Turkish PM condemns bid to shut down his party

By Gareth Jones

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday condemned a bid by state prosecutors to shut down his ruling AK Party as an attack on democracy and political stability and vowed to resist it.

A state prosecutor asked Turkey's Constitutional Court on Friday to close the AK Party because he said it was trying to destroy secularism and turn the country into an Islamic state.

He also sought to ban Erdogan, President Abdullah Gul and scores of other AK Party officials from politics for five years in a move that drew criticism from the European Union, which Ankara aims to join, and looks sure to rattle financial markets.

Turkey may have to wait many months for the court's verdict.

"This case is a step taken against the national will," Erdogan told a televised AK Party rally in southeast Turkey.

"Nobody can depict the AK Party... as a hotbed of anti-secular activity... Nobody can deflect us from our path. We will continue our democratic march with the same determination."

Erdogan, a pious Muslim who was once briefly jailed and barred from politics for reading a religious poem in public, strongly denies claims that his party has an Islamist agenda.

The EU enlargement chief criticized the indictment move.