Worries over veil in Turkey

Turkey is a secular democratic republic whose political system was established in 1923 under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, following the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I. Turkey is located between Asia and Europe, often described as a bridge between the western and eastern civilizations.

The current constitution in Turkey obliges the government to ensure equality for all - a clause that women's groups fought hard to include. A revised new constitution is now being proposed, describing women as a vulnerable group in need of special protection.

Thousands of prominent men and women who make up the elite of this country are having panic attacks in the face of the possibility that Turkish universities might tolerate their students wearing the Islamic headscarf. Virtually everyday, bureaucrats, pundits and even university rectors lash out against the proposed article in the new constitution to set the headscarf free.

Under the Ataturk code, women were banned from wearing the headscarf in government offices. The Turkish military, the fiercest guardian of “Kemalism” as the cult of Ataturk is known, has used the threat to secularism as the pretext over the decades for many an intervention in politics.

Over the last 80 years, since becoming a secular country the Turks have still not got over the fear of seeing a veiled women.