In This Article
30-Second Summary
Headline Links: Turkish parliament approves constitutional amendment
Background: Headscarves and other signs of political change
Reactions: ‘Head Scarf Debate Rears Its Head Again in Turkey’
Historical Context: Secularism in Turkey
Opinion & Analysis: The changing role of religion in Turkey
Reference: Turkey
Related Topics: France and the headscarf ban
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Turkey Moves to End Headscarf Ban
by
findingDulcinea Staff
Turkey’s parliament has approved a draft constitutional amendment to allow female university students to wear Islamic-style headscarves on campus.
30-Second Summary
On Jan. 24, the majority parliamentary coalition of the Islamist-leaning Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) agreed on a proposal to redraft the nation’s constitution to allow women to wear Islamic headscarves in public universities.
On Jan. 29, 348 members of the 550-person assembly signed on to the proposal. It is scheduled to go before the country’s Constitutional Court on Jan. 31.
However, the opposition regards the move as antithetical to the secularist principles on which the state was founded in 1923.
“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,” Chief State Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya said in a statement.
Still others argue that the move is a further indication that the country’s secular tenets are being slowly chiseled away.
Soner Cagaptay, the director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said in Newsweek, “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.”
Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish newspaper columnist, says that the ban against the headscarf violates social liberties. “Now is the time for freedom for all Turkish citizens, whatever their creed, language and way of life may be,” he writes.
France went through similar debates in 2004, when the government banned all “overtly religious symbols” in public schools, including headscarves, large Christian crosses and Jewish skullcaps.
On Jan. 29, 348 members of the 550-person assembly signed on to the proposal. It is scheduled to go before the country’s Constitutional Court on Jan. 31.
However, the opposition regards the move as antithetical to the secularist principles on which the state was founded in 1923.
“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,” Chief State Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya said in a statement.
Still others argue that the move is a further indication that the country’s secular tenets are being slowly chiseled away.
Soner Cagaptay, the director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said in Newsweek, “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.”
Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish newspaper columnist, says that the ban against the headscarf violates social liberties. “Now is the time for freedom for all Turkish citizens, whatever their creed, language and way of life may be,” he writes.
France went through similar debates in 2004, when the government banned all “overtly religious symbols” in public schools, including headscarves, large Christian crosses and Jewish skullcaps.
Headline Links: Turkish parliament approves constitutional amendment
The Web site of Turkish daily newspaper Hürriyet reports that the AKP-MHP coalition passed its preliminary plan to amend the constitution and permit women to wear headscarves in universities. Out of the 550-member parliament, 348 signed their approval on the proposal. The secularist-leaning Turkish Constitutional Court is set to review the proposal on Jan. 31.
Source: Hürriyet (in Turkish)
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
Background: Headscarves and other signs of political change
On Jan. 24 the majority Turkish parliamentary coalition of the AKP and the 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: Turkish Daily News
Turkey in the 2000s
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. The AKP still holds the majority in the Turkey’s legislative body.
Source: findingDulcinea
Reactions: ‘Head Scarf Debate Rears Its Head Again in Turkey’
On Jan. 13, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip 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
Opinion & Analysis: The changing role of religion in Turkey
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 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
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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