The Headscarf Ban in Turkey and the EU

Published: 04-05-2005

Headscarved Turkish women feel angry, marginalized

By Selcuk Gokoluk
REUTERS
5:00 a.m. May 4, 2005

ANKARA – Muruvvet Aktas, fired from her teaching job for wearing the Muslim headscarf, has not entered a school for years because it makes her feel very uncomfortable.

"Even just walking near a school now and hearing the voices of kids in the playground gives me pain. You ask yourself, 'Why has this happened to me and not somebody else? Am I such a bad person?'," she said.

Her friend Turkan Bakacak also has painful memories of her time as a teacher of mathematics.

"An inspector comes and asks you to remove your headscarf. This is disgusting, it is like being told to get undressed. Your status and respectability in the eyes of the students are destroyed," Bakacak said.

Aktas and Bakacak fell foul of a strict ban on headscarves in schools and other public buildings in Turkey, a secular but overwhelmingly Muslim country where a majority of women, from the prime minister's wife down, wear the garment.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has Islamist roots, has tried to ease the ban but has run into stiff opposition from Turkey's staunchly secular military and bureaucratic establishment.

Critics say Turkey's ban exceeds restrictions seen in other countries and say it violates individual freedom of expression in a country set to start European Union entry talks this year.

"Turkey does not only ban the wearing of headscarves by civil servants or pupils in state-run schools as in France, but also in private colleges, driving license courses, court rooms and even some hospitals," Ayhan Bilgen, head of the Mazlumder rights group, told Reuters.


QUESTION OF DEMOCRACY

"This is not an issue of minority rights as in Western countries where the majority is not Muslim, but a question of the legitimacy of Turkey's democratic system," said Bilgen.

Political parties, elections and parliament risk losing their legitimacy because parties which take power promising to lift the headscarf ban are not allowed to do so by powers outside parliament, he said.

"It is shameful for Turkey that the headscarved wife of its prime minister is accepted in the White House but not in Turkey's own presidential palace," said Bilgen.

Turkish media last year showed Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's headscarved wife Emine having tea with Laura Bush in the White House but noted she could never do the same thing at the palace of Turkey's secularist President Ahmet Necdet Sezer.

Defenders of Turkey's headscarf ban say it is a legitimate way to counter Islamic fundamentalism, which they say wants to impose its religious symbols on society and to establish a state based on religious precepts.

They also point to a key ruling by the European Court of Human Rights last year which upheld the ban and rejected an appeal from a Turkish student barred from attending Istanbul University because her headscarf broke the official dress code.

Women like Aktas and Bakacak insist they pose no threat to Turkey's secular order and have no wish to see their country go the way of Islamic states such as Iran or Saudi Arabia.

"Their understanding of Islam is different from ours. We belong to different religious traditions. Also Turkey is looking to the West," said Aktas.

Aktas and Bakacak belong to a women's support group in the Turkish capital Ankara. Many of its members once worked in state-run religious vocational schools set up to train future Muslim clerics.


SUFFERING

They said their dress had once been tolerated but after the military pressured Turkey's last Islamist-led government to quit in 1997 even in the religious schools the atmosphere became more repressive.

They said the prospect of Turkey starting EU entry talks gave them little hope of any improvement, noting an increased anti-Muslim sentiment in post-9/11 Europe and the new ban on Muslim headscarves in French high schools.

Despite the passing of time, the women say they still suffer psychologically from their dismissal from jobs they loved.

One said she had become very introverted after losing her job though she had previously been very outgoing. Another said she had become a more aggressive person.

Hatice Guler, a former theology teacher, said the experience had sensitized her to the sufferings of Turkey's minorities.

"As a citizen of this country, did I ever react to the oppression of Kurds, of leftists or protesters dragged onto the streets by the police, or back the rights of homosexuals of whom we disapprove?," Guler asked.

"Before us, there were Kurds and leftists and now it is us. It will be others next," said Aktas.



Source: San Diego Union Tribune