TURKEY: Headscarves Become a Headache

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Hilmi Toros

ISTANBUL, Mar 14 2008 (IPS) - Female students wearing headscarves are now admitted to the campus of Turkey’s Sakarya University, some 200 km from the main metropolis Istanbul. They have benefited from recent constitutional amendments lifting the ban on the headscarf at universities, in place since 1988.

Yet, those wearing similar headscarves are still barred from Gaziantep University in the southeast. Administrators here tell them the constitutional amendments may be “unconstitutional”.

At one university they say the new amendment enhances freedom by restoring the right to higher education for all. At the other, they say that far from representing freedom of expression or belief, headscarves are political symbols aimed at undermining the separation of religion and state.

The amendments were passed through a parliament dominated by the ruling Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), which had promised its conservative power base it would lift the restriction. President Abdullah Gul, one of the founders of AKP, who had his daughter cover her headscarf with a wig to circumvent the restriction, ratified the amendments.

But the opposition Republican Peoples Party (CHP), outvoted overwhelmingly in Parliament, applied to the Constitutional Court to have the amendments annulled. The high court agreed on Mar. 8 to take up the case.

A 50-page petition to the court by the staunchly secular party claims that constitutional changes lifting the ban violate the basic and overriding clause of the Constitution (Article II) that the secular nature of the Republic cannot be changed – or even considered for change.

“The amendments do not aim to bring freedom but permit wearing the ‘turban’, a religious symbol, at universities,” the petition said. “The amendments would lead to an erosion of the separation of state and religion.”

Complicating the matter, the constitutional amendments stipulate that a new law would be passed on permissible headscarves. But a bill on this has been withdrawn because of disagreement on the shape and size of the head cover.

While the court’s decision is pending, the country is becoming increasingly polarised, amid fears of lingering disputes regardless of the final verdict.

“A Pandora’s box has been opened,” says Mehmet Ali Birand, commentator for the mass circulation daily Posta and anchor for the main evening news on Kanal D channel. If the ban is upheld, he says students sporting headscarves will “rebel against the ban with AKP’s backing.” And if headscarves are permitted, there would be “more chaos, for the covered and the uncovered have now been divided into two opposing camps, and have carried all that tension to the universities.”

Close to 100 of Turkey’s 116 universities are still observing the ban on the grounds that a law setting out the shape of the headscarf has not yet been passed.

Secularists hope the high court will take into account its earlier rulings in 1989 and 1991 imposing the ban to safeguard secularism, as well as the opinion of Europe’s human rights tribunal in 2005 that the ban does not violate any European human rights norms.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who sent his two daughters to colleges in the United States rather than have them observe the restriction at home, has hit back at such court decisions, saying that the competent authority on the headscarf controversy are the “ulemas”, the religious authorities, rather than courts. This has further raised questions about his commitment to secularism.

Erdogan’s view is that one can be both a devout Muslim and secular at the same time. He calls it “conservative secularism”.

His party claims that two-thirds of women wear the headscarf in Turkey and that the 411 votes in the 550-member Parliament in favour of lifting the ban represent 80 percent of voters.

Istanbul attorney Sanem Yunusoglu told IPS that she believes the Constitutional Court will strike down the amendments. “Then, the only way to revive the issue would be through a brand new Constitution rather than constitutional amendments. That could further polarise society.”

Like most Turks, Yunusoglu says she has nothing against headscarves, even at universities, if they truly represent religious belief rather than political protest against secularism. “But how can you separate them?” she asks. “There are many who do it for politics. Headscarves are not an obligation outlined in the Koran.”

Until it became a burning controversy over the past two decades, the headscarf was a non-issue at schools of higher education. Most girls complied with the custom and bared their heads when entering university campuses. A few who did not were let in anyhow. But as religious values steadily spread, a growing number of girls insisted on wearing headscarves – or were encouraged to do so by religious leaders.

One fear of secularists is that if the headscarf ban is lifted at universities, it will be lifted also in schools and in public offices where it is still in place.