Turkey's Islamists make joining EU top priority

Turkey's moderate Islamic party promised to make joining the European Union a priority, as voters went to the polls in an election overshadowed by an economic crisis and accusations of political corruption.

In a statement designed to reassure Ankara's nervous establishment, Yasar Yakis, the vice-chairman of the Justice and Development party (AKP), promised to accelerate preparations to meet the criteria for EU membership ahead of a crucial European summit in Copenhagen next month.

The AKP - formed last year mainly by deputies from previously banned Islamist groups - led the opinion polls throughout the campaign but is under legal threat of closure. Its leader, the former Istanbul mayor Reccep Tayyip Erdogan, is disqualified from standing for the national assembly after having read a poem deemed to incite religious hatred.

Despite describing itself as "conservative democrat" and denying that its political credo is dominated by an Islamist agenda, the AKP's advance is seen by some as a threat to Turkey's secular state.

Mr Yakis, a former Turkish ambassador to the United Nations, stressed the party's desire to look west. "Our first priority in government," he told the Guardian, "will be to complete the framework document for the Copenhagen criteria. We don't want to leave any pretext for Europe to say that Turkey will not be admitted."

He agreed that closure of the party, currently being pursued by the state's chief prosecutor, would generate a constitutional crisis but said that was "a very remote possibility".

The more immediate problem, if the AKP gains an absolute majority, is who will become the prime minister. Mr Erdogan cannot take the post. Turkey has no by-elections so there is no means of his entering the assembly if the disqualification were lifted.

"We will meet shortly and discuss who will be our candidate for prime minister," Mr Yakis said yesterday. "I don't think the president will nominate a different person [if the AKP has a majority]. If he does, there will be a political crisis and the president will be responsible for this."

A coalition government between the AKP and the centre-left Republican People's party (CHP) - second in the opinion polls - was widely canvassed before the election. The CHP, however, is the party most committed to secularism and there is little affinity between the leaders of the two parties. Professor Yakup Kepenek, a member of the CHP's central committee, said at the weekend he would prefer not to have a coalition with the AKP.

"We are the most secular party. That's our raison d'être," he said. "Throughout the campaign we had people coming to us worried about the AKP and Islam. The life of the secular state is threatened.

"You should not exploit the religious feelings of the people," he added. "If the AKP is closed down by the courts that will produce a real clash between politics and the law."

Only one party made opposition to the EU a major policy in its electoral platform. The Nationalist Action party launched its campaign convinced that voters did not want to cede political powers to Brussels - particularly if it meant allowing Kurdish separatist groups to organise more openly.

The weather was warm and dry across most of Turkey yesterday, boosting expectations of a high turnout. More than 41 million Turks were entitled to vote.

The names and symbols of 18 parties were side by side on each ballot paper, making them almost two feet wide. There are 550 seats in the national assembly but only parties that obtain more than 10% of the national vote can have deputies elected.