A Turkish court has ruled that President Abdullah Gul should face trial over a funding scandal in the 1990s involving a now-defunct Islamist party to which he belonged.
The court overturned a prosecutor’s decision to drop the case, ruling that Gul’s immunity as president did not cover allegations dating to the period before he took office, Anatolia news agency reported.
Authorities must now re-examine the case that alleges falsification of documents and violation of laws governing political parties.
The case threatens to exacerbate tensions between Turkey’s ruling Islamist-rooted party and secularists, who accuse Mr Gul and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, of seeking to erode the country’s secular traditions.
The ruling AKP has said it fully embraces secularism.
Mr Gul’s office denounced the court ruling in a statement and said a previous judgement had cleared him of responsibility in the case involving the Welfare Party, accused of embezzling money from the public treasury in the 1990s.
“The efforts in some circles to attempt to present our president as a suspect when he is neither charged nor in the process of being tried does not in any way result from good intentions,” it said.
The statement said Mr Gul could only be put on trial for treason.
Government spokesman Cemil Cicek also disputed the ruling.
“It is unthinkable that presidents not be protected by immunity when deputies are,” he said.
Welfare was outlawed in 1998 for undermining Turkey’s secular system, a year after it relinquished power under pressure from the military.