http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=72849
International The News Thursday, September 20, 2007, Ramzan 7, 1428 A.H. * Erdogan seeks to abolish headscarf ban* Thursday, September 20, 2007 ANKARA: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged on Wednesday the dropping of a ban on the Islamic headscarf in universities, fuelling a row on whether a planned new constitution should lift the restrictions. “The right to higher education cannot be restricted because of what a girl wears,” Erdogan said in an interview with the Financial Times. “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. Speaking to reporters here, Erdogan, a former Islamist whose wife and daughters cover up, said the headscraf was part of individual freedoms, sending a strong signal that the government would push for removing the ban. 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 increase pressure on women to cover up. Members of the academic community and the judiciary raised strong objections to any amendment that would drop the ban in a new constitution that Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) is drafting. Lifting the ban will be unlawful, they argued, pointing at rulings of Turkish courts and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that have kept the headscarf out of campuses. “It is not possible to make changes in the constitution that would allow freedom of dress” in universities, Erdogan Tezic, head of the rectors’ committee, said after the body held an extraordinary meeting. The appeals court’s chief prosecutor, Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, warned that overriding existing rulings would “fuel enmity among the people, shake the credibility of the law and lead to polarisation.” 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. The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) charged that the AKP was taking the need for reform as an opportunity to shape the law according to its own ideological convictions. The new constitution “would be the AKP’s and not Turkey’s constitution,” CHP deputy chairman Mustafa Ozyurek said. Hardline secularists mistrust the AKP because of its roots in a now-banned Islamist movement, even though the party has pledged commitment to secularism. Erdogan rejected the accusations and pledged a comprehensive public debate on the draft before it is voted in parliament, adding that the code would be put on a referendum for popular approval. “We are drafting the new constitution with a liberal spirit... Turkey should no longer waste time with baseless fears. We should understand and trust each other,” he said. 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.
