Main focus of Monday, February 11, 2008

Turkey eases the ban on headscarves

With a large majority the Turkish parliament has paved the way for an amendment to the constitution. In line with legislation drafted by the governing AKP party, female university students will in future be permitted to wear headscarves. Is this a step towards democracy as demanded by the EU or is there a danger that Turkey is reverting to Islam?

Die Welt - Germany

"No reason to panic," say Dietrich Alexander. "In a democratic decision-making process Turkey has loosened its ban on headscarves. The country has thus liberated itself from the constraints of an anachronistic piece of legislation brought in by Kemal Atatürk more than 80 years ago and thus become a little more honest in its search for a national identity. ... Nevertheless, it would not be good if Prime Minister Erdogan's conservative-Islamic governing party were to use its comfortable parliamentary majority to take further steps perceived by secularly-oriented Turks as breaking taboos -- such as introducing a ban on consuming alcohol in public, favouring graduates of religious Imam-Hatip schools or prescribing prudish regulations for bathing attire. After all it is important for the government to remain on good terms with the country's urban elite." (11/02/2008)

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Diário de Notícias - Portugal

"After the vote, 100 000 people demonstrated in Ankara to protest against the measure, seeing it as an attack against secularism. Attitudes that reveal a division in the country between two different worlds," notes the Lisbon daily. "What's in the balance here represents much more than a story about the veil in a country between two continents, where enthusiasm for Europe has diminished considerably as Brussels imposed a series of successive obstacles and reports. It's for this reason that the EU cannot watch what's going on in Turkey from a more or less neutral perspective. On the contrary, Europe must encourage those who struggle for modernity." (10/02/2008)

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Die Presse - Austria

"The state has the right to forbid its employees to wear religious symbols, but it does not have the right to expect female students as 'customers' of the university to remove their headscarves when they enter the campus. This piece of fabric cannot bar admission to higher education," writes Helmar Dumbs. "The dangers are elsewhere, for example in the mounting reports that Erdogan favours civil servants whose wives wear the 'turban.' This is what undermines the foundations of a state that is officially neutral on religion. For how secular is a state whose religious authority even interferes in Friday sermons? De facto Islam is the state religion in Turkey, while the Christian Churches are subjected to official harassment. This is not the separation of state and religion, it is total control of religion by the state." (11/02/2008)

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Neue Zürcher Zeitung - Switzerland

Cyrill Stieger thinks there are more important issues to be decided in Turkey than headscarves. "The notorious Article 301 of the penal code, which punishes 'denigration of Turkish identity,' must be abolished if Turkey wishes to become a modern democratic state. The Alevite religious minority still does not have a right to hold its own religion classes, and Kurdish schools are not allowed to teach in Kurdish. ... Until the recent abolition of the headscarf ban in universities no major reform projects have been implemented since EU accession talks began in October 2005, and that despite a clear power situation in parliament. ... It is not the headscarf issue that decides how Islamic, democratic or nationalistic the governing party is. Only once Turkey has a new constitution will it become clear what Erdogan really wants and what direction Turkey is going in." (11/02/2008)

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