Social Science Research Council

Last March, the Chief Public Prosecutor of Turkey’s High Court of Appeals opened a closure case against the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, which had received 47% of the votes in an 18-parties election eight months ago. The prosecutor asked the Constitutional Court not only for the closure of the party, but also for a ban on 71 leading politicians for five years, including Prime Minister Erdoğan and President Gül. The indictment presents the case as if it is based on the AK Party’s support for the recent constitutional amendments that would lift the headscarf ban at universities. I am not convinced that the lifting of the headscarf ban is the real basis of the case for three main reasons. [...]

In Turkey, the headscarf is usually taken as an emblem of tradition and backwardness, and its removal from public life is associated with modernization and progress. Such an approach to the headscarf turns the issue into an insoluble problem. [...]

The analysis of the headscarf controversy cannot simply be based on arguments of liberal politics. Rather, it has to be analyzed within its historical context. In Turkey, the headscarf has assumed a symbolic character that refers to different historical memories and different understandings of modernity. For both sides of this conflict, the headscarf is at the center of the debate because the debate is, in its essence, about gender relations.

Women who are proponents of the headscarf distance themselves from secular models of feminist emancipation, but also seek autonomy from male interpretations of Islamic precepts. They represent a rupture of the frame both of secular female self-definitions and religious male prescriptions. They want to have access to secular education, follow new life trajectories that are not in conformity with traditional gender roles, and yet fashion and assert a new pious self. They are searching for ways to become Muslim and modern at the same time, transforming both.

Turkey’s ban of the headscarf on university campuses — rather than the headscarf itself — has become a serious impediment to women’s participation in economic and professional life. Three-quarters of Turkey’s female population covers in some fashion. The ruling Muslim-inflected Justice and Development Party (known by its Turkish acronym AKP) made a deal this week with the nationalist MHP in parliament to secure enough votes to eliminate the ban. [...]

In Turkey there is now a great deal of controversy about proposed revisions to the constitution that would include lifting the ban on the wearing of Islamic headscarves in universities. Many commentators have taken this to be an ominous sign of the intention of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul, who represent the Justice and Development Party (AKP), to undermine Turkey’s secular republic in the interests of establishing an Islamist state. In Turkey, as elsewhere in Europe, the headscarf has become a symbol not only of political Islam, but of the oppression of women. [...]