ANKARA, Sept 27 (AFP) - After the bruising experience of a contested penal code reform, Turkey's ruling party went into a three-day retreat at a mountain resort Monday to smooth over their differences and prepare the year ahead.
The Turkish press speculated that a cabinet reshuffle would be high on the agenda, a theory lent weight by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's opening remarks.
"The greatest danger," he said, "is to fail to renew oneself, to produce excuses instead of ideas and deeds and to think that the (comforts) of the seats and limousines of office will last forever.
"If we believe in the temporal nature of office, we must never forget that we are accountable -- the basic characteristic of our policy is a hierarchy of values, not of office."
In praising his party's record after two years in power, he added: "I am sorry to say we have not yet completely succeeded in undoing the damage done to public service by wastefulness, inefficiency and a heavy, cumbersome bureaucracy."
The heated debate over the criminal code reform -- seen as vital to Turkey's long-cherished hopes of joining the European Union -- exposed serious divisions with the Justice and Development Party (AKP).
The package was finally passed at a special parliament sitting on Sunday, but only after pressure from the radical Islamist wing of the AKP to make adultery a jailable offense forced the debate to be suspended for ten days and nearly scuttled Turkey's EU bid.
The AKP's 368 deputies, including all government ministers and members of the party executive, were meeting behind closed doors at a spa in Kizilcahamam, a wooded resort about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Ankara, to discuss the party's future.
Party leaders will discuss who will do what when parliament starts the new legislative season on October 1, newspapers reported, as well as a possible cabinet reshuffle the media says has been on the cards for several months.
The AKP swept to power two years ago on a conservative platform that attracted voters from across the social spectrum, not only the hardline Islamist movements in which a good part of the party leadership, including Erdogan, have their political roots.
Erdogan has made joining the EU his top priority and has repeatedly said religion plays no role in his or his party's politics, which he describes as simply "conservative," but his detractors claim his reformist side hides a secret religious agenda.
They say proof of this lies in occasional radical Islamist stabs at the deep-rooted secular tradition of his overwhelmingly Muslim nation, such as bids to allow Islamic headscarves in universities, ease access into higher education for young Turks who have graduated from religious preachers' schools and, most recently, make adultery a jailable offense.
The AKP eventually backed off from all those projects.
It can nevertheless boast genuine achievements that have drawn a favorable global response, such as stabilising the economy and making major progress in improving human and minority rights.
In his speech, Erdogan referred obliquely to the rift between the secular and religious that exists not only within the AKP but in Turkish society in general.
"The way to eradicate artificial tensions between the state and society is to remove the obstacles before society's will to better itself, to respect the free choices of society and not allow attemps at social engineering to damage the democratic order," he said.