ISTANBUL, 26 February 2008 — Some Turkish academics dispute whether a recent change in the constitution allows women to wear Islamic head scarves in universities, signaling that the battle over the religious attire has yet to run its course. Most universities defied an instruction yesterday from the higher education and denied entry to students wearing the Islamic head scarf, though the prominent Bosporus University in Istanbul allowed them, local media reported.
Television footage from Cihan news agency showed guards at the Kocaeli University, near Istanbul, stopping half a dozen women students in head scarves from entering the campus. Government attempts to lift a ban on head scarves in universities have escalated tensions between the secular opposition and the Islamic-rooted ruling party since its victory in general elections last summer.
Earlier this month, Parliament passed two constitutional amendments that the ruling party considers sufficient to abolish the ban. The amendments make it harder to bar anyone from the right to higher education unless they are in clear violation of laws, which the government thinks do not openly forbid Islamic head scarves in universities.
President Abdullah Gul, a pious Muslim, approved the change Friday. The main opposition party said they would appeal the ruling to the nation’s top court, whose past verdicts helped enforce the ban. The government says the measure is aimed at expanding democracy and freedoms as part of Turkey’s EU membership bid.
Higher education chief Yusuf Ziya Ozcan said Sunday that the constitutional change made the ban on Islamic head scarves void and asked university presidents to act accordingly. “Measures can be taken to stop only those people who could not be identified from entering campuses,” Ozcan said in a written statement.
Meanwhile, Turkish fighter jets pounded Kurdish rebel positions for the fifth day running yesterday in the mountainous Hakurk region of northern Iraq, security sources here told AFP. Members of the Kurdish security force in the autonomous north of Iraq said the raids, which began around 10.00 p.m. (2000 GMT) Sunday, continued overnight in and around Hakurk, a prominent PKK stronghold some 20 kilometers from the Turkish frontier. Billows of smoke could be seen miles away, they said.
The Firat news agency, considered a PKK mouthpiece, said on its Internet site that warplanes began taking off from the military air base in Diyarbakir, the main city in Turkey’s southeast, late Sunday. The raids came after fighting intensified between Turkish troops and PKK rebels around Hakurk.
