ANKAKRA: Turkey's Chief Prosecutor has demanded the closure of the ruling A K Party accusing it of seeking to establish an Islamic state.
The chief prosecutor of the Court of Appeal made a 90- minute oral presentation before a panel of Constitutional Court judges, a court official who declined to be named told.
The Islamist-rooted AK Party will make its presentation to the court on Thursday.
Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya said the party should be closed for anti-secular activities and 71 leading figures, including Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul, banned from party membership for five years.
The AK Party, which was re-elected last year, denies the charges and says they are politically motivated.
The case has deepened political and economic uncertainty. Istanbul's main share index fell more than 4 percent, bond yields rose and the lira currency weakened due to global markets and domestic political concerns.
The secularist establishment, including army generals and judges, suspects the AK Party of harbouring a hidden Islamist agenda. The party, which embraces nationalists, market liberals and centre-right politicians as well as religious conservatives, denies such accusations.
EU CRITICISM
The court official said Yalcinkaya argued that a recent statement by AK Party deputy chairman Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat that the revolution of the Republic's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, was traumatic was evidence of the party's anti-secular orientation.
The rest of his statement mirrored his written case. Most political analysts expect the party to be outlawed and some members, including Erdogan, banned from belonging to a party for five years. AK Party representatives suggest a ruling is unlikely before August.
The European Union has criticised the case and a move against a democratically elected party could hurt Turkey's accession process.
If the AK Party is closed and Erdogan removed from power analysts expect an early parliamentary election will follow. Turkish courts have banned more than 20 political parties for alleged Islamist or Kurdish separatist activities and a predecessor to the AK Party was banned in 2001.
The courts and the military see themselves as guardians of a strict separation of religion and politics, which is rooted in the foundation of the modern state in the 1920s from the ruins of the dismembered Ottoman Empire.
State founder Ataturk radically changed the face of the nation in a short time, forcing religion out of state
policy-making, aligning the country with the West, changing the alphabet from Arabic to latin script and granting democratic rights to women.