In Turkey - Secularism Gone Crazy and Undemocratic

And the battle continues. This week, Turkey's highest court agreed to consider banning the Islamist-leaning Justice and Development Party (AKP), and bar 71 of its leading members – including the current prime minister and president – from participation in political life. This wouldn't be the first time that the avowedly secular court (8 of its 11 judges are secularists) has weighed in on such matters. Under stipulations in the 1982 Turkish constitution, the high court is granted broad discretion to ban offensive political parties – a privilege that the court has exercised numerous times to ban roughly 24 parties since 1963. Under this latest court case, brought by the secular state prosecutor, the AKP is being tried for its "anti-secular" outlook and its alleged efforts to bring harsh Islamic law to the Turkish state.

Interestingly, it's not the secularists who are in the right. Backed by an interventionist military, the secular establishment (a legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's reign) is profoundly anti-democratic. They have repeatedly intervened in the country's political process, suppressed dissent on multiple occasions, banned legitimate political parties, and stifled religious freedoms for Turkish Muslims. In contrast, the mainstream and popular Islamists actually represent a forward-looking path for Turkey. Although religiously-tinged, the AKP has advocated for closer ties to the EU (unlike the secular establishment), pursued an extremely mainstream domestic agenda (focusing primarily on economic growth and social reform), and largely stayed away from divisive religious issues.