Posted on 09/19/2007 10:11:58 AM PDT by Republicain
ANKARA (AFP) - Turkey's prime minister and president have urged the abolition of a ban on the Islamic headscarf in universities amid a simmering controversy on whether a planned new constitution should lift the restrictions.
Both leaders, former Islamists whose wives and daughters wear the headscarf, argued that the ban violated individual freedoms and the right to education of women who cover up.
"The right to higher education cannot be restricted because of what a girl wears," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an interview with the Financial Times published Wednesday.
"There is no such problem in western societies but there is a problem in Turkey and I believe it is the first duty of those in politics to solve this problem," he said.
Secularist forces, which include the army, senior judges and the academic elite, see the headscarf as a symbol of defiance of Turkey's fiercely-guarded secular system.
Many fear that easing the restrictions will erode the country's secular fabric and raise the profile of religion in public life.
Turkey's top academics on Wednesday strongly objected to any moves to allow the much-disputed headwear on to campuses as unlawful.
"The headscarf ban is a legal situation based on rulings passed by Turkish courts as well as the European Court of Human Rights," Erdogan Tezic, the head of the Higher Education Board, said here after an extraordinary meeting of the rectors' committee.
"It is not possible to make changes in the constitution that would allow freedom of dress," he added.
In 2005, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the headscarf ban in Turkish universities was not a violation of fundamental freedoms and could be necessary to protect Turkey's secular order against extremist movements.
Public servants are also barred from wearing the headscarf in Turkey.
Erdogan's Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) has started drafting a new constitution, boosted by its landslide election victory in July that gave it a second five-year mandate.
The current constitution is a legacy of the 1980 military coup. It has been amended several times but its many critics say a fundamental overhaul is needed to stamp out its authoritarian spirit and make it fully democratic.
But there are widespread concerns that the new code will be the fruit of the AKP rather than one of national consensus.
"The fact that the constitutional amendments are being drawn up by one political party casts a shadow on democracy," Tezic said. "The way the draft is being prepared has led to social unease and insecurity."
According to media reports, AKP leaders, wary of a secularist backlash, are hestitating on whether to press ahead with lifting the headscarf ban in the new constitution and have left the decision to Erdogan.
President Abdullah Gul, who belonged to the AKP until he became head of state in a crisis-ridden election last month, also backed the abolition of the ban.
"It is much better for (women who cover up) to go to university than to stay home and be isolated from social life," Gul told the Milliyet newspaper.
"We have to see the issue from the point of individual freedoms and as a result of modernity," he said.
Gul played down concerns that lifting the ban might result in women who do not wear the headscarf coming under social pressure from conservatives to cover up.
"We are people who have lived side by side in peace... There can be both girls who cover up and who do not in the same family. This is our social structure and we have lived like that for years," he said.
Erdogan pledged that a comprehensive debate would be held on the new constitution draft before it is brought to parliament for a vote.
"We want a constitution that is going to provide and protect a state that is a democratic, secular, social state of law," he told the Financial Times.
Well let me see. Lift the ban or allow women to act like human beings? Yep, lift the ban...
The Middle-East is stuck on 600 a.d. Think how little your pee pee must be, if you’re afraid for your wife to go out in public with her face showing.
Kinda makes you wonder what these pussies would do with 72 virgins anway.
There is no limit to the number of compromises the mudslimes will try for to advance their cancerous agenda. The Turkish military needs to smash them down with an iron fist.
How do you think the 72 virgins remain virgins??
The guys have tiny little winkies!!
Why of course, it’s obvious. I should have thought of that. :->
I don’t see how banning leads to freedom.
No, she doesn’t need a ban against veils...if she doesn’t want to wear a veil, she doesn’t!
You’re fogetting something Ari. She doesn’t have a say in this matter. In Turkey who rules the roost? And if Islam says veil, women wear veils. Go home and tell your wife she has to wear a veil. I encourage you. Do so and find freedom...
I think the ban on veils was the true provision of freedom for women.
Where women have been given the freedom to chose in the Middle-East, they have adopted western dress.
If we were talking about a society where women could decide what they wanted to wear, I would of course agree with you. Unfortunately we are not.
Women who don’t do what they are told, reap the whirlwind. And so I think the government’s move was the only solution.
Well, here's another little gem of a quote from Erdogan: "Democracy is like a bus (or streetcar); you ride it to where you want to go, then you get off."
What we're seeing here is a classic demonstration of "Al Taqqiyah" - deliberate deception to gain a tactical advantage. He will tout "democracy" just until he can fool enough Turks into voting for sharia and making Turkey another Islamic Republic. Then, bye bye democracy.
I think I see what you are trying to say but you are trying to change this religion and culture through government force and that is not going to work. They know they are muslims and eventually that will break out against the government.
that response will work better than basically saying “you’re stupid. Don’t do this or else.”
Now I’m Jewish and Jewish married women are required to cover their hair. Usually with a wig, scarf or hat. In fact, there was a time, not too long ago when all women wore a hat in public. I wouldn’t want a law banning scarfs )or long skirts and sleeves) on the premise that Jews are somehow oppressively puritanical.
I don’t think you quite get the drift of what he’s saying.
Islam’s only use for democracy and freedom is to use them as non violent tools to gain power & influence, prior to total domination. Islam is not just a religion. It is a dictated way of life. The wearing of head scarfs in Arab countries is mandatory except for visiting Female dignitaries. Right now Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan uses the Term “Freedom” to wear the Scarf. Will he call it “Freedom” later on when All Turkish women are forced to wear them? Of course not.
This is why since 1960 the Turkish Military has had to step in and replace entire political administrations about once every 10 years. They are bound by Turkish law to insure a secular Turkish government. After all A secular government is nothing more then separation of Church and state. Turkish Troops will mow down their fellow Islamic citizens in a heart beat. The Islamics know that. The break out of which you speak would be short lived at best, and the changing of religions and cultures by government force or any kind of force has been an on going thing for thousands of years in the middle east.
How do you think the so called Prophet Mohammad and Islam came to be? Islam is deception, read the Qur’an.
Is that a practice for all Jewish women Ari, or is it the practice of a certian sub-section of Jewish women? I’ve known Jewish women who didn’t cover their head.
Look Ari, you’re not beating up, raping or killing Jewish women you meet on the street who aren’t covering their heads. That’s why I wouldn’t suggest limiting your preferences at all.
Islam is not just a religion. It is a dictated way of life.
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so the response would then be to dictate right back at them. You’d have to get rid of the premise that muslims can live under a democracy, secular or islamic.
Headscarf is a political statement in that country.
“You’d have to get rid of the premise that muslims can live under a democracy, secular or islamic.”
Absolutely!
it has yet to be proven. There is a reason why all predominately Muslim countries are ruled and governed with such brutal force by their Governments.
While world Politicians like to call Turkey a Democracy, They never have been. The many reasons for them not being a democracy are the same reasons keeping them out of the E.U. Turkey is the closest thing to a democratic state in the middle east and they fail miserably at it. Unless religion is removed from Middle East governments there will always be fighting. We in the west know the importance of separation of church from state. This is one of the reasons (to our credit) that never in history, have two democratic nations ever fought a war. Islamic State imposed religion seems to promote fanaticism. We are of course only covering the basics here. Education plays an important factor as well.
The recently announced Hydrogen on demand break through will hopefully allow the whole world to turn their backs on the middle east and leave them broke and to their own self demise. I for one am tired of paying for the rope that they want to hang me with.
Just my opinions for what they’re worth.
this would be true for Iraq as well
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