It is hard to believe that the highest court in Turkey actually will consider outlawing the governing party in that country because it is accused of crossing over the nation's division between mosque and state. Yet that is going to happen, as noted in this article. Even taking up the subject will put strains on the country for months.
I have assumed--and still assume--that the court eventually will hold back, even though many of its appointed members come from the secularist opposition party. Long term, if the Court decides to disallow the existing Administration, there will be economic as well as political consequences.
The government's supposed "religious" offenses--merely ALLOWING female students and others to wear headscarfs to school, for example--will seem trivial to Westerners, including even the left wing parties in most European Union countries. In fact, the anti-religious zeal of some in Turkey is so extreme that it is almost a mirror-image of the pro-religious zeal in certain Arab and Central Asian countries (like Iran, next door). Someone should tell the Turkish high court that the opposite of one extreme is not another, but a moderate position. The cure for communism was not Nazism, after all, but liberal democracy. The cure for Islamic fanaticism is not secularist fanaticism, but a government that makes space for religious observances, including the protection of religious minorities.
Turkey has a long way to go, but it's a fine country, with good hearted people. It doesn't need to be pushed into a kind of secularist suicide by its high court.
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