The country's Constitutional Court on Thursday annulled a Justice and Development Party (AKP) law allowing women to wear Islamic headscarves in universities, on the grounds that it violated Turkey's secular system, enshrined in an unchangeable constitutional article.
Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat, vice-president of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AKP, said the court's decision "violated" the separation of powers by overruling a majority vote in parliament.
"It is an unprecedented verdict which will be debated for a long time," he told reporters after the six-hour meeting.
The prime minister cut short a visit to Istanbul to return to Ankara to chair the meeting.
Firat said Erdogan, who did not speak to reporters afterwards, would address AKP members of parliament over the issue on Tuesday.
Erdogan had also scrapped a trip to Switzerland where he was to have watched Turkey's first Euro 2008 football match against Portugal.
The law in question was the principal argument advanced by Turkey's chief prosecutor when he asked the Constitutional Court in March to ban the AKP, on charges that it is seeking to install an Islamist regime in the mainly Muslim country.
Some party members have even suggested Erdogan should call snap elections after the ruling, media reports said.
The judgement was largely seen as strengthening the prosecutor's hand in his bid to outlaw the AKP and bar 71 officials, among them Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul, from politics.
The verdict is expected later this year.
Source: By DDNEWS
