Symbols sometimes matter more than words and deeds, especially in fraught situations. Turkey's fragile political consensus has been thrown into turmoil over the symbolic significance of a headscarf. One parliamentarian's insistence on her right to wear it may see her party banned and its four million supporters disenfranchised. Last Friday, the Chief Prosecutor went to the Constitutional Court, the country's highest court, seeking to have the Islamist-supporting Virtue Party banned. The prosecutor, Mr Vural Savas, has had the Virtue Party in his sights from the moment it was formed eighteen months ago. Its membership consists mostly of ex-Welfare Party members who found themselves without a party when Welfare was banned because of its Islamist agenda. The Virtue Party has argued that it is not one and the same as Welfare and that it is not committed to foisting Islamist values on Turkish society. Mr Savas, and most of Turkey's political elite, had their doubts. Then along came Virtue's Ms Merve Kavacki who insisted on wearing an Islamic headscarf in parliament. That, Mr Savas decided, was the last straw.
There can be little doubt that the Constitutional Court will rule in favour of Mr Savas and that the Virtue Party will be banned, although it will be months before a decision is reached. This will hardly strengthen Turkey's democracy credentials. The Virtue Party did poorly in last month's general elections winning only 110 seats compared with the 158 held previously by the Welfare Party. However, banning Virtue can only serve to strengthen the extremists.
In some respects Virtue deserves its fate. There is considerable evidence to suggest that the headscarf provocation was the idea of Mr Necmettin Erbakan, the former leader of the Welfare Party who was banned from political leadership when his party was outlawed. If this is so, then Virtue's conciliatory leader, Mr Recai Kutan, has little control of his troops and his credibility will not have been helped by his deputy leader's decision to resign, complaining that the militants had taken over the party.
The Virtue moderates may have lost influence because of the party's poor showing in the general election. But the party did not lose votes to other Islamist candidates; it lost to the Prime Minister's Democratic Left party and to the far-right National Action Party. None of the other political leaders will rise to Virtue's defence because to do so would almost certainly encourage the army to flex its secularist muscles, perhaps outside the barracks. What must worry the political establishment however is the Islamists' gameplan from here. Having provoked a showdown which seems certain to have them excluded from political life, there will be concern that they are ready and willing to explore non-democratic opportunities of furthering their cause.