ISTANBUL — Turkey’s parliament took a major step toward lifting a ban against women’s head scarves in universities on Saturday, setting the stage for a final showdown with the country’s secular elite over where Islam fits in the building of an open society.
Turkish lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favor of a measure supported by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to change two articles in Turkey’s Constitution that they say would guarantee every citizen the right to go to college regardless of how they dress. Turkish authorities imposed the ban in the late 1990’s, arguing that the growing numbers of covered women in colleges threatened secularism, one of the founding principles of modern Turkey.
Secular opposition lawmakers voted against the change, with about a fifth of all ballots cast. Large crowds of secular Turks backed them on the streets of Turkey’s capital, Ankara, chanting that secularism, and women’s right to resist being forced to wear head scarves by family members or religious authorities, was under threat and demanding that the government step down.
“This decision will bring further pressure on women,” said Nesrin Baytok, a deputy from the opposition secular party, during the debate in parliament. “It will ultimately bring us Hezbollah terror, Al Qaeda terror, and fundamentalism.”
Another deputy from that party, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, said the group would take the amendments to Turkey’s Constitutional Court, a pro-secular institution that is likely to rule against Mr. Erdogan. It must wait until the changes are approved by the president and published in the official state newspaper, a process of as many as two weeks.
The head scarf ban, and the attempt to repeal it by Mr. Erdogan’s governing party, has become one of the most emotional issues in Turkey. Though the terms of the debate revolve around religion, at its heart it is a struggle for power between a rising, increasingly wealthy middle class of observant Turks, on one side, and a secular elite, backed by the military and judiciary, on the other. The head scarf is their battleground.
“It’s all about power,” said Jenny B. White, a professor of anthropology at Boston University who has been writing about Turkey since the 1970’s. “It’s about who gets to decide what Turkey’s image and emblematic lifestyle will be. Islam is the lightening rod for all the fears and concerns.”
Still, Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development party now has significant power, controlling the parliament and the posts of president and prime minister, and many secular Turks fear that party officials will impose their own conservative lifestyle on Turkey.
“It’s been presented as a liberty to cover the head, but in practice, it is going to evolve into a ban on uncovered hair,” said Sami Turk, a former justice minister, speaking on NTV television. “This is a starting point, that’s the importance.”
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I think Sami Turk's statement clearly outlines the fear in lifting his ban.
In a perfect world, freedom is the ultimate right....but we don't live in a perfect world.
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