagen criteria required for membership of the 27-nation bloc.

"We respect the separation of powers. The executive shouldn't meddle in the courts' work and the legal system shouldn't meddle with democratic politics," Rehn later told journalists at a Brussels Forum on transatlantic relations.

"I hope this incident does not consume much political energy and that it does not delay or distract attention from EU reforms ... I trust that the government will focus on these reforms."

Turkey began accession negotiations with the EU in 2005 but has made only slow progress, partly because of the unresolved dispute over the divided island of Cyprus.

A state prosecutor asked Turkey's Constitutional Court on Friday to close down the AK party because he said it was trying to destroy secularism and turn the country in to an Islamic state. He also demanded that Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul be barred from politics for five years.

"BIZARRE APPLICATION"

The United States also criticized the lawsuit in almost identical terms to the EU. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza told the Turkish daily Zaman: "The voters have spoken. Their wishes should be respected."

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said the AK party government was made up of "profound European reformers" and the prosecutor's action "takes the concept of the bizarre application of laws to astronomical heights".

"We all know there are those who are trying to break things down and have extremely exaggerated, extremely inflated fears for the future of the secular character of Turkish society," he said.

Rehn reacted critically last year when the armed forces general staff issued a statement on its Web site declaring the secular order in danger in a presidential election in which Gul, a former Islamist, was the leading candidate, and vowing to uphold secularism.

Erdogan faced down that so-called "e-coup" by triggering an early general election, in which his party won a landslide victory over secular nationalists.

AK party member of parliament Suat Kiniklioglu, speaking at the same forum as Rehn, noted the AK had won 47 percent of the vote with an election turnout of 85 percent in that poll.