Turkey: curiouser and curiouser

EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn are visiting Ankara this weekend. It may be a surreal trip.

It is probably no coincidence that their Turkish host, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has just introduced into parliament a reform measure long demanded by the EU and held up by secular-nationalist opposition.  The reform is to section 301 of the Penal Code which criminalises 'insulting Turkishness' and has been invoked by zealous nationalist prosecutors to pursue a number of prominent authors, including Orhan Pamuk, as well as those seeking to question the official Turkish line on the Armenian genocide question.  The change would require approval from President Abdullah Gul for any future prosecutions.  It is likely to pass parliament next week.

The Constitutional Court has also just said it will hear a case brought by another zealous secularist prosecutor seeking to close the ruling AKP and to ban 71 leading officials, including Gul and Erdogan, from politics for five years, on the grounds that they are seeking to create an Islamic state.  The EU has not surprisingly been scathing in its criticism of the judiciary's move against a party recently re-elected to office by an overwhelming plurality. 

The AKP is trying to project an image of 'business as usual' while it works out how to respond -- although it seems to have given up the idea of amending the constitution to make it harder for the court to close the party after failing to secure support for the move from the opposition parties.