Turkey's top court will hear a case this week to shut down the ruling party for alleged Islamist activities, a fate that could halt its hard-won European Union membership process.

The indictment against the Justice and Development Party (AK) rests heavily on government proposals to allow girls to wear the Muslim headscarf at university. A recent separate ruling scrapping that move increases the likelihood of the government party being shut down.

AK party members are pessimistic and are said to be preparing for the worst. The constitutional court could also ban up to 71 of its members, including Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister, and President Abdullah Gül, from party affiliation.

The hearing is the latest round in the spat between Turkey's self-styled protectors of secularism and the devout Mr Erdogan's popular AK Party — a pro-European, pro-business party containing many former political Islamists.

The EU has expressed horror at the prospect of a party that won 47 per cent of the vote in its re-election last year being closed down, but the AK Party's secularist opponents accuse the bloc of meddling.

The constitutional court will sit twice — on Tuesday to hear the chief prosecutor of the supreme court of appeals present his indictment in person, and on Thursday to hear senior AK Party members deliver a verbal defence.

Initially, few people believed that the indictment would amount to anything more than a warning to a Government that has already weathered numerous battles with the secularist Establishment over the role of Islam in this mainly Muslim, but officially secular, country.

Last year a constitutional court ruling stymied AK's first attempt to elect Mr Gül as President. But AK won the snap election that followed with a landslide and elected Mr Gül anyway.

Now AK party members are said to be looking at ways of ensuring their survival after an expected ban. The party has denied claims that it is promoting Islamisation.

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