Ankara - In a fight that has pitted the devout against the secular, the Turkish parliament looks set to lift a ban on university students wearing Islamic-style headscarves after the government won an overwhelming vote in parliament on Thursday. A total of 404 deputies voted in the 550-seat parliament in favour of two constitutional changes that concern equality before the law and rights to education. The package will now be voted on again on Saturday.
For supporters, the reforms are a matter of human rights. For opponents, the changes are the first steps down a slippery slope that endanger the secular foundation of Turkey.
The Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), which first came to power in 2002, has always been regarded with extreme suspicion by the staunchly secular military, the judiciary and academics, but the moves to lift the headscarf bans at universities have ratcheted up tension.
More than 100,000 people, mainly women, protested in Ankara last week against the lifting of the bans.
Secularists argue that the headscarf is a political symbol that has no place in schools.
They fear that if the bans are lifted at universities, similar bans at schools and in the public service will be next to go.
The government has attempted to allay such fears saying that the lifting of restrictions will not spread.
The debate at times has become surreal.
The government will move to only allow loose headscarves that are worn with a knot tied under the chin, a traditional Turkish style, and not the style favoured by the wives of most AKP leaders, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's wife Emine, which covers the neck and is considered as Arabic in origin.
Such rules would imply that universities will have to employ clothes police to ensure that the correct headscarf is being worn.
Then there is the irony that one of the fiercest pro-secular politicians, Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal, used a group meeting earlier this week to argue that the Koran does not require the wearing of a headscarf.
The fact that the government has stuck to its guns on the issue has also dismayed liberals and European Union diplomats who complain that lifting the headscarf ban has put much more important reforms, such as lifting the notorious Article 301, which deems it a crime to "insult Turkishness," onto the back burner.
Opponents also complain that the government has exaggerated the effect that the headscarf bans have had on university attendance by pious Muslim women.
Radikal newspaper on Thursday reported a university study which found that 29.8 per cent of women did not go to university because they failed to pass the entrance exams, 20.8 per cent because they needed to work, 14.6 per cent because, while they passed the entrance exams, they got married instead, 10.5 per cent because their families refused to allow them to continue their education and just 1 per cent because of the headscarf bans.
Parliament will meet again on Saturday, when it will almost certainly pass the changes.
The government will then introduce changes to higher education laws that will specifically state that headscarves are allowed to be worn in tertiary institutions.
Baykal has already stated that his party will make a challenge in the Constitutional Court not only on the law changes but on the changes to the constitution itself.
It was the Constitutional Court which made it clear just under two decades ago that the headscarf cannot be worn at universities.
In the meantime, the military, which first introduced bans on the headscarf after the 1980 coup, has refused to get involved in the debate, instead saying that it is watching the situation closely.
