Court Says Turkish Front-Runner Can’t Run

The supreme electoral board on Friday barred the candidate who had been widely expected to become this country’s next prime minister from running in parliamentary elections. The move could slow Turkey’s drive toward European Union membership and cast a shadow over the Nov. 3 balloting.

The national board ruled that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, leader of the Justice and Development Party, cannot run because of a 1998 conviction on charges of inciting religious and ethnic hatred. His offense was publicly reciting a 90-year-old nationalist poem that is taught in state schools.

“It is a worrying sign that Turkey’s avowed commitment to democratic reforms is not matched by deeds,” said a senior Western diplomat who requested anonymity.

Erdogan spent four months in jail and was stripped of his post as mayor of Istanbul for reciting the lines that include: “Minarets are our bayonets, domes are our helmets, mosques are our barracks, believers are our soldiers.”

Turkey has a predominantly Muslim population but an avowed secular government. People convicted of political or terror-related offenses are barred from office.

Erdogan argued that constitutional reforms enacted in August, which were aimed at easing Turkey’s entry into the EU and included laws expanding the scope of free speech, should give him the right to run. Former Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk, who helped draft many of the changes, shares that view.

“The shadow of politics has been cast over the justice system,” Turk said.

Erdogan, 48, began his political career in an openly Islamist party but broke away last year to form his own centrist organization, which includes former Islamists and secular politicians.

The charismatic former soccer player has said he longer believes in mixing religion with politics. His party favors joining the European Union, maintaining strong ties with the United States and sticking with a multibillion-dollar economic reform program that is being backed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

In a bid to appease his critics, Erdogan even pledged that he would leave behind his wife--who wears the Islamic head scarf, banned in state-run institutions--while attending official functions. He also said that he would defer to the solidly pro-Western military should Turkey be asked by the U.S. to take part in any operation against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

It remained unclear Friday who will succeed Erdogan as party leader, though speculation centered on his deputy, economist Abdullah Gul.

Many analysts believe that Erdogan’s exclusion might even bolster his party’s ratings by attracting sympathy votes. Recent polls have indicated that the party could muster at least 25% of the national vote--about 10 percentage points more than its most serious rival, the pro-secular Republican People’s Party. So fragmented is the vote likely to be among the 20-odd parties running in the election that there is a real chance Erdogan’s group could rule with that level of support.

The prospect is deeply worrying to the nation’s fiercely pro-secular military leaders, who make no secret of their distaste for Erdogan. The generals, who have seized power three times in the last four decades, played a key role in pushing Turkey’s first democratically elected Islamist-led government out of office in 1997.

The military, along with many urban intellectuals and business leaders, remains unswayed by Erdogan’s professed change of views and says he would try to make Turkey an Islamic state.

In its ruling Friday, the electoral board also barred former Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan and Murat Bozlak, leader of the country’s pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party, from running for office. Both also have convictions stemming from political or terrorism crimes.

Erdogan vowed to keep campaigning on behalf of his party and said he will lodge an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.

“Even after the acceptance of many laws to abide by the standards of the European Union, still the authoritarian mentality seems to be lingering on,” said Dogu Ergil, a political scientist at Ankara University. “It’s not enough to make changes. You need to believe in them as well.”