Tag: headscarf ban

Every morning Yasemin Derbaz puts on the piece of cloth that marks her out as an observant Muslim.

Millions of other Turkish women do the same: it is estimated that at least 60% cover their heads.

Now, for the first time, almost all universities across Turkey have abandoned the official prohibition on women wearing headscarves.

The ban ended when the government issued a statement in September saying it would support any student expelled or disciplined for covering her head.

The Islamic headscarf has become a divisive symbol, which bars women from jobs and education, and came close to bringing down a government two years ago.

Yasemin can now go to her architecture classes at Yildiz Technical University for the first time without wearing a large hat or a wig to cover her hair.

“I feel happy that I don’t have to stop in a mosque on the way and change into my wig,” she said.

The exact status of the headscarf ban is mired in confusion.

There is no law against wearing one. Nor does the ban originate with modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, although he did discourage women from covering their heads, and passed a law barring men from wearing traditional Ottoman clothing.

Emine Erdogan was blocked from entering a military hospital in 2007 for not removing her headscarf

The more recent ban on headscarves in universities and for public servants dates back to regulations passed by government departments in the 1980s, after the last military coup.

With leftist groups harshly suppressed, Islamic parties made strong gains among the Turkish electorate in the elections that followed, prompting a reaction from the avowedly secular military.

The university ban was only properly enforced after the military forced out an overtly Islamic prime minister in 1998.

What the regulations had in mind was not the traditional scarf, tied around the neck by peasant women in Anatolia, but the hijab, also called a turban in Turkey, which has become a symbol of pious or political Islam, worn by growing numbers of urban, educated women since the 1980s.

It is for that reason that military buildings will allow headscarfed women in if they take out the pin that holds the tightly-wound hijab in place – they have a special pin-box at reception.

Emine Erdogan, the wife of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was blocked from entering a military hospital in 2007 for refusing to remove hers.

Mr Erdogan tried to overturn the university ban in 2008, through a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to education.

It passed through parliament, but was thrown out by the Constitutional Court.

But this year, with the momentum behind him after winning the constitutional referendum in September and more compliant bureaucrats in the Board of Education, the government in effect ended the ban by stealth.

The Constitutional Court is in any case being restructured following the referendum, and is less likely to challenge the governing party so boldly in future.

Caught off-guard

The main opposition party, the secular CHP – previously a strong supporter of the university ban – wanted to negotiate its end with the government, but was denied the chance.

Lawyer Fatma Benli says that her headscarf bars her from appearing in court

But the party has vowed to maintain the ban on civil servants wearing headscarves.

“The reason why we don’t allow a headscarf for, say a judge, is that it is a symbol of religion. The state should be impartial to race, religion, everything,” says Hursit Gunes, a deputy secretary-general of the party.

There are still academics appalled by the prospect of headscarves on campus.

“Universities are supposed to be places where science and scientific thought can be discussed freely,” says Nezhun Goren, a biology professor at Yildiz Technical University.

“Religious faith can’t be discussed, you either accept it or reject it.”

Disadvantaged

The resistance to headscarves among many secular Turks seems to be driven by something deeper – a belief that the rigorous adherence to Islam it symbolises in the wearer will eventually reverse the modernisation of Turkish society under its strictly secular system.

Lawyers are still barred from wearing the headscarf in court

Headscarfed women say right now they are the ones who are disadvantaged.

Fatma Benli is an experienced lawyer who specialises in defending women. But her headscarf bars her from appearing in court – she has to appoint bare-headed proxies to defend her clients.

“For 12 years I’ve been working long hours as a lawyer and I have specialist skills, in international law, so I should be well-paid,” she says, “yet I still have to rely on financial help from my parents to run my office”.

Dilek Cindoglu, a sociologist at Bilkent University who does not wear a headscarf, has done research which shows that the restrictions on headscarfed women in the civil service have spilled over into the private sector.

“Once they get employment they are being discriminated against in terms of promotions, salaries, and in terms of dismissals should the company decide to reduce the workforce.”

I asked Yasemin if she understood the fear many secular Turks feel about openly pious Muslims like herself.

“I am forcing myself, but I cannot say that I totally understand it.”

She argues that she was the one left with the psychology of fear, not them, because for 10 years she was unable to go to school wearing her headscarf.

Thomas Seibert

Last Updated: Dec 18, 2010

ISTANBUL // When Sumeyye Erdogan, the youngest daughter of the Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, took a seat on the visitors’ balcony of a meeting room inside Ankara’s parliament building to listen to a speech by her father a few weeks ago, no one assumed the appearance was a coincidence or pure family business.

Recent sightings of Ms Erdogan, 29, at several of her father’s political meetings have triggered speculation in the media that she may be preparing to enter politics and run for a parliamentary seat at elections scheduled for June next year.

Although Ms Erdogan says her father does not want her to enter politics, the rumours swirling around her political ambition have a wider significance: in order for her to enter parliament, Turkey would have to lift the ban on the Islamic headscarf for parliamentary deputies.

Ms Erdogan wears the headscarf, as does her mother, her sister and millions of other Turkish women. Mr Erdogan, a devout Muslim who is accused by his opponents of following a hidden agenda to turn Turkey into a Islamic state, has refused to rule out changing the rules on the garment in parliament.

A long-time headscarf ban in Turkish universities, lifted only a few months ago, prevented Ms Erdogan from studying in her home country. With the financial help of Remzi Gur, a wealthy textile entrepreneur and a friend of the Erdogan family, Ms Erdogan went to the United States and to the United Kingdom to study political science and graduated from the London School of Economics in 2008.

Mr Gur has also paid for the higher education of Mr Erdogan’s other three children, Sumeyye’s older sister, Esra, and her brothers, Ahmet Burak and Necmeddin Bilal.

Unlike her siblings, Ms Erdogan has shown an intense interest in political affairs after her return to Turkey. She has accompanied her father on diplomatic trips in Turkey and abroad.

At the same time, she has been working as an “honorary adviser” to Mr Erdogan in his ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, as she said in the only interview she has given in response to the media speculation about her political ambition.

Speaking to Hilal Kaplan, a columnist of the independent Taraf daily, during a trip with her father to Lebanon last month, Ms Erdogan denied that she was thinking about running for parliament and said that her father did not like the idea of family members entering politics.

“He has been like that since we were little,” she said. Mr Erdogan, who has built his reputation partly on fighting corruption, has banned leading AKP party officials from promoting close relatives to party positions.

Despite her denial, the symbolism of her visit to parliament last month to hear her father’s speech to AKP deputies has fuelled speculation about a possible end to the headscarf ban for female members of parliament.

Although headscarves are allowed in meeting rooms of parliamentary groups inside the parliament complex, making it possible for Ms Erdogan to attend her father’s speech, they are banned in the parliamentary chamber.

Turkish secularists, who include a majority of members of the military as well as parts of the judiciary and the bureaucracy, are concerned that an Islamist agenda is gaining strength in the country and see the headscarf as a symbol of political Islam that must be kept out of state institutions.

The recent end of the headscarf ban for students in universities only became possible after a change in the make-up of the higher education board, which used to be a secularist stronghold but is now dominated by academics considered close to Mr Erdogan.

That change was accepted by Turkey’s main opposition group, the secularist Republican People’s Party, or CHP. Its new leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, argues that the party can reach its goal of unseating Mr Erdogan next June only if it softens its formerly strict opposition to the headscarf, worn by two out of three women.

But consenting to a lifting of the headscarf ban in parliament is out of the question for the CHP and Mr Kilicdaroglu. He has called on Mr Erdogan to give his word that the government was not trying to lift the existing headscarf ban for civil servants of parliamentary deputies. Mr Erdogan has refused to do that.

“In politics, everything is possible,” he said in reply to questions by reporters last month whether Turkey would see parliamentary deputies with headscarves in the future.

Further fuelling speculation, some AKP politicians have openly demanded an end to the ban. “Sixty to 70 per cent of women in Turkey wear the headscarf, but they only have active voting rights, no passive voting rights,” Fatma Bostan Unsal, a founding member of the AKP, said in October. “There must be headscarf-wearing candidates for the elections in 2011.”

The last attempt by a deputy to enter parliament with a headscarf ended in uproar. In 1999, Merve Kavakci, a member of an Islamist party that was later banned by the constitutional court, entered the chamber in a blue headscarf to take her oath as an elected deputy.

Protests by secularist members of parliament forced Ms Kavakci to leave the chamber without taking the oath. She was later stripped of her seat and her Turkish citizenship, the official reason being that she had failed to disclose that she also held US citizenship.

tseibert@thenational.ae

via Daughter of Turkish premier fuels debate on headscarf.

BROOKFIELD — A news clip showed women in a Turkish fashion show sashaying down the catwalk in long-sleeved, ankle-length, figure-flaunting outfits with colorful, matching hijabs wrapped tightly around their heads.

People watching the clip at the Brookfield Library saw a contradiction: The hijab is supposed to be an Islamic symbol of piety and modesty, but these stylish hijabs seemed anything but.

Their reactions are similar to the secular Turks’ explained Wendy Youngblood, who traveled to Turkey on a Fulbright-Hayes scholarship in 2009; Monday she spoke about the political identity of the headscarf in modern Turkey at the Brookfield Library. Her talk was sponsored by the Brookfield League of Women Voters.

Turkey is 99 percent Muslim, and 45 percent of women said they wear a headscarf in public, according to a 2007 Gallup poll.

But by its constitution, Turkey is a secular country and the military is charged with ousting political leaders if they don’t uphold the divide between religion and government.

“If the generals feel the political parties are getting too Islamic for their britches, they clear them out,” Youngblood said. (Such a coup has happened four times in the last 50 years.)

A national rule states women are not allowed to wear their headscarves in public universities. If they do wear them, they are not allowed to take the final exams. Female judges are not allowed to wear headscarves either. Burkas are illegal, and the only women sporting them are the tourists from countries such as Saudi Arabia, Youngblood said.

A political divide exists between the secularists, those who uphold Turkey’s embrace of Western principles, and those who believe that secularism by definition should allow people to freely practice their religion.

Secularists charge that the women wearing the stylish hijabs, nicknamed “Easter eggs”, are actually making a political statement rather than honoring their religious beliefs.

The current political party in power is the conservative AKP, or Justice and Development Party. Its leaders have been taken to court on accusations that they are trying to impose Islamic religious law in Turkey. The fact that the wives of Turkey’s prime minister and president both wear stylish hijabs fans the flames of the debate, Youngblood said.

“It’s a huge deal,” Youngblood said. “You think Hillary (Clinton) got a hard time over her pantsuits. That was nothing.”

Youngblood showed a photo she snapped of some village women wearing basortusus, or plain, simple hijabs, on a ferry.

Basortusus were common 50 years ago in Turkey and were socially accepted, said Albert Uziel, a Turkish native who now lives in Brookfield.

Then Youngblood showed a photo of a made up, beautiful woman sporting a turban, or Easter egg hijab.

“That woman supports the AKP,” Uziel said.

“I don’t see that woman symbolizing a return to Islam,” one woman in the audience said.

“That is the symbol of Islamic extremism,” Uziel said. Uziel moved to the United States in 1987 to pursue higher education and ended up settling here.

After the presentation, Uziel said he believed the president of Turkey, Abdullah Gul, wouldn’t stop short of reinstating Sharia law in Turkey if it weren’t for the military keeping him in check.

“He is trying to bring back Islam in the disguise of democracy,” Uziel said.

Contact Vinti Singh at vsingh@newstimes.com or 203-731-3331.

via Women’s headscarves the subject of political debate in Turkey – NewsTimes.

In Turkey, women being allowed to wear headscarves at universities; follows complaint by Istanbul University student, who was sent out of class.

The head of Turkey’s Higher Education-Board confirmed this week that he ordered Istanbul University, one of the nation’s biggest, to stop its professors from kicking students out of classes for wearing head coverings.

The directive followed a complaint by an Istanbul University student, who was sent out of class last November for wearing a hat. Many students disguise headscarves by placing an over-sized baseball cap on top of their scarves.

The headscarf debate has dominated political talk in Turkey for most of the year and almost brought the ruling party to the brink of being banned by the country’s highest court for infringing on human rights. Now it seems that the two major parties have reached a consensus.

“This is liberalization in one sense and in another sense it is acceptance of the headscarf in the public domain in Turkey,” said Dr. Nilufer Narli, a professor of Political Sociology at Bahçeşehir University and author of numerous books including the forthcoming Feminism, Islamism and Women’s Political Participation: A Comparative Perspective.

“This is a healthy process for Turkey. This issue was really creating conflict and dividing the society,” Dr. Narli said. “It will bring more unity to Turkey.”

In a sign of how power is shifting in Turkey, the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, the main party of secularist opposition, has said in recent weeks that it, too, would support ending the ban in universities.

“This is a political process. The competing parties have been trying to reach a consensus, one political group insisted it is only political symbol and it shouldn’t be permitted in public and another party claimed it is sign of faith and should be allowed in the public sector. Today these two parties are reached a consensus that the headscarf should be accepted and permitted at universities,” Dr. Narli added.

The directive released today was aimed specifically at Istanbul University, however, it is expected that more universities will follow suit.

“We are against anybody being sent out of the classroom for any way of dressing,” said Education Board President Yusuf Ozcan, in comments to Turkey’s NTV television channel.” We notified this [to Istanbul University]. If it is needed, we will notify other universities as well.”

Secularists, including many academics, support the ban out of fear that any dilution of Turkey’s secular laws will open the floodgates to the country’s Islamization.

“This is a huge step backwards, a step to radicalize the state and a step towards Islamization,” Anders Gravers founder of Stop Islamization Of Europe (SIOE) told The Media Line. “This will be one of many steps that will transform Turkey into an Islamic state.”

“The veil means you are a good Muslim, that you are cleaner than everyone else and that those who do not wear it are unclean. The founder of Turkey liberated the women and now he [Abdullah Gül] is allowing them to be condemned,” Gravers said.

“The Arab-Turks want to make this a law because they want to use the veil as a step towards Islamization. To show that they [Muslims] are dominating,” Gravers added.

Parliament passed legislation to lift the ban in 2008. The law was struck down by Turkey’s top court on grounds that it conflicted with the constitution’s secular guarantees. The court then came within a single vote of banning the AKP Party (Justice and Development Party) as a threat to Turkey’s secular foundations.

That, however, is unlikely to be repeated. In a referendum last month, the government succeeded in driving through amendments to the constitution that will radically change the make-up of the Constitutional Court, likely ending its dominance by secularists. Turkey’s Higher Education Board, too, was once a bastion of secularism. It is now dominated by government appointees.