Universities split on Turkish headscarf row

Universities split on Turkish headscarf row

By Vincent Boland in Ankara

Published: February 1 2008 15:24 | Last updated: February 1 2008 15:24

Turkey’s higher education establishment appeared split on Friday over a government attempt to ease a campus ban on the wearing of the Muslim headscarf ahead of a parliamentary debate next week.

Rectors of some of the country’s leading public and private universities met in Ankara to coordinate opposition to the government’s move to change the constitution to ease the headscarf ban, which was introduced in the early 1980s when Turkey was under military rule.

The rectors said the change “would undermine the principle of secularism and would inevitably turn Turkey into a religious state.” Turkey’s constitution mandates the strict separation of religion and the state and at the same time allows for tight state control of religious practice – a policy known as laicism.

However, a group of nearly 300 academics from universities across Turkey, including many women, issued a counter-statement arguing that the easing of the headscarf ban was a question of civil rights and of allowing young women to decide for themselves what to wear. That principle should apply to all students at all universities, the academics said.

The split in the ranks of the academy illustrates how polarised Turkey has become over the issue of the headscarf, which is considered one of the most significant fault-lines in Turkish society. Older academics who run the universities and are steeped in the prickly and rather narrow principles of the republic appear at odds with a younger generation for whom the headscarf has become a civil rights rather than a religious issue.

The government, which has its roots in political Islam, has won the backing of a nationalist opposition party to change the constitution to ease the headscarf ban. A parliamentary commission began discussing the amendments
yesterday, and MPs are expected to debate and vote on the issue next week.