Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has proffered an olive branch to secular critics by publicly disowning his party’s proposals to curb pornography and encourage school prayer.
The move appeared designed to allay lingering fears of an Islamist state, coming less than two weeks after a court case in which the governing Justice and Development party (AKP) narrowly avoided a ban for allegedly undermining Turkey’s secular system.
Erdogan spoke out after AKP Deputy Chairwoman Edibe Sozen provoked an outcry by publishing a plan to force buyers of pornography to give their details to shopkeepers, who would have been obliged pass them to the authorities.
The bill also included provisions requiring prayer facilities in all state schools, despite constitutional laws demanding the separation of religion and state.
The draft Protection of Youth bill also proposed banning licensed restaurants from admitting unaccompanied minors after 10pm, and would have made it illegal for them to be there after midnight even if accompanied by their parents.
Sozen claimed the bill was based on laws in force in Germany, but withdrew her proposal under protest from secularists who claimed it was further evidence of the AKP’s Islamist “hidden agenda.”
The fallout forced Erdogan, known for his socially conservative views, into an unusually harsh rebuke in which he described Sozen’s proposals as “ill-timed and fatal.”
He urged party discipline at a time when the AKP is under fierce scrutiny for perceived anti-secular tendencies.
“It [the bill] is not the party’s work, but it was perceived as if it belonged to the party,” Erdogan told an AKP meeting.
“Such works should be discussed within the party first. It is an ill-timed and fatal statement. The content is bad,” he said.
“She [Sozen] put the party in a difficult situation. We are going through sensitive times that need caution and ultimate care. This is valid for each one of us. We all need to refrain from any actions or statements that could create new tensions,” the prime minister said.
His comments were later reinforced by an AKP statement, which dismissed Sozen’s proposals as “not in accordance with the party program.”
Sozen’s draft was published just days after the Constitutional Court — Turkey’s highest — effectively put the AKP on probation by depriving it of millions of dollars in state funding, after finding it guilty of being a “focal point of anti-secularism.”
The ruling stopped short of prosecutors’ demands for the party to be shut down and for its senior figures, including Erdogan, to be banned from politics for five years.
Mensur Akgun, an EU program director with Tesev, a Turkish think tank, said: “I don’t think the critics will be satisfied with such a motion from the prime minister.
“He has to show that he favors further liberalization of the country and cares about more than just the rights of the Muslim community,” Akgun said.
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
SEVEN-MINUTE HEIST: The masked thieves stole nine pieces of 19th-century jewelry, including a crown, which they dropped and damaged as they made their escape The hunt was on yesterday for the band of thieves who stole eight priceless royal pieces of jewelry from the Louvre Museum in the heart of Paris in broad daylight. Officials said a team of 60 investigators was working on the theory that the raid was planned and executed by an organized crime group. The heist reignited a row over a lack of security in France’s museums, with French Minister of Justice yesterday admitting to security flaws in protecting the Louvre. “What is certain is that we have failed, since people were able to park a furniture hoist in the middle of
RSS