From Todays Zaman: "The Constitutional Court on Wednesday ruled against closing the governing Justice and Development Party (AK Party) for having turned into a "focal point" of anti-secular activities but ruled to impose partial financial penalties on the party, Chief Justice Haşim Kılıç announced yesterday to an army of press members at the main courtroom of the Constitutional Court."

Dang. So many bad news for Turkey

I don´t think so.

Verdict expected on closing Turkey´s ruling party

another article today in the Irish Times and Wall Street Journal



http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/0730/breaking29.htm

We´ll see what future will bring for Turkey. But I hope it´ll be less of what AKP stands for.

kesinilkle türkiye için olabilceğinin en iyisi oldu.
Really its good new for our country.

here is what these monkeys stand for
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tozH0M1gQWI


"You can`t be both a Muslim and secularist. These two don`t mix up."

Tayyip

I agree with you gencturk..
The constitution of 1982 has never been LEGITIMATE..
Nobody was allowed to speak what was what; people who were against it were put in jail; Kenan Evren used all the media tv, newspapers etc for the propaganda.
The funny thing of them all was presidency and the constitution was in one election.. YES meant ´I approve the constitution and the president´.
And there was no other candidate at all..
can anybody call that type of election legitimate?

It´s interesting to see the debate here. I feel a bit strange that I can´t enter it from the inside, but from the outside the AKP party is turning Turkey away from where I, as a european, would like to see it and where I believe it would find the best - EU.

The fact is that becase Erdogan was Pro - EU they supported him but in the last year or so Turkeys credit has fallen greately in Europe. I put aside the obvious reasons (which are not important) like that EU treats Turkey like crap (even ´tho in many ways Turkey has been stubborn also), which creates long and boring debates which frustrates turkish citizens -> they turn away from EU. But from the political, economical and historical point of view Turkey should come into EU as soon as possible. This, sadly, is getting more and more unreal.

Turkeys goverment muslimise the country greately and countries like Poland and Germany who opposed the entrance talks all the time are now even inclined to totaly freeze any talks through their right of veto. There are rumors of political oppresion, fake trials, wide-spread corruption and a videspread religious outbreak which scares the hell of Poland and other more religious states. All this (if continuing) will escalate into another rejection of Turkeys application and will leave it alone on the shores of EU with no real friends in muslim world also.

Please note that I come from a state who has been in EU for four years now and that I am no EU mongler. I would say I am more a sceptic than anything else.
Also who knows something about the history of my country knows that we had a great deal of totality here over the years so I feel really worried about things.