[wvns] TURKEY MAY LIFT HEADSCARF BAN
Turkish PM says wants to lift headscarf ban
Wed Sep 19, 2007
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL1918897820070919?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews
NOTE: When I visited Turkey in 1991, many women came up to me and told
me they wished they could wear the headscarf but could not do so
because they needed to work to support their family. It was a very
interesting reversal of oppression-stereotypes. The woman who chooses
to wear a headscarf is not oppressed by Islam, because Islam allows a
woman to work. She is oppressed by the Turkish government, which
forbids her to study or work and forces her to stay at home as a
housewife if she does not reveal her beauty to the public. - WVNS
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was quoted in
the Financial Times on Wednesday as saying he wanted to lift the ban
on the Islamic headscarf in universities as part of a planned
constitutional overhaul.
The remarks by Erdogan, whose Islamist-rooted AK Party won a new
five-year mandate in July elections, could reignite tensions with
Turkey's powerful secular elite, including army generals, which
suspects him of wanting to boost the role of religion.
"The right to higher education cannot be restricted because of what a
girl wears. There is no such problem in Western societies but there is
a problem in Turkey and I believe it is the first duty of those in
politics to solve the problem," he told the FT in an interview in
Ankara.
The secularists regard the headscarf as a symbolic threat to Turkey's
separation of state and religion. They also fear any lifting of the
ban would put social pressure on uncovered women to start wearing the
headscarf in overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey.
But the AK Party says it is a question of freedom of expression and
notes that the garment was only banned from university campuses in
1982 after a military coup.
Erdogan's government has pledged to replace Turkey's military-era
constitution with a new charter that puts the focus on individual
rights and freedoms and is more in line with the requirements of the
European Union, which Ankara aims to join.
"We want a constitution that is going to provide and protect a state
that is a democratic, secular, social state of law," Erdogan told the
FT.
"This constitution is going to point Turkey in a certain direction and
it is our duty to debate it and consult with people in the widest
possible sense," he said.
The AK Party is currently debating a draft text drawn up by a team of
legal experts but Turkish media say it is still divided over how to
broach the headscarf issue in the charter.
Turkey's military, which views itself as the ultimate guarantor of the
secular order, is closely watching the debates, as are nervous
financial markets. Ten years ago the army, with strong public support,
ousted a government seen as too Islamist.
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