(ISTANBUL) - A senior member of the European Parliament said Tuesday a legal bid to ban Turkey's ruling party would tarnish the country's image abroad and strengthen the hands of opponents to Ankara's European Union aspirations.

"It is bad for Turkey's image abroad," Joost Lagendijk, co-chairman of a joint Turkey-EU parliamentary commission, told reporters on the sidelines of a conference here on Ankara's bid to become an EU member.

"I'm sure that those people in Europe who are against Turkey's accession will be very happy because they will have an extra argument to say 'why should we negotiate with a country whose governing party runs the risk of being closed down?'", the Dutch deputy said.

Lagendijk was speaking a day after Turkey's constitutional court voted unanimously to hear a case aimed at outlawing the Justice and Development Party (AKP) for anti-secular activity.

The country's chief prosecutor, Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, charges that the AKP, which emerged from a banned Islamist movement, is turning its religious rhetoric into action in a bid to establish an Islamist system.

He has also called for 71 officials, among them Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul, to be barred from politics for five years.

The AKP, which says it is fully committed to secularism, rejects the charges.

Lagendijk also said that the case threatened to slow down the reform process needed to boost Ankara's troubled EU bid at a time when the government is already under fire for having lost steam on the road to full membership.

"The government will be so busy fighting with the opposition that we won't see any reform," he said.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn has also signalled that banning the AKP could hit Turkey's accession talks, saying he saw no justification for outlawing the party.

The EU has already frozen talks with Turkey in eight of the 35 policy areas that candidates are required to complete in response to Ankara's refusal to grant trade priviliges to Cyprus.

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