Head scarves create divisions in Turkey

International Herald Tribune ^

[Siberian-psycho]

ISTANBUL: Secular women at parties speak disdainfully of covered women and the neighborhoods they populate. Older people shake their heads and cluck their tongues at them. High school boys yell, "Go back to Iran."

Adamantly secular Turks "hate religious people," said Atilla Yayla, a Turkish political philosophy professor teaching in England. "They don't encounter them as human beings. They want them to evaporate, to disappear as fast as possible."

"In the past, when a person with a scarf walked by me, I didn't feel anything toward them," said a 24-year-old lawyer in a Starbucks in a fashionable Istanbul neighborhood the day after the repeal. "Now I just want to hit them."

Women are "clearly inferior" in Islam, whose rules limit inheritance for women and allow men multiple wives, she argued, pointing out that Turkey's president, Abdullah Gul, at the age of 30, met his wife, Hayrunnisa, when she was just 14.

[Siberian-psycho]

We don't have this kind of support against head scarves.

[PGalt]

Thanks for posting. Welcome aboard!

[Cicero]

Typical NYT/IHT spin. The appearance of headscarves all over Turkey and the new law allowing headscarves in schools by an Islamist parliament is a sign of “integration” and upward mobility.

Everything is hunky dory and nicely multicultural.

You bet.

[Siberian-psycho]

Thanks,
I’m sick of being overrun with muslims

[blam]

Welcome aboard.

Are you being over-run in Siberia?

[SoCal Pubbie]

Serb, I have a question for you. I have run into a few Bosnians who are now living here in my little part of Southern California. One in particular is a very nice woman who works as a clerk at my local grocery store. Her name is Jasminka. I’d be surprised if she’s Muslim, as she seems to fit right into our consumer culture here in America. Could she be a Bosnian Serb?

[Siberian-psycho]

She could be. Most are cordial, especially if they are grossly outnumbered or think they can make a buck of you. Is it her store?

[WilliamofCarmichael]

An earlier story defined the headcovering hubbub thus, [AKP] officials have promised to interpret the measure as allowing only head scarves that are tied under the chin, a style seen as traditionally Turkish rather than Islamic. The party says it will not allow women to wear more rigidly Islamic attire -- veils that cover all of the hair and neck or the face, or cloaks that cover the body -- in public offices.

There's a photo of Miss Turkey and 2002's Miss World at Reply #16.

[SoCal Pubbie]

Do you mean she could be Serbian, or Muslim? I hoped the name might be indicative of one ethnicity or another.

No, she doesn't own it. It's a big chain store with Union employees.

[Siberian-psycho]

I meant she could be muslim. As for Serb, I don’t know. Does she wear the scarf or no?

[SoCal Pubbie]

No scarf, wears her hair down. She wears jeans to work, and makeup, speaks excellent though accented English. Doesn’t fuss when handling pork, nothing to indicate anything but a Western (basically) background.

She drives a car with big BOSNIA lettering in the back window (and a small US flag inside), and Fleur de lei along side it. If I hadn't asked her, and seen her in the parking lot later, I would have thought she might be Polish or Ukrainian or something

[Blue State Insurgent]

Yugoslavia was communist and secular. Nobody there cared about religion until Serbian Fascists made it an issue.

God, I hate Clinton for blockading arms for Bosnians.