Talking Turkey

The indictment of 86 people, including businessmen, journalists and retired army officers, on coup-plotting charges is clear evidence of the scale of the political crisis now gripping Turkey.

The defendants are accused of planning an ultra-nationalist insurrection against the government of the ruling Justice and Development party, the Islamic AKP. Prosecutors are preparing cases against several others, including two ex-generals arrested this month. The investigators suspect the plotters of planning violent outrages to create conditions for army intervention.

The probes coincide with constitutional court action by the prosecutor to ban the AKP for allegedly undermining Turkey’s secular constitution. The party’s Islamic agenda – including allowing women to wear headscarves at public universities – has provoked great disquiet in the traditional secularist establishment, not least the army.

The legal actions must now run their course, free of political interference. But, more fundamentally, the secularists must reconsider their ill-advised efforts to bring down the popular AKP, which governs with a big parliamentary majority. The party should not have put headscarves so high on its agenda but overall it deserves praise for developing Islamic politics with a modern face. Its economic record, including boosting the incomes of the rural poor, speaks for itself. The secularists must accept that if democracy delivers Islamic governments, they must accept the voters’ verdict – as long as those governments do not themselves threaten democratic rights, which the AKP has not.

As the country develops, Turkey’s Islamic and secularist leaders must find compromises – or risk harming the modern nation both sides want. A sensible deal over headscarves would be a good start.

The crisis is also an indictment of the European Union for its lamentable failure to handle Ankara’s membership bid positively. If the union had given Turkey a clear set of conditions and timetable, both the generals and the AKP could have concentrated their energies on accession, not headscarves.

The talk of coups, bombs and a cache of hand-grenades should remind the EU that, inside or outside the union, Turkey will not go away. Dealing with a violently unstable big neighbour would demand much more attention – and possibly more money – than managing the considerable difficulties involved in Turkey’s EU accession. The union must revive its faltering efforts to engage with Ankara before it is too late.