Turkey’s parliament passed a bill several months ago allowing
girls to wear the Moslem headscarf at the state universities. That
single act now may precipitate a complete change in the country’s
political environment.
Turkey’s constitutional court in a clear 9-2 vote on June 5
struck down the earlier parliamentary action. The majority opinion
held that the headscarf measure was a threat to its
constitutionally enshrined secular state. The result of this
historic finding has been to put into jeopardy the existence of the
entire ruling party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
A petition has been submitted by Turkey’s top prosecutor to
remove the Justice and Development Party (AKP) from the legal
political representative rolls. In effect this action would place a
ban on the party that has been in power since 2002 and a
prohibition of Erdogan and his leadership team from further
political life for at least five years, and perhaps
permanently.
The basis of the prosecutor’s charge (which AKP’s stalwarts call
an attempt at a “judicial coup d’etat”) is that the party’s
objective is to “Islamize” the nation and overthrow the secular
constitution. Two openly Islamic parties during the 1990s were
closed down on similar charges.
AS STRONG a popular following as the AKP may have, it is no match
for the determined “protector of the secular state,” the Turkish
military aided by the judiciary and a major portion of the media.
The ideology of the man who created modern Turkey in the 1920s,
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, wanted secularism to control all aspects of
Turkish life. In practice this has meant that religion is
subordinate to state control.
It seems a small thing that female university students have been
given the right to wear Islamic headscarves. Not to the court. The
Turkish court is very resistant to such devices that they see as
the thin edge of the wedge of introduction of Sharia law.
That the scarf issue was immediately followed by action to shut
down Erdogan’s internationally respected political party is
consistent with past experience. So why was the headscarf matter
pushed through by the AKP in the first place?
The term used to describe traditional female Arab attire is
hijab. In Arabic the word means “screen.” It includes a
scarf covering the head and also the neck and upper chest. A full
hijab would be a long dress to the ankles with only the
hands showing from the sleeves. The concept of this mode of dress
is to have a “screen” between public and private life. The
headscarf alone is a symbol of the larger Islamic cultural
guide.
The seemingly innocuous introduction of the hijabi headscarf
into an otherwise secular couture can appear therefore to be the
first step in introducing religious instruments into ordinary
public life. This is not only against Kemalist principles; it is an
affront to the entire secular ideology of Mustapha Kemal. At least
this is the way the secularists see it.
WHO ARE these “secularists”? They are urban professionals, state
employees, business people, the media and, most importantly, the
armed forces who were charged by Kemal Ataturk with the ultimate
responsibility of defending of the state. These groups are termed
by European commentators as “the republican elite” fearful of the
reemergence of the caliphate that existed before Mustapha Kemal’s
assumption of power.
Outside of the major cities, in the towns, villages and farms of
the rest of Turkey, there is a deep belief in the practice of
Islam. To Turkey’s secularists these communities breed willful
ignorance. The image exists among metropolitan sophisticates that
the “unwashed” of the countryside want to impose religious rules on
everyday aspects of life. In other words the specter of a revival
of Sharia law haunts urban Turkey.
The AKP in its application to join the European Union has been
characterized as a modern Turkish political party with solid
Islamic credentials which nonetheless did not keep them from
envisioning a modern, principally secular, Turkey. The issue of the
student headscarves was something that Europe’s leaders tended to
overlook, but Turkey’s protectors of secular life have not.
Will Turkey be thought of less by a West eager to pretend to
equality with certain Islamic traditions while fearful of Islamic
radicalism? Which is more democratic? Restricting religious
costuming in the name of secular-demanded separation of state and
religion, or allowing limited emblems of religious cultural belief
to exist as a symbol of democratic process? And will Turkey’s
military care?
