Turkey’s Gul urges more reform

ANKARA (middle east online.com) -- President Abdullah Gul urged a period of reflection on Turkey's warring political parties in an interview Saturday, after a court ruling this week spared the governing party from being banned.

""Everybody, all of us, need to make self-criticism and show empathy to others... The country is tired,"" Gul the popular Milliyet newspaper published Saturday.

But ""while cooling down, we must not forget that there are fences to be mended,"" he added.

The Constitutional Court recently narrowly rejected a bid to outlaw the Justice and Development Party (AKP), for undermining the secular system, but rapped it with financial sanctions which it described as a ""serious warning"" to the party to toe the line.

The court case was the culmination of a bitter power struggle between the AKP and hard-line secularists, backed notably by the army, which has simmered since April 2007 when the AKP nominated Gul as president.

Gul, who is now neutral by law, said Turkey's secular democratic system was deep-rooted but called for more efforts to heal political divisions.

""No one must interfere in the lifestyle of others... We can eradicate the existing concerns together,"" he said.

The president urged Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government to revive reforms aimed at alignment with the democratic norms of the European Union, which Turkey is seeking to join.

The country's EU membership bid ""cannot advance while the engine is running at an idle speed,"" he said. ""An all-out mobilization for reform is required.""

The prosecutor who sought to have the AKP banned argued that an amendment that aimed to lift a ban on the Islamic headscarf in universities was an indication that the party is seeking to install an Islamic regime in Turkey.

The bill, passed in February, was scrapped by the Constitutional Court in a separate case in June.

The AKP, who got the majority of Turkish votes, maintains that rigid interpretations of secularism in Turkey breach religious freedoms, which is a key pillar to democracy.

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