Headscarf war threatens to split Turkey


Christina Lamb, Istanbul
SHE has a gentle face and caring manner. She has completed nine years of medical school and training, including a year as a clinician at a hospital in the Welsh city of Bangor. But at 29, Dr Ayse Maden cannot work in her home country of Turkey as the paediatrician she has trained to be because she wears a headscarf.

“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” she says, pointing at the offending item, which is white with green and black spots on the day we meet. Headscarves are banned inside public offices in Turkey, including schools and hospitals, and Maden has to scrape a living doing occasional medical translation. Yet outside on a busy Istanbul street, almost every woman passing is wearing a headscarf.

It is this simple square of cloth that has provoked a political crisis, exposing a growing rift between Islamists and secularists over Turkey’s direction, and threatening a military coup.

Almost two-thirds of Turkish women wear a headscarf – 62%, according to the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation – but the prime minister’s nomination of a president whose wife wears a headscarf has produced outrage. More than a million flag-waving protesters came out on to the streets of Istanbul last Sunday.

It also prompted the country’s powerful military to post a warning on the army’s website that it may intervene to protect the secular state laid down by its founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

“The headscarf is a political symbol,” explains Professor Nilufer Narli, head of sociology at Bahcesehir University, who was among the protesters. “People think if the first lady wears a headscarf then many things will change, threatening our whole secular system and forcing all women to wear headscarves.”

Ayse Maden was two years into her degree at the Bosphorus University in Istanbul when the headscarf ban was imposed in 1998. “I had worn it since I was 16 because it is part of my Muslim faith to cover my head,” she said. “It was my dream to be a paediatrician but I couldn’t just stop something that is an important part of my religion.”

For two years she and her headscarf-wearing friends, such as Havva Kaplan, continued trying to get into the university every morning but most days were forced back by the police or the professors. Her parents and professors suggested she stop wearing the scarf or, like many women, wear a wig on top of it. “I cried a lot thinking about it,” she said. In the end she learnt English and went to Hungary to study before going to Wales to work.

Maden and Kaplan are activists for the Women’s Rights Organisation Against Discrimination, set up in 1999 to fight for an end to the ban. They have issued lawsuits against universities, and lobbied MPs and nongovernmental organisations, but Kaplan admits: “We’ve got nowhere.”

Their hopes were dashed when the headscarf ban was upheld by the European Court of Human Rights in 2005 and now they mostly raise money to send headscarf-wearing girls to study overseas.

“It should be our right to wear what we like,” said Kaplan, sitting in an office decorated with paintings of women in headscarves crying behind wire or being silenced by the hands of police. “This ban is excluding women from higher education and denying them jobs.”

Among their friends is a woman with a top degree in international relations who is now taking a cookery course because her headscarf bars her from working as a diplomat. Another is a lawyer who has to pass cases to her brother when they reach court because she cannot appear. And although the ban applies only to state institutions, it deters many firms from employing women in headscarves.

“I don’t understand why people are so scared of the headscarf,” said Kaplan. “We don’t see why Turkey can’t be both modern and Islamic.”

Despite the stark contrast in Istanbul between places such as the glitzy Kanyon centre, where the wealthy shop at Harvey Nichols, and the poor suburb of Fatih where the mosque is the focus of attention, it is common to see scantily clad women arm in arm with those in headscarves and long coats.

But many Turks believe it is a choice, pointing out that the issue takes on much more significance, given Turkey’s geographical position straddling East and West and with neighbours such as Iran and Iraq.

“This is not just a political crisis, it’s a war about a style of life,” says Narli, the sociology professor, tossing back her long, highlighted hair with red manicured nails to match her red high heels. “All my friends are tense and angry and worried about the future for their daughters.”

She points out that the past 30 years has seen an enormous influx of rural people into the cities bringing with them village traditions such as wearing headscarves. At the same time headscarves have been changing. While mothers tended to wear simple scarves tied under the chin, their daughters are using what are known in Turkey as turbans – scarves pinned to cover the neck completely.

“For years the middle classes have been silent but we see our society changing, more and more people wearing turbans and going to Mecca,” said Narli. “It’s like slicing a sausage piece by piece until people decide that’s enough. That’s why many came to the streets to protest for the first time in their lives.”

The battle over the headscarf is not just about religious beliefs. It also represents a clash between a fiercely secular elite, the so-called “white Turks”, and a new urban entrepreneurial class, many of whom came from the countryside. These generally support the Islamic-rooted Justice and Development (AK) party that swept to power in 2002 after an economic collapse.

The issue came to a head 10 days ago when Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, nominated his foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, to replace President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who steps down on May 16. A Gul presidency would mean the country’s parliament, government and presidency would all be controlled by an Islamic party for the first time.

A parliamentary vote in Gul’s favour on April 27 led to the generals’ ultimatum late that night. Describing themselves as “the absolute defenders of secularism”, they added: “When necessary we will demonstrate our attitudes . . . Let no one doubt this.”

Few did: Turkey’s army is Nato’s second biggest with more than 1m soldiers and has ousted four governments in the past 50 years, the latest just 10 years ago.

Last Sunday saw the secularists’ second mass protest in a fortnight, chanting, “No to Shariat [Islamic laws]!” and “We will reconquer Istanbul!” On Monday the Turkish lira tumbled and stocks fell 4%.

There was little surprise on Tuesday night when the constitutional court declared the vote for Gul invalid, invoking a little-known law requiring a quorum of 367 MPs. Parliament brought forward elections to July 22.

An angry Erdogan described the court’s decision as “a bullet fired at democracy” and vowed to press on with Gul’s candidacy. Another vote is scheduled for today but the necessary quorum is not expected to be achieved.

Tens of thousands of people protested against the government in two western cities yesterday, calling for the secular system to be preserved.

Gul is regarded as charming, speaks several languages and, as foreign minister, has overseen negotiations for accession to the EU. “I have been Turkey’s foreign minister for 4½ years,” he said last week. “There are not many people in Turkey who can be trusted if I can’t be.”

But Turkey’s president holds important powers, such as chairing the national security council and appointing judges, university rectors and top civil servants as well as a veto over legislation.

Many secular Turks suspect AK harbours a hidden Islamic agenda that it would implement once it had control. They point out that Erdogan was imprisoned in 1999 for inciting religious hatred after he recited an incendiary Islamic verse and was photographed sitting at the feet of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a fundamentalist Afghan warlord.

This view is widely held at the Ataturk Thought Association (ADD), which aims to protect the legacy of the revered founding father of the 84-year-old republic. The ADD was one of the groups behind last Sunday’s rally and its office above the Bakirkoy market is bustling with people preparing flyers for others all over the country.

The ADD’s president claims that membership has risen from 350,000 to 1m because people are so fearful that secularism is under threat. One of the new members is a pretty 18-year-old called Ekiem who hopes to study industrial engineering.

“AK wants to turn Turkey into Iran and force us to wear chadors,” she says. “To me there’s a war going on for Turkey now and my generation must fight for the republic as the young generation did during Ataturk’s time.”

Yet nobody at the ADD is able to name a single law promoted by the AK party that challenges the country’s secularism. Some AK-controlled municipalities have created alcohol-free zones and Erdogan did try to criminalise adultery in 2004 as part of a reform of the penal code but withdrew it under EU pressure. Yet the party has disappointed many of its own supporters by not lifting the headscarf ban.

Under AK rule, Turkey has seen lower inflation and higher foreign investment, and has been accepted as a candidate for EU membership.

The events of the past 10 days, including the army’s statement, may have strengthened the AK’s position in the forthcoming elections, though yesterday two centre-right parties announced that they were uniting to take it on.

Not everyone is unhappy. At the Tekbir headscarf shop in Fatih, where scarves are on sale for anything from £2 for cotton to £50 for silk, sales have been booming so much that it now has three branches.

“Maybe Turkey is now two Turkeys,” said Cemil, one of the salesmen. “But I know which one is growing faster.”