(BERLIN) - Germany on Monday sharply criticised a chief Turkish prosecutor's demand to ban the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) for anti-secular activities, saying it undermined Ankara's EU ambitions.

Deputy government spokesman Thomas Steg said Berlin was "worried" by the Court of Appeals Chief Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya's "incomprehensible" indictment of the AKP Friday, calling the move undemocratic.

"The AKP is clearly a democratic party and clearly emerged from the free and fair and democratic parliamentary elections in 2007 as the strongest party with about 47 percent of the vote," he told a regular government news conference.

"The decision of the chief prosecutor must thus clearly be seen as a decision against the will of the Turkish people."

Steg said Berlin shared the view of EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn, who warned Saturday that "the legal system shouldn't meddle in democratic politics" as Turkey implements reforms in its quest to join the European Union.

Germany welcomed the criticism of the indictment already voiced in Turkey by media outlets and business groups, he said.

"The German government has faith in the democratic system and the rule of law in Turkey, which set high hurdles for the banning of a party," he said.

"We expect the constitutional court not to approve the chief prosecutor's indictment."

Turkey's top court on Monday was studying the chief prosecutor's demand to ban the AKP, a move that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has slammed as an attack on democracy.

Yalcinkaya's indictment charges that the AKP, which emerged from a banned Islamist movement, is turning its religious rhetoric into action, attempting to infiltrate state institutions to establish an "Islamist-inspired" system in the strictly secular country.

Some 2.5 million people of Turkish origin live in Germany, the vast majority of them descendants of "guest workers" who came to the country in the 1960s.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel opposes Turkey's bid to join the EU although her left-right coalition government formally supports Ankara's ongoing membership talks with the bloc.

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