TURKEY'S CONSTITUTIONAL SECULARISTS AND POLITICAL ISLAMICISTS PREPARE FOR MAJOR LEGAL BATTLE - AND PERHAPS A NATIONAL CRISIS

THIS IS OUR THIRD POST ON THE UPCOMING CRISIS IN TURKEY...

Bloomberg: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the nation won't accept the closure of his Justice and Development Party, elected in a landslide in July.

Attempts by prosecutors to shut down Justice and ban Erdogan from politics for undermining secularism ```can't be reconciled with the law or the conscience of the nation,'' Erdogan told regional chiefs of the party at a meeting in Ankara today.

``Extra-political interventions cannot determine the political order,'' Erdogan said. ``Only the nation determines the political order.''

Turkey's top prosecutor on March 14 applied to the Constitutional Court to close Justice and ban politicians including Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul. The prosecutor's indictment says that Justice has breached Turkey's constitutional commitment to secularism in measures such as the removal of the ban on Islamic-style headscarves at universities.

The Constitutional Court is due to decide within a week whether to hear the case, and a verdict is likely to take about six months if it does so, judges say.

THE NYTIMES - WHICH NORMALLY APPROVES OF JUDICIAL INTERFERENCE IN LEGISLATIVE MATTERS HERE IN THE USA - DEFENDS THE ISLAMICIST/ANTI-USA PARTY AND ATTACKS THE SECULARISTS:

What apparently provoked the latest legal action was the government’s decision this year to allow observant Muslim women to wear head scarves at Turkish universities. If the Constitutional Court accepts the lawsuit and Parliament leaves the law unchanged, Turkish politics face turmoil for the next year or more. Needed reforms to strengthen the economy and meet the entrance requirements for the European Union would languish.

Laws like this are an embarrassment and a danger to Turkey’s modern, democratic society, which has outgrown them. The Justice and Development Party should use its parliamentary majority to repeal them, and those secular party representatives who truly believe in democracy should support the effort.

• THE NYITMES IS VERY SELECTIVE ABOUT WHEN THEY CHOOSE TO SUPPORT JUDICIAL ACTIVISM OVER LEGISLATIVE ACTIVISM. ON GAY MARRIAGE THEY SUPPORT JUDICIAL ACTIVISM, FOR EXAMPLE.
  

• THEIR DECISION REALLY SEEMS TO COME DOWN TO THIS: THE NYTIMES WILL ALWAYS DEFEND ANY GROUP OR PRACTICE WHICH ADVANCES AN ANTI-WESTERN AND ANTI-TRADITIONALIST AGENDA.

• THE LEFT'S VIEW ON THE "LIVING CONSTITUTION" IS ALSO HYPOCRITICAL: IT'S ALIVE/MUTABLE VIA INTERPRETATION WHEN IT COMES TO THINGS THEY DON'T LIKE ABOUT IT (LIKE THE 2ND AMENDMENT), BUT WHEN IT COMES TO WHAT THEY DO LIKE - FOR EXAMPLE "ROE V WADE", THEN THE CURRENT INTERPRETATION WRITTEN IN STONE.)

• AND IT DOESN'T MATTER IF THE ANTI-WESTERN ATTACK IS HERE OR IN TURKEY: IF YOU OPPOSE THE WEST, THEN THE NYTIMES SUPPORTS YOU.

I'd like to see Erdogan's party banned.

One of the BIG errors the Bush Administration made the last six years was allowing Hamas on the ballot.

Blair didn't make this mistake with the IRA: he demanded they disarm FIRST.

You cannot be for democracy and and anti-democracy.

Islamicists - who want "sharia incorporated" in secular law, or want de-secularization to accommodate/appease their fundamentalist practices - are the ENEMIES OF DEMOCRACY.

They should be treated as such.