(dpa) - A case to close down Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on suspicion of anti-secular activities is to go ahead after the country's Constitutional Court on Monday decided in favour of hearing the case.
In a short statement made to reporters, a Constitutional Court spokesman said the court had voted to hear the case, including a prosecutor's move to have Prime Minister Redep Tayyip Erdogan and dozens of his party colleagues banned from politics for five years.
The spokesman said the court will not make any moves to have President Abdullah Gul banned from politics.
Chief Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya earlier this month lodged an indictment against the AKP seeking to have the party banned on the basis that it was a focal point for anti-secular activities.
Yalcinkaya listed a range of activities in his indictment arguing they were proof that the AKP sought to undermine the secular state.
They included moves to allow women to wear Islamic-style headscarves at universities, attempts to restrict public drinking of alcohol to "red light zones" and appointments to public sector positions seemingly based on the religious convictions of applicants.
Erdogan's AKP has fought a number of battles with hardline secularists who fear that moderate Islamist moves by the party will ultimately lead to Turkey becoming an Islamic state with sharia law.
The government's moves to allow women to wear Islamic-style headscarves have proved to be the main focus point in the fight between secularists and the government.
Wearing the headscarf in universities was first banned after the 1980 military coup but it was not until the late 1990s that the ban was strictly enforced.
Rather than take off their head-coverings many devout Islamic women have refused to go to university and some, including Erdogan's daughters, have studied abroad to get around the ban.
The move to allow the Islamic-style head-covering, passed by parliament but subject to court challenges, came after the AKP was returned to power last year in early elections that were forced following a series of spats with secularists over the nomination of Abdullah Gul, whose wife wears a headscarf, for the presidency.
The controversy over Gul's nomination and eventual election to the presidency saw hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets across the country.