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.

"In a normal European democracy, political issues are debated in parliament and decided in the ballot box, not in the court room," Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said in a statement faxed to Reuters in Brussels.

Asked whether the lawsuit could affect Turkey's EU entry bid, he said: "It is difficult to see that this lawsuit respects the democratic principles of a normal European society."

Ankara began EU entry negotiations in 2005 but its bid has slowed sharply amid rows over Cyprus and human rights.

Rehn also urged Turkey's government to respect the independence of the judiciary. "The executive should not meddle in the court's work while the court should not meddle in democratic politics," he told reporters.

FEUD OVER RELIGION

The 162-page indictment, drawn up by the chief prosecutor at the Court of Appeals, marks the latest shot in a long-running feud between Turkey's fiercely secular elite, which includes the judges and army generals, and the religiously minded government.

Political tensions in Turkey have been especially high since parliament -- dominated by the AK Party -- approved constitutional amendments last month easing a ban on women students wearing the Muslim headscarf on university campuses.