ANKARA — Turkey’s president and prime minister pledged yesterday to uphold secularism as they sought to ease tensions over a plan to lift a ban on women students wearing the Muslim head scarf at university.
Turkey’s secular establishment, which includes army generals, judges and university rectors, fear lifting the ban would undermine the separation of state and religion, one of the founding principles of the modern Turkish republic.
“What we are trying to do is completely (about) the right to education at university,” Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told his ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) in a speech broadcast live.
Two-thirds of Turkish women wear head scarves and many of them stopped going to university after a ban on wearing them in public institutions was extended to universities in 1989.
Those opposed to lifting the ban see the head scarf as a symbol of their worst fears that Turkey could eventually slide into Islamic Shariah law as practiced in neighboring Iran. “We are closely following the worries and criticisms expressed in public,” Erdogan said, in an apparent softening of tone toward his opponents.
In a separate statement Gul, a popular former Islamist, also vowed to uphold the secular order. Turkey is 99 percent Muslim, although many are not practicing. More than 120,000 secular Turks in the capital Ankara and other cities rallied on Saturday against the head scarf reform.
An opinion poll published this week by Ankara-based Metropoll Research showed that 65 percent of Turks backed removing the ban on head scarves at universities. Parliament is expected to approve the constitutional amendment this week sponsored by the center-right AK Party and the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).
Turkish lawmakers vote today on a constitutional reform to end a ban on Islamic head scarves in universities, an issue that has divided the Muslim country. But while the measures have angered secularists on the one side, they have failed to satisfy devout women who don the head scarf on the other.
