Headscarf politics in Turkey

The headscarf debate has started again here in Turkey. Last week, the new rector of Boğaziçi University (one of Turkey's best) banned female students wearing scarves or other head coverings from the campus.

Headscarves are banned from almost all Turkish universities and other ''secular institutions,'' including government buildings and Parliament. This ban restricts freedom of expression and religion, and limits the advancement of devout women in political, economic, and social life.

The scarf is both a potent political symbol and an object of great religious significance. Unfortunately, its dual identity is understood by few Turks, which makes civil debate all but impossible. The secular Turks I have spoken with often believe that the scarf is an exclusively political symbol, and that women wear it out of political, not religious, conviction. Yet many religious Turks are deeply frustrated that an important object of their religion has been turned into a political tool.

The tensions surrounding this issue are indicative of the larger divisions in Turkish society. It splits the nation into three camps: devout Muslims who believe they are required to wear the scarf, liberal reformers who support freedom of religion and expression, and staunch (one might say radical) Kemalists who consider the scarf an attack on the principles of Ataturk and the secular republic. (Religious people find themselves allied with westernizing liberals quite often in Turkey. Strange bedfellows? Kind of.) This split has existed throughout Turkey's history. However, the religious camp has gained more political and economic power here in the last 10 or so years.

The headscarf ban is a product of the secular elite's deep insecurity with religion. The covered women I see on every street remind staunch secularists that Turkish Islam has not been completely neutered. It has not been transformed into a minor reminder of times long past--Islam is still an important social and political force.

For most of the history of Republican Turkey, religious Turks were effectively disenfranchised. They were considered an anachronistic element that would soon be left behind, but the secular elite took no chances--religious political parties were banned if they showed any potential. The CHP and MHP (the two parties that have ruled Turkey for most of its history) ignored the interests of religious people, and did little more than the occasional favor designed to win a few votes in the next election.

The electoral successes of the AKP in 2003 started to change this. The AKP is a moderately Islamic, pro-European Union party with a liberal economic platform. Most of the international press considers it the most effective governing party in Turkey in decades. Secular Turks have absolutely freaked out ever since it took power--I hear that the AKP plans to institute sharia and turn Turkey into another Iran pretty much every day here. As far as I (or most independent outsiders) can tell, there's no basis for any of this.

Anyway, the barriers that have kept the huge numbers of religious Turks out of politics are slowly fading away. The battle over the headscarf is part of this process. Like anywhere else in the world, a university degree is essential for social, political, and economic success in Turkey. Religious women have been denied this key credential for decades. I am not saying that the Ministry of Education has chosen to ban the headscarf as part of a sinister plot to limit the success of religious women. However, that has been the result.

I have a very hard time understanding the rationale for such deep opposition to the headscarf. As I wrote, it is a symbol--but a symbol of what? Resurgent Islam? The oppression of women? A hatred of prevailing hair styles? The debate in Turkey is always about the scarf as a symbol, not the issues it symbolizes. Serious Kemalists refuse to address the role of Islam and women's rights, so they talk about the danger of the scarf instead.

Like Christianity in the US, Turkish Islam is often a powerful force against rationalism and progress. (However, I think there are fewer nutsos campaigning against teaching evolution and sex ed here than back home.) Little is done in Turkey to blunt the impact of these anti-modern ideas. Instead, Turkey simply bans the headscarf from its ''secular spaces'' and claims it has addressed the problem of fundamentalist Islam.

The theory is something like this: If I chose my eyes and chant ''Na na na na,'' you'll disappear. Banning a symbol only pushes the real issues behind closed doors, where they are much more dangerous.

Further, I wonder why Kemalists aren't up in arms for better treatment of women in Turkey. The argument against the scarf often takes on an uncomfortably paternalistic cast: women must be protected by modern men from fundamentalist men. But that protection is just another restriction, not support for increased female empowerment. (After all, that might threaten the position of those modern men!) Who cares if women wear headscarves as long as they choose to? Is it impossible to be religious but also believe in equal rights and a democratic republic? Women are not equal in Turkey, but banning the scarf hardly remedies this.

My time in Turkey has concinced me that much of the rhetoric about ''The Republic'' and ''Ataturk's ideals'' is just a meaningless tool to maintain the status quo. Ataturk never dreamed of banning the scarf, but his words are often used to attack the rights of those who chose to cover themselves. This debate, like almost every other one in modern Turkey, has been transformed into a struggle over power. If Turks can be convinced that the AKP and the many covered women intend to create another Iran, they will run back to Turkey's old parties, the CHP and MHP. Those parties will then continue to rule for themselves and not for all.

The headscarf should not be an issue. It has been made into one so the real problems in this country can be ignored.