ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey’s government is  preparing a package of constitutional amendments to go to  parliament within 10 days, a minister said yesterday, a move  expected to increase tension with the secularist judiciary.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government lacks the  two-thirds parliamentary majority it needs to change the  constitution, so it will then hold a referendum to gain public  backing which will undercut any Constitutional Court challenge,  Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin said.  Erdogan’s AK Party, which has roots in a banned Islamist  movement, wants to make it harder to outlaw political parties  and reform the way judges and prosecutors are appointed.

“We object to the current structure of the judiciary because  it over-extends its powers and creates laws by overstepping the  authority of the parliament,” Ergin told reporters yesterday.

The secularist establishment, whose legal challenges against  the AK Party have been spearheaded by the Constitutional Court,  suspects the government wants to Islamicise the state by stealth  and pack the courts with sympathetic judges and prosecutors.

The head of the Constitutional Court has urged Erdogan to  seek consensus rather than force through constitutional changes  to ease tensions generated by the detentions of a prosecutor and  several military officers in the so-called Ergenekon  investigation into an alleged coup conspiracy.

The arrests have wobbled financial markets worried about  political stability in the $650 billion economy.

The government’s proposed package consists of “urgent and  limited” amendments of 10 to 15 articles including rules to curb  the role of the Constitutional Court, Ergin said.

Ergin said the changes include tighter rules on political  party bans, but he would not specify if they would help the  ruling AK Party avert a new closure case. There is speculation in the media and among some investors  that prosecutors could open another case to outlaw the  business-friendly, pro-EU AK Party, which narrowly escaped a ban  in 2008 on charges it undermined Turkey’s secular constitution.

Banning parties “is obviously a problem in Turkey, which has  closed some 25 parties,” Ergin said. “That’s why we have the new  regulations to make party closures more difficult.”

Turkish democracy has also been tested by repeated  interventions from the military, the self-appointed guardian of  the country’s secular system.

The army ousted three governments in coups between 1960 and  1980 and pressured a fourth, Turkey’s first Islamist-led  administration to resign in 1997. Erdogan was the outspoken  mayor of Istanbul for that Islamist party at the time.  “Turkey needs to consolidate democracy to be less  susceptible to military coups,” Ergin said.

The Justice Ministry will examine charges of wrongdoing in  the Ergenekon investigation and trial, but criticism of the case  has come mainly from those named in the indictments or from  those with close ties to suspects, Ergin said.