July 31, 2008

Good news has been a long time coming in Turkey, but the drought ended yesterday when the high court narrowly decided not to ban the country's governing party. Maybe Ankara now can get back to the important work of building a liberal Muslim democracy.

It was a close call for the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, which had been charged with engaging in illegal "antisecular activities." Six of the Constitutional Court's 11 judges voted to disband the party that won a large plurality in elections a year ago. Fortunately, seven votes were needed for a ban. Instead of removing the AKP from power and turning the country's political turmoil into outright chaos, the Court stripped the party of half of its state funding.

Just days earlier, Turkey had been fully on the brink. On Sunday, the evening before the Court began deliberations, a pair of bombs exploded in a poor part of Istanbul. Seventeen people were killed and a further 150 wounded in Turkey's worst terrorist attack in five years.

Who was behind the bombings remains unclear. But the blasts laid bare deepening divisions that go beyond the struggle between the neo-Islamist AKP and the old secular establishment.

Most fingers are pointed at the Kurdistan Workers' Party, a terrorist outfit better known as the PKK. Sunday's blasts had characteristics that were both typical and unusual for the PKK, which has denied involvement. But the group itself has become splintered, and it's possible that one faction acted without the others' knowledge.

Other potential conspirators include al Qaeda, which has been linked to a shooting outside the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul this month that left six people dead, and Ergenekon, an underground network of Turkish ultranationalists. That so many dangerous elements are plausible suspects speaks to the range of problems Turkey still faces.

Secularism is enshrined in Turkish law, and the AKP would be wise to heed the warning of Court President Hasim Kilic, who said yesterday that the ruling was a "serious warning" to the party.

One of the "antisecular activities" that prompted Turkey's chief prosecutor to ask the Court to ban the AKP ban was the party's support for a law allowing women to wear Islamic-style headscarves at public universities. The Court, which is regarded as a bastion of the old secular establishment, struck down the headscarf law this spring. In its ruling yesterday, it agreed with the prosecutor that the AKP had become a "focal point" of antisecularism but decided it was "not that serious."

Despite critics' claim that it is "Islamicizing" Turkey, the AKP has been the chief proponent of the liberal reforms the country must make if it is to meet its longstanding goal of joining the European Union. But if Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is to continue moving Turkey on a European path, he must avoid any question that religious motives stand in the way of modernizing efforts.

Likewise, the Court's ruling is an opportunity for EU leaders to re-engage their large Muslim neighbor. The prospect of EU membership has done more than anything else to solve some of Turkey's fundamental problems.

Across Eastern Europe, enlargement has been the EU's best carrot to get regimes to move toward political freedom, the rule of law and economic development. For fresh evidence, look no further than last week's arrest of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic by a Serbian government eager to be in Brussels's good graces.

Yet when it comes to Turkey, which is more strategically important than the Balkans, leaders such as France's Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany's Angela Merkel are eager to cast their most effective policy tool aside. They can pretend all they want that keeping Turkey at arm's length will somehow isolate them from its problems. The opposite is more likely true.