The AK Parti, the Constitutional Court, and me

Hey folks,
As many of you know by now, earlier this week the Turkish Constitutional Court voted to dock the AK Parti half of their funding from the state. This is pretty good news, as the banning of the party, and the removal of many of its political leaders from politics for several years, seemed more likely. It was a close vote: the Court came within one vote of banning the party.
The AK Parti was under scrutiny because of what the chief prosecutor termed threats to the secularism of the state. The AK Parti made headlines internationally this year when its politicians passed legislation ending the ban on headscarves in public universities. This is a little misleading though, as they had to amend the Constitution to do so. That whole arrangement caused quite a bit of excitement here, but ultimately the Constitutional Court reversed the changes. This played a large part in the indictment against the AK Parti, as it was used in arguing that the AK Parti was influenced by Sharia law, or had allowed religion to influence its governance of the secular state (clearly there's much more to the issue, I just wanted to give a little background).
Had the AK Parti been banned, Turkey would have had to hold new elections, as the AKP is the majority party at the moment, and one can only speculate on who would have emerged with the majority. There was even speculation that the aftermath of such a ban would have resulted in such turmoil as to 'necessitate' a military coup; many arrests have been made here this summer of suspected members of a secretive group allegedly attempting to bring about illegitimate change in government via instability and intervention. It's all a little Agatha Christie-esque. There's still speculation that the secretive group, Ergenekon, might still be up to something; I guess we'll see. In any case, it's been a fascinating week here on the political side.
My week was perhaps not quite as fascinating; I've already written about the first part of the week, and the second half has been pretty relaxed. On Wednesday I played Turkish Monopoly with my class; it was strange because the game used Turkish Lira instead of Yeni Turkish Lira, and evidently had been produced sometime in the middle of the rampant inflation of the late 90s/early 00s, as I think 20,000 lira was roughly equivalent to the US version's $200 (in today's adjusted currency, that'd be 20 YTL). Our TA had never played Monopoly before, but somehow quite handily beat us all; we're pretty sure she is secretly a ninja. After that, I headed back to Superdorm before heading down to Cat's apartment in Bebek for some pie-baking; her boyfriend was flying in on Thursday, so she wanted to make a peach pie for his family. As I am a fan of baking and currently kitchenless, I was more than willing to head over with one of my roommates for a communal pie-baking effort. Thursday was mainly given over to class and such, although I did find time to reread Pride and Prejudice and order in bruschetta with one of my roommates. Today was pretty nice as well; Callie and I walked down to Cat's after class briefly before walking over to Bodrum Manti in Arnavutkoy (best manti in the country, I'm positive of it) and then heading to Besiktas for some shopping. I picked up some DVDs (feeling just a little foolish for the number of romantic comedies I requested), and then we hit up this huge bookstore, so Callie could look for Turkish childrens books. I browsed around and found the English-language novel section, which comprised 2 shelves. I was pretty excited, as I'd somehow neglected to bring any books with me other than the one I read on the plane and some tomes on foreign policy and the middle east. Sadly, a good half of the English books they had were ancient Greek and Roman authors, and I just didn't think that Aristotle would make light summer reading. Just as I was about to give up on having any fresh reading material, I saw a volume by Mungo Park, who I immediately recognized as the Scotsman who, in the late 18th century, discovered Niger. I didn't know that his journal was in print, but apparently it is, and thus I am now slowly working my way through his Travels in the Interior of Africa; I think it'll last me a decent while.
This weekend I'm really excited to finally see the Aya Sofya, which I disn't see last time I was in Turkey because I wasn't fond of the idea of paying admission, and the Cistern, which should be just awesome, before heading through the Spice Bazaar. My roommates and I are jointly catsitting for a friend, so we'll be spending Saturday night cooking and baking up a storm in the cat's apartment (the joys of kitchen access, let me tell you).
It's a bit hard to believe that I have only a week and a half left of this summer program; I still need to figure out when exactly I'll be moving to Ankara, and how exactly I'll get my stuff there. The program has been really good so far, although the grammar has at times been more of a review than a new lesson for me. I think my vocab has vastly improved, so perhaps I am at a Turkish elementary-school kid's level, rather than a preschooler's level in my speaking ability. Maybe by the end of the year I'll be at middle school level--I'd be pretty content with that.
On that note, I'm off to bed,
-R