Pamela Bone
The vote by Turkey's Parliament last weekend to lift a ban on the wearing of headscarves at universities has led to demonstrations by tens of thousands of people, waving Turkish flags and carrying posters of Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. The opponents of the ban, who include the army, academics, senior judges and some women's groups, fear that allowing headscarves back into universities will be the first step to the erosion of Turkey's secular democracy.
Naturally the protests are the focus of the media coverage. Yet the protesters do not represent the majority of Turks, who according to opinion polls are not much bothered by the prospect of headscarf-wearing women at universities. What you see in the streets are girls with covered heads walking arm-in-arm with girls with uncovered heads. According to a recent poll, 73 per cent of women who don't wear the headscarf still support the lifting of the ban. Nearly all of the women's rights activists I spoke to in Istanbul thought the ban should go.
On balance, I think they are right. My heart is with the secularists: the fears that the ruling Justice and Development Party wants to take Turkey down a more Islamist path are not unreasonable. "This is not Iran: Turkey is a democracy", I was told over and over by people who supported the ban being lifted. Yes, it is, but the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, often described as "mildly Islamist" reportedly once likened democracy to "a train from which to disembark on reaching one's destination".
I heard stories of women being bribed to wear the headscarf in order to inflate the proportion of women who "choose" to wear it. There are also stories of the Government systematically inserting its "true believers" into schools, the police force and the bureaucracy.
On the other hand, thousands of young women 80,000, by one estimate have been denied a university education because of the ban. Or at least they think they have been denied one. The instinctive western response might be to say, "Well, why not just take it off?" Unfortunately it's simply not that easy for those who truly believe it is their religious duty to wear it. I spoke to a lawyer who cannot go into a courtroom because she wears the headscarf, and a teacher who said she had to remove her headscarf before she came in sight of the school, because she would have been sacked if the school authorities knew she wore it in her private life.
While people who support the ban argue the headscarf goes against Ataturk's vision of a modern secular state, people who want the ban lifted argue that Ataturk would not have approved of it because he wanted girls to be educated. (Ataturk banned the fez but not the headscarf, believing women would cease to wear it as the country modernised). Sixty years after his death, people are still arguing about what Ataturk meant by this or that. It's against the law to criticise him. An outsider might well think this makes him into a religious figure.
The lifting of the ban means that while women will be permitted to wear the headscarf as long as it is tied in a knot under the chin, it will not be allowed if it is draped around the neck and fastened with a pin, as worn by women in Iran.
Many women have tried to get around the ban by wearing wigs, as some orthodox Jewish women do. Now sellers of wigs worry about a decline in business, while sellers of scarves expect a boost. Women who cover their hair typically have "five expensive and 15 inexpensive headscarves in their wardrobe", according to one shop owner, which seems to indicate it is as much a fashion item as it is a protector of modesty.
The long black chador and the burqa will remain banned in universities and public offices. It is interesting that all the women I spoke to who wanted the headscarf ban lifted were equally adamant that the burqa, which covers the whole body and face, should never be permitted, and were amazed when I told them that in Australia burqa-clad women were permitted to teach children in schools.
The education of women is crucial not only to their own liberation but to the economic and social development of the country in which they live. Given that still, 22 per cent of Turkish women are illiterate (39 per cent in some eastern areas) compared with 6 per cent of men; that in some east and south-east provinces half of marriages were forced, 64 per cent of women in those areas had been beaten by their husbands, and 63 per cent of teenage girls thought being beaten by your husband was acceptable, it seems to me that anything that hinders women being educated can't be a good thing.
Pamela Bone is a Melbourne writer.
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