Turkey’s militant secularist establishment seeks ban on ruling neo-Islamist party

The move against the AKP of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, effectively a coup d’état by the judiciary, was triggered by the government’s decision in February to ease restrictions on wearing a Muslim headscarf at universities. The secular establishment –a tightly-knit grouping which includes the armed forces, the judiciary, parts of the civil service and many women in urban areas, particularly Ankara and Istanbul– has never been comfortable with the AKP’s winning of power by democratic means in 2002 and was looking for a way to get it out of office. It suspects that it has a ‘hidden agenda’ to impose Sharia law. The evidence, however, does not bear this out.