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.
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