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TURKEY: Headscarves Decide National Identity
Analysis by Hilmi Toros
ISTANBUL, Feb 4 (IPS) - Turkey's Islamic-rooted governing party is moving ahead with hotly contested constitutional amendments that would lift the ban on headscarves at universities. Opponents see it as a danger-laden step undermining the currently rigid secular regime by introducing Islamic principles that may extend far beyond higher learning.
Critics of the government express the fear that Turkey, while aspiring for full EU membership, may actually slide into a restrictive, religious society. On the other hand, advocates of lifting the ban see it as a step towards freedom of expression of the kind Western universities enjoy.
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), with its leaders originally from an Islamic party that was banned, have linked up with the Nationalists Movement Party to make the amendments lifting the ban. The two parties have enough votes to do so – 410, while 367 are required. The bill is already in a parliamentary commission on fast-track motion. It could be adopted within 10 days.
The main opposition Republican Peoples Party (CHP), founded by creator of secular Turkey Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in the 1920s, has announced it would seek annulment of the changes through the Constitutional Court.
Over 100,000 people marched in capital Ankara Saturday against proposed changes to lift the ban.
The proposed changes would lift restrictions only on what Turks call the "basortusu", a small headscarf worn by millions of women across the country of 70 million. It would not apply to a headscarf like a turban, considered a symbol of Islamic fundamentalism. Most wives of AKP members wear the 'turban'.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, once a firebrand member of an Islamic party and now heading a party and government on a platform of conservatism, had promised the party's devout Muslim powerbase it would lift the ban. He said the changes are aimed only at ending discrimination against female students at universities, and restoring their rights to university education.
"No basic human rights pose a threat to democracy or the fundamental values of the Republic," Erdogan declared. "The AKP government is a safeguard of our secular order."
"This is not a religious matter," said opposition CHP leader Deniz Baykal. "It is highly political." He accuses AKP of trying to pass the turban off as "basortusu", and says the turban is "not Turkish, but a foreign import" coming from the Wahabi sect in the Arab world.
AKP member Husnu Tuna has said "the target is to lift the ban everywhere," leading to criticism that the AKP may have a hidden Islamic agenda despite claims to the contrary.
"The real problem is the danger of this freedom (of wearing the headscarf) spreading to all public areas, and also contaminating primary and secondary schools, hospitals and the judiciary as time passes," says Mehmet Ali Birand, a liberal commentator on Turkish affairs for the widely circulated Posta.
"The real danger is to breed turbaned male and female judges, prosecutors or doctors, and to be confronted with instances of female doctors refusing to examine male patients or female patients refusing to be examined by male doctors."
The academic world, directly affected, is divided.
"We are warning those who support this measure and those who remain silent that it would erode the gains of the Republic and that the secular order will come to an end," president of the Inter-University Council and head of the Akdeniz (Mediterranean) University Prof. Mustafa Akaydin said after an extraordinary meeting of the council. "It would inevitably transform the Turkish Republic into a religious state."
The senate of Istanbul University, the largest in the country with 50,000 students, issued a statement saying: "Political interests and choices, disguised as freedom of religion, cannot be allowed to threaten scientific freedom in the universities. Turkey will not be a scene for Sharia games and abuse of religion. We cannot turn a blind eye to those who voluntarily or ignorantly undermine our social order."
Prof. Ural Bulut, rector of the prestigious Middle East Technical University in capital Ankara, said in an interview with CNN Turk: "If adopted, radical Islamists will put pressure to have the ban lifted in lower schools and other fields. Those who don't wear the headscarf will come under pressure."
But his faculty member, Prof. Ihsan Dagi, disagreed with him in a joint television interview. "Universities should be concerned not with bans but freedoms and education," he said. He has launched a petition to lift the ban, and said it was supported by more than 600 faculty members in universities across the country within 24 hours.
The powerful Business and Industry Association and the Women's Entrepreneurial Organisation both oppose a lifting of the ban on the grounds that the government is focusing on the headscarf issue at the expense of broader reforms on human rights issues demanded by the EU. There are also fears that a perceived erosion of secular values may supply further ammunition to the anti-Turkish mood in the EU.
Prof. Ilter Turan, former rector of Istanbul's leading private Bilgi (Knowledge) University and professor of political science, told IPS that "there will be confusion, and further polarisation, with possibility of the conflict escalating."
The military, which has overturned four civilian governments, one of them an Islamist one since 1960, and sees itself as the guardian of a secular regime has issued no comment, saying its position on the subject is well known. This was an apparent reference to a statement in April last year when the military called itself "an interested party" in the secular debate, and vowed to take action to defend secularism when necessary.
"The military will keep a low profile if things don't get out of control - and I don't see any danger of that now," Istanbul-based French analyst Jerome Bastion told IPS.
The ban came into force in 1989 when a court ruled that the headscarf violated Article 2 of the Constitution on the unchangeable secular nature of the republic. Before then, most women came to university campuses with their head uncovered, or wearing a minimal basortusu. But through the wave of conservatism in the 1990s, female students contested the ban. Those not complying with it were barred from university campuses.
Rather than complying with the ban, Prime Minister Erdogan sent his daughters to schools abroad. President Abdullah Gul's daughter covered her headscarf with a Western-style wig. His wife, now the first First Lady of the secular republic to wear a headscarf, once sued the Turkish state at the European Court of Human Rights over the right to wear a headscarf. She withdrew the case after her husband became a leading figure in the government.
In a separate case, the EU court has ruled that Turkey's ban is in compliance with its laws.
Millions of Turkish women cover their heads now, and the practice is more and more visible even in swank Istanbul, a city of 12 million. Veils are also more to be seen. The "burka" covering most of the face and flowing down to feet, as worn in some Arab countries, Iran, and Afghanistan, is still rare.
The amendment motion goes as far as to define the contours of an admissible headscarf. It has to be small enough to leave the face uncovered for identification purposes, with a knot under the chin.
If the amendments take effect, university administrators dealing with admissions may have to inspect headscarves first.
"Are we to employ fashion designers at universities to check on students?" constitution expert Ergun Ozbudun said in a television discussion. Columnist Fatma Diski of the pro-AKP daily Zaman, who has a photograph wearing the turban-style headgear accompanying her columns, says government definition of allowable headscarf through legislation is "state interference" in attire.
As things stand, neither the First Lady nor the Prime Minister's wife would qualify for admission into a Turkish university. Their headgear is not tied under the chin, it wraps back to the neck. (END/2008)
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