If Turkey's headscarf ban is lifted, the actual requirement to wear them could be next
Published by Avi Green on Monday, January 28, 2008 at 11:21 PM.
Turkey continues its return to Islamic fundamentalism:
ISTANBUL, Turkey - Turkey's ruling party agreed with an opposition party Monday to lift a decades-old ban on Islamic head scarves in universities of the mainly Muslim but secular nation.While the army in Turkey may be one of the last bastions of common sense, I have a feeling even that may not last long. How soon will it be before women are actually required by law in Turkey to wear headscarves?
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling party and the Nationalist Action Party said in a joint statement that the two parties agreed to make changes in the constitution and the Higher Education Law to allow female students wearing head scarves into universities.
A constitutional change would need a two-thirds majority in the 550-seat assembly. The two parties have more than enough legislators.
Wearing of head scarves in universities was first banned shortly after a military coup in 1980 but implementation of the ban has varied over the years.
Erdogan, who is a devout Muslim, vowed to end the ban during his election campaign last summer. He scored a resounding victory against the secularist opposition.
The staunchly secularist Republican People's Party has repeatedly said lifting the ban would harm the nation's secular traditions.
The Republican's deputy chair, Onur Oymen, citing an earlier decision by the Constitutional Court on the ban, said the constitutional amendments planned by the ruling and nationalist parties would not be enough to allow scarf-clad students into universities.
When Erdogan first proposed Abdullah Gul, an observant Muslim, for president in April, the military issued a statement that hinted at intervention.
The ensuing crisis forced Erdogan to call an early general election. The ruling party's landslide victory resurrected Gul's presidential bid and Parliament voted him into the post in August.
Secularists unsuccessfully opposed Gul's candidacy partly because his wife wears a head scarf. She challenged Turkey's head scarf ban at the European Court of Human Rights — after being barred from university in 1998 — only to withdraw her complaint when her husband became foreign minister.
