Turkey At Loggerheads With Itself Over Veil Ban

It's the issue that could be the undoing of secularism in Turkey--or the undoing of religiously conservative Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan: should women attending public universities be allowed to wear the Islamic head-scarf, or veil?

The Turkish Constitution says no. The constitutional provision declaring Islam the religion of the state was repealed in 1928, and in 1937 the Turkish constitution adopted secularism and gender equality as explicit state policies. In 1980, the Turkish military, which considers itself the ultimate defender of Turkish secularism, explicitly prohibited the wearing of veils in public universities and schools and government offices. Medical student Leila Sahin challenged the ban in 1998--all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, which in 2005 upheld the ban. (Ironically, the European Commission today urged that whatever Turkey does, its crisis should be "solved by the Turkish people through dialogue, respecting fundamental rights.")

Erdogan disagrees with the Turkish Constitution and the European High Court. In early 2008 he pushed through parliament, with a convincing 410-vote majority out of the chamber's 550 seats, a measure that amended the Constitution to enable women to wear the head scarf in universities. (Erdogan’s wife wears the head scarf in public.) But the measure had to be approved by Turkey’s Constitutional Court.

Last week, the Constitutional Court struck down the measure. That should have been the end of it. But not with Erdogan.

In Turkey, it's turning into a battle reminiscent of the American Congress' occasional attempts to reduce the power of the U.S. Supreme Court (notably in 1956, when Southern lawmakers wanted to repeal the court's desegregation ruling, and again in 1963, when right-wingers tried to get liberal Chief Justice Earl Warren impeached). Erdogan's AKP Party is debating measures to rein in the Constitutional Court, possibly forbidding it to consider constitutional amendments in their essence. The speaker of parliament meanwhile is calling for a restoration of a bi-cameral parliamentary system, with an upper chamber re-seated to, allegedly, relieve pressure on the country's Constitutional Court. It's a veiled though transparent end-run around the court.

Whatever Turkey's politicians do, they must always remain aware of what the military will do. Three times in the secular republic's history (1960, 1971, 1980) the military has intervened when it felt the country's politicians were either losing their grip on the country or betraying the principles set out by Turkey's founder, Kemal Ataturk. Almost supreme among those principles is secularism. Erdogan's popularity may only take him so far in defense of the veil if, at some point, his zeal for reform offends the military's idea of what Turkey should be.

See Also:

• Does the Quran Require Women to Wear the Veil?
• Glossary: Hijab, or Veil
• The Veil and the Law in Europe and North America
• Geraldine Brooks: Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women