Turkey's High Court - A Gutsy Ruling

Story from The New York Times: Turkey’s High Court Overturns Headscarf Rule By SABRINA TAVERNISE Published: June 6, 2008 ISTANBUL — Turkey’s highest court dealt a stinging slap to the governing party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday, ruling that a legal change allowing women to attend universities wearing head scarves was unconstitutional. [Hooray! A symbol of women's oppression is done away with.] The Constitutional Court said in a brief statement that the change, proposed by Mr. Erdogan’s party and passed by the Parliament in February, violated principles of secularism set in Turkey’s constitution. The ruling sets the stage for a final showdown between Turkey’s secular elite — its military, judiciary and secular political party — and Mr. Erdogan, a Muslim with an Islamist past. The court is one of Turkey’s most important secular institutions, and the ruling was seen as largely political. It bodes ominously for Mr. Erdogan: The same court is considering a case that would ban him and 70 members of his party from politics. A decision is expected in the summer. Turkey’s political system has been controlled for generations by a powerful secular elite that has stepped in with coups and judicial decisions against elected governments. Mr. Erdogan and his party, Justice and Development, or AKP, have come the closest of any political party in Turkey’s history to breaking its hold on power. In the head-scarf case, the elite establishment argued that allowing veiled women onto college campuses threatens Turkish secularism, which was imposed by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in a secular revolution in the 1920s. Head scarves were banned from campuses in the 1990s. Kemal Anadol, a deputy chairman of the secular opposition Republican People’s Party, called the verdict a triumph of justice and said it showed that secularism and democracy are “constitutional principles that can’t be separated from one other.” Mr. Erdogan calls the case a matter of individual rights, arguing that all Turks should be able to attend university no matter what they wear or believe. But the way his party proposed it — abruptly, with little public discussion — angered the secular old guard and disappointed liberals, who support the changes, but wanted them to be accompanied by changes that would strengthen other rights, like free speech. Some said AKP seemed to be pursuing only those changes that would please its constituency, and not the broader range that was needed to join the European Union. “AKP is lost in the spell of their own power,” said Mithat Sancar, a law professor in Ankara, Turkey’s capital. “When they want to listen to liberals, they do, but when they don’t, they comfortably ignore them.” Despite Mr. Erdogan’s broad popularity — his party won 47 percent of the vote in an election last July — the threat of closure is serious: The authorities have closed more than 20 parties in the past, and Thursday’s ruling seemed like it could be a sign of things to come. The head-scarf amendment is considered to be the single most important irritant that set off the case to ban Mr. Erdogan and 70 other AKP members, and is central to its argument that Mr. Erdogan and his allies are trying to dismantle secularism in Turkey, a charge they strongly dispute. Many secular Turks are skeptical that Mr. Erdogan, whose past is in political Islam, will defend secularism in the future, even though he frequently reassures them that he will. “There is still a group within the AKP that is remembered for their Islamic past,” said Ersin Kalaycioglu, a political science professor from Sabanci University. “Fears don’t need to be rational.” Dengir Firat, a senior member of Mr. Erdogan’s party, said that was no reason for the head-scarf ban. “You can’t limit someone’s liberties on the basis of people’s fears,” he said. [Note to Mr. Firat: Oh yes, you can - and with good reason. There are reasons why neo-Nazis are feared, for instance; and reasons why Islamists who advocate the forcible overthrow of all other religions are feared, for instance...] The military, another strongly secular institution, expressed muted approval of the court’s decision. “A different ruling would have been surprising,” said Gen. Aydogan Babaoglu, chief of Turkey’s Air Force, according to NTV television. All but lost in the debate have been the voices of the women themselves whose future is caught in the political cross hairs. Neslihan Akbulut, a 26-year-old sociology graduate student, said she cried when she heard the verdict. “There is no way for me in Turkey now,” she said. “When I see this result, I feel that I don’t need to wait. I would need to wait for a long time.” [No offense, but try Saudi Arabia.] Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting.