Despite the lifting of the headscarf ban, Turkey continues to debate the issue:
Leading academics have warned there could be clashes on campuses and a boycott of classes by some female academics. Since the bill approved by the President Abdullah Gul the universities are divided over lifting the ban. Observers say legal uncertainties further complicate the already sensitive and controversial matter, adding the annulment ruling will help to ease tension.
Legal experts are also divided over the issue. Some say the amendment of two articles of the constitution would be enough to lift the ban, but the rest disagrees, saying the ban was put in place not by a law but by a verdict of the Constitutional Court and a top court and they interpreted that the lifting the headscarf ban in universities will harm Turkey's secular system, which is defined in the 2nd article of the Constitution.
A mass rally is planned:
It will be the second large-scale demonstration against easing the ban - imposed after a 1980 military coup - after a February 2 protest that drew more than 125,000 people...
...But the reform has angered secularists - among them the army, the judiciary and academics - who see the headscarf as a symbol of defiance against the strict separation of state and religion in the mainly Muslim country.
In Turkey, more than in the United States, wearing the headscarf is not just a sign of Muslim identity, it's a sign of sympathy with political Islamism, an ideology that's committed to the destruction of the separation of church (or mosque) and state. Most of the population in Turkey is Muslim, but most women, at least in Istanbul, do not wear headscarves.
During a ride down the Bosphorous, on a crowded ferry, a woman wearing a headscarf was looking for a seat. I shifted a little to give her some space, but everyone around me stayed still. She gave up and looked for a seat somewhere else. Another woman, without a headscarf, came by a few minutes later. Everyone moved over to give her room.
In Comment is Free, Agnes Poirier says interviews Goknur, a PhD student of both Montpellier and Istanbul universities, who describes what feels like being a young woman in Turkey today::
On paper, Turkey is a modern country where women enjoy equal rights with men but in reality, traditions are still ruling the way we live and interact: a woman who chooses not to wear the headscarf is still considered by many as a traitor. Men often don't shake your hand, or simply refuse to acknowledge your presence. Since 1923, the Republic has allowed public places where we're free from the weight of religion but outside of these places, women's life is still very much a daily fight." What does she reply when told that a group of Turkish women who wanted to wear the headscarf had to flee to the UK, and the London School of Economics in particular, in order to study freely, as
Madeleine Bunting wrote last week? "The London School of Economics is well-known for its links with Fethullah Gülen, an Islamist Hodja, and those students represent but a marginal group.
[The London school of Economics has more Islamists than Guantanamo]
And since when was wearing a veil a sign of women's freedom? Liberals in Europe should support us, women, who try to make Turkey a modern society, rather than support religious people out of some old-fashioned Oriental romanticism."
Heh - accusing Madeline Bunting, who said:
What Islam is, inadvertently, doing across Europe is exposing the precarious assumptions by which the vast majority of Europeans believed they had dealt with religion - they thought they had got the genie back in the bottle.
..of old-fashioned Oriental romanticism? That's got to hurt.
"During a ride down the Bosphorous, on a crowded ferry, a woman wearing a headscarf was looking for a seat. I shifted a little to give her some space, but everyone around me stayed still. She gave up and looked for a seat somewhere else. Another woman, without a headscarf, came by a few minutes later. Everyone moved over to give her room."
Very interesting.
The Turks have been battling political Islamism and the related terrorism for a very long time. Oddly enough, the Kurds, who are conservative Muslims, also have no tolerance for the people who, in their worldview, represent political Islam. Although they don't get along at all, both the Turks and the Kurds are fairly sympathetic towards Israel.
It's a shame that, when America is putting its foreign policy together, we rely on the British and the Europeans for advice - the only people on the planet who are more clueless about Islamism than we are.