In This Article
30-Second Summary
Headline Link: ‘13-Hour-Long Marathon in Parliament to Say “Yes” to Headscarf’
Background: The signs of political change
Reactions: The headscarf debate
Historical Context: Secularism in Turkey
Key Player: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Opinion & Analysis: The headscarf, secularism and the changing role of religion in Turkey
Reference: Turkey
Related Topics: France and the headscarf ban
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Turkey to Lift Headscarf Ban
by
findingDulcinea Staff
On Feb. 7, the Turkish parliament passed a constitutional amendment allowing female university students to wear Islamic headscarves on public university campuses.
30-Second Summary
The coalition of the ruling Islamist-leaning Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP) pushed the bill through in a landslide 404-92 vote.
The country’s secular establishment views the amendment as an affront to the values established by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish republic.
The day after the measure passed, an estimated 10,000 people took to the streets of Izmir, the country’s third-largest city, to protest the move to lift the ban.
Demonstrators carried signs bearing slogans such as “We women are guarding the secular state” and “Men and women hand in hand against the headscarf.”
The secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP), Turkey’s main opposition party, will try to defeat the bill in the next round of voting, scheduled for Feb. 9.
CHP member Kemal Anadol asked those voting for the amendment, “How will you stop the demands of the covered university graduates when they will ask to work for the state in the future? Good job for you. You are getting closer to your goals step by step.”
Turkish columnist Mustafa Karaalioglu writes that the amendment puts “power and responsibility” back in the hands of the parliament.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed a similar view: “There is only one institution that can speak on behalf of the people … and this is the parliament.”
The country’s secular establishment views the amendment as an affront to the values established by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish republic.
The day after the measure passed, an estimated 10,000 people took to the streets of Izmir, the country’s third-largest city, to protest the move to lift the ban.
Demonstrators carried signs bearing slogans such as “We women are guarding the secular state” and “Men and women hand in hand against the headscarf.”
The secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP), Turkey’s main opposition party, will try to defeat the bill in the next round of voting, scheduled for Feb. 9.
CHP member Kemal Anadol asked those voting for the amendment, “How will you stop the demands of the covered university graduates when they will ask to work for the state in the future? Good job for you. You are getting closer to your goals step by step.”
Turkish columnist Mustafa Karaalioglu writes that the amendment puts “power and responsibility” back in the hands of the parliament.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed a similar view: “There is only one institution that can speak on behalf of the people … and this is the parliament.”
Headline Link: ‘13-Hour-Long Marathon in Parliament to Say “Yes” to Headscarf’
An amendment to the Turkish constitution allowing female students to wear Islamic-style headscarves in universities passed parliament on Feb. 7. Following 13 hours of debate, the measure was approved by a 404-92 vote, far surpassing the required two-thirds minimum. Secularists vow to defeat the measure in a mandatory second round of voting, set for Feb. 9.
Source: Al-Jazeera
Background: The signs of political change
On Feb. 8, the day after parliament passed the headscarf amendment, some 10,000 people marched in protest in Izmir, Turkey’s third-largest city. Signs carried slogans such as “We women are guarding the secular state,” “Men and women hand in hand against the headscarf” and “Ataturk Supporters for a Secular Turkey.”
Source: Hürriyet
On Jan. 24 the majority Turkish parliamentary coalition of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) agreed on a preliminary draft amendment to the national constitution that would lift the ban on wearing Islamic headscarves in universities. Reports indicated that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged his fellow AKP members to push through the legislation despite warnings from the staunchly secularist national judiciary.
Source: Al-Jazeera
Sarah Rainsford, the BBC’s correspondent in Istanbul, writes that “the issue is highly controversial in a mainly Muslim country whose secular elite—including the military—sees the headscarf as a symbol of political Islam.”
Source: The BBC
Turkey in the 2000s
A recent survey conducted by the Turkish Confederation of Employers Unions reports that 66 percent of women in Turkey between the ages of 25 and 29 do not work. The organization said in a statement, “Such a backwards situation rings alarm bells … The motto ‘women belong at home’ should be abandoned.”
Source: Turkish Daily News
Turkey is pushing through one of the world’s strictest bans on public smoking. A nation famed for strong tobacco is the latest of several European countries to stop people lighting up in public spaces.
Source: findingDulcinea
In August 2007, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul became the country’s first president to have an Islamist background, a victory that marks the increasing influence of Turkey’s religious middle class on a government with staunchly secular roots.
Source: findingDulcinea
On Nov. 25, 1998, the government of secularist Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz collapsed under charges of corruption. This marked a shift in the country’s political composition that paved the way for the 2002 parliamentary victory of the Islamist-rooted AKP.
Source: findingDulcinea
Reactions: The headscarf debate
Deputies from the ruling AKP/MHP majority said, “The amendment will only apply to universities.” Kemal Anadol, a member of parliament from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), asked backers of the amendment, “How will you stop the demands of the covered university graduates when they will ask to work for the state in the future? Good job for you. You are getting closer to your goals step by step.” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in response to CHP disapproval, “There is only one institution that can speak on behalf of the people … and this is the Parliament.”
Source: Turkish Daily News
On Jan. 13, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan told the press that there was no legal basis for the ban on Islamic headscarves in government buildings. “This is a serious problem in terms of freedoms,” he said. Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, chief state prosecutor, issued a warning on behalf of the government’s secularists. “It is clear that the rejection of the 85-year-long gains of the republic and its basic principles will not bring any good to the country, but will first raise consciousness among the people and then lead to separatism and clashes,” he said in a statement.
Source: International Herald Tribune
Historical Context: Secularism in Turkey
In 1923, amidst the ruins of the Ottoman Empire and World War I, military general turned national leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk sought to establish Turkey as a secular republic by founding the nation upon a number of Westernizing reforms. Religion was to be kept out of governmental institutions. A centralized education system akin to the one in France was put in place, and women were given equal rights under the law.
Source: Council on Foreign Relations
Key Player: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan rose to power through populist politics. In 1994 Erdogan was elected as the mayor of the Greater Istanbul Municipality. In 1998 he was convicted of “inciting religious hatred” due to his recitation of an Islamist poem. His political party, the moderate but Islamist-leaning Justice and Development Party (AKP), has ruled Turkey since 2002. The country has since seen economic expansion, although secularists criticize his party’s social reform policies, which include a failed attempt to illegalize adultery, a move to re-draft the constitution to allow female students to wear Islamic-style headscarves at universities, and stiff taxation on alcohol. The working classes from rural areas herald his policies.
Source: The BBC
Opinion & Analysis: The headscarf, secularism and the changing role of religion in Turkey
Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman ran an English-language translation of an editorial originally published in the Turkish-language paper Star. Mustafa Karaalioglu argues that the headscarf was never a political issue, so by Parliament taking a stand on the point, the legislative body publicly announces “that it is the lawmaker and it owns both power and responsibility for its actions in the eyes of society.”
Source: Today’s Zaman
Turkish newspaper columnist Mustafa Akyol blogs about the case of a high school student named Tevhide. Tevhide won a state award for an essay honoring teachers, but was pulled off of the dais at the ceremony because she was wearing a headscarf. “This has to end,” he writes. “Now is the time for freedom for all Turkish citizens, whatever their creed, langue and way of life may be.”
Source: Mustafa Akyol’s blog
Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, writes in Newsweek that the university class on Turkish secularism he was set to teach in September 2007 will become “a history class” if the legislative trends of the past five years continue. “Religion will assume a larger and larger place in the country's politics and society. Turkey will become a more Islamic society in its foreign-policy outlook and culture…Headscarves, religious education and the rejection of alcohol will become more common,” Cagaptay writes.
Source: Newsweek
Turkish newspaper columnist Burak Bekdil attempts to illustrate inconsistencies in AKP policy by listing a series of statements made by party members and their supporters. Pertinent to the headscarf debate are comments made by Prime Minister Erdogan regarding the AKP’s now-coalition party, the Nationalist Action Party (MHP). Before the elections, Erdogan said that MHP chief “Devlet Bahceli is not honest … he is trying to fool the people.” After the MHP agreed to support the headscarf ban amendment however, Erdogan said, “The AKP and the MHP are trying to strengthen secularism.”
Source: Turkish Daily News
Reference: Turkey
The BBC has compiled a list of key facts about Turkey and an overview of the country’s recent history.
Source: The BBC
Related Topics: France and the headscarf ban
In September 2004, France instituted a ban on “overtly religious symbols.” The ban covered Islamic headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses. According to Al-Jazeera, however, “French officials have made it clear their main aim was to outlaw the headscarf to combat ‘extremist influence’ among a minority of France’s 5 million Muslims.”
Source: Al-Jazeera
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