Turkey: After Headscarves, What’s Next?
Soner Cagaptay reports on the Washington for Near East Policy website (2.13.2008) on the importance of the turban and its relationship to larger religious and political issues in Turkey. Here is an excerpt:
. . . When Kemal Ataturk founded Turkey as a secular republic after World War I, he looked to Europe, and especially France, for his inspiration. While American secularism provides freedom of religion, the French version that Ataturk adopted emphasizes freedom from religion — that is, keeping religion and its symbols out of government and education. Turkey’s secular courts have considered the turban a political religious symbol — AKP leader and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose wife wears a turban, suggested that this might indeed be the case. Accordingly, the courts had, until last weekend, banned the turban on college campuses. But now that the turban is allowed on campuses, what will happen next? . . .