A marble fountain held up by bare-breasted maidens in the eastern city of Kars is a source of pride for the city's mayor, Naif Alibeyoglu. Yet last November the sculpture vanished a few days before a planned visit to Kars by Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Fearful of incurring the wrath of Mr Erdogan and his mildly Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), the mayor (himself an AKP man) reportedly arranged for its removal.rnIn the event, the prime minister never arrived-and the fountain came back. The incident may be testimony to the prudery of Mr Erdogan, and of the AKP more broadly. But could it also be evidence of their desire to steer Turkey towards sharia law? The country's chief prosecutor, Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, might say so. In March he petitioned the constitutional court to ban the AKP and to bar Mr Erdogan and 70 other named AKP officials, including the president, Abdullah Gul, from politics, on the ground that they are covertly seeking to establish an Islamist theocracy.
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