In Turkey, any day now, a female university student will mark a dramatic moment in her country's history. After years of heated debate, culminating in street demonstrations in recent months, she will no longer have to replace her headscarf with a wig or hat before attending her lectures, thanks to a constitutional amendment that received presidential consent last week. However, she will know that her newly won right is by no means secure; university authorities have been threatening to break the law and enforce the headscarf ban, while legal appeals are likely to end up in the constitutional court.
For the group of young women students I met recently in the London School of Economics, there is hope at last.… Seguir leyendo »
The West doesn’t know quite what to think of Turkey’s Islamic-oriented ruling party: does it envision a liberal, European future for Turkey or an Islamist one? A vote this week on the seemingly minor issue of whether head scarves should be allowed at universities will help us begin to answer that question.
The ban on women covering their heads on campus has long been a thorn in the side of the Justice and Development Party. The rule has the perverse effect of keeping devoutly religious women out of higher education. A few years ago, while on a trip to lecture about Islam, I met a daughter of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan — not in Istanbul, but at Indiana University, which she was attending at least in part so she could cover her head while getting an education.… Seguir leyendo »
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