TURKEY: WORRIES MOUNT OVER GOVERNMENT’S COMMITMENT TO DEMOCRATIZATION

Yigal Schleifer 2/13/08
The recent vote in the Turkish parliament ending the ban on headscarves at public universities is raising concern about the future direction of Turkey. Some political observers are voicing concern that the government may be turning away from its broad reform agenda covering domestic democratization and Turkey’s European Union bid.
"The perception shared by many intellectuals is that this reform [over headscarves] will come at the expense of other reforms," says veteran Turkish journalist Yavuz Baydar, a columnist for the English-language newspaper Today’s Zaman.
"Some intellectuals [who support the government] are starting to have second thoughts about whether the government has a well-defined strategy for change for Turkey, and what triggered this doubt is the priority that the government has put on the headscarf issue."
The constitutional reform package that ended the headscarf ban zipped through parliament, after first being introduced only a few weeks ago by the liberal Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. The rapid passage of the measure contrasted sharply with the AKP’s drive to promote European Union membership. Over the last year, many of Turkey’s EU-related reforms have stalled.
For example, article 301 of the penal code, used to punish those who have "insulted Turkishness" and which has marred Turkey’s record on freedom of expression issues, remains unchanged despite numerous promises by the government to amend it. Meanwhile, the draft version of a new civilian-minded constitution, meant to replace one written by the military following a 1980 coup, has been ready for months but has yet to be presented by the government.
"What Turkey really needs to have is a very profound constitutional debate," says Katinka Barysch, an expert on Turkey at the Centre for European Reform, a think tank based in London. "The headscarf is only the tip of the iceberg."
Ali Babacan, Turkey’s foreign minister, claimed that lifting the headscarf ban was part of the effort to meet EU membership requirements. But EU officials were quick to make clear that the issue was strictly a domestic Turkish matter. "There is no EU legislation on the issue of wearing the headscarf," Krisztina Nagy, the spokesperson for the EU Commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn, told reporters in Brussels after the Turkish vote.
Says a European diplomat based in Ankara: "The fighting over the headscarf issue is distracting from dealing with other issues, and could make it more difficult for the different sides to come together on these issues, if it reinforces antagonisms and skepticism."
"It is unfortunate that this has taken up priority over these other issues, such as the reform of 301 and the constitutional process as a whole," the diplomat continued. "We hear from the government that reforms are in the pipeline. … But those never come true."
Also worrisome for observers was that in order to pass the headscarf legislation, the AKP had to enter what some have termed an "unholy alliance" with the opposition Nationalist Action Party (MHP), a hard-line group that has taken a rejectionist stance on many of Turkey’s EU reforms. Already, parliamentary debate over a bill that would provide for the return of property confiscated by the Turkish state from religious minority groups has been delayed by the AKP government, in order not to antagonize the MHP, which opposes the legislation.
Academics, meanwhile, are expressing concern that the focus on the headscarf issue is obscuring the need for more substantive reforms in Turkey’s higher education system. The same 1982 constitution that created the headscarf ban also put in place a highly centralized and bureaucratic university system that many academics assert stifles academic and intellectual freedom.
"The whole higher education system needs a greater look and needs to be reformed," says Ustun Erguder, a political scientist at Sabanci University in Istanbul. "This headscarf issue just delays the whole thing."
But Sahin Alpay, a professor at Istanbul’s Bahcesehir University and a leading Turkish liberal secularist, counters that getting the headscarf issue out of the way may actually make it easier to bring about other constitutional changes. "It may be a good thing that the headscarf issue is dealt with separately, because then the discussion of the new constitution will not be overshadowed by this extremely divisive issue," he said.
AKP government representatives insist that the party pushed for lifting the ban in the name of human rights and civil liberties. "Our main aim is to end the discrimination experienced by a section of society, just because of their personal beliefs," AKP parliamentarian Sadullah Ergin recently told private broadcaster NTV.
Because of the ban, many covered women went abroad to study. (The covered daughters of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for example, attended college in the United States). Other women have resorted to wearing wigs over their headscarves in order to attend classes at Turkish state universities.
According to one recent poll, 60 percent of Turks support ending the headscarf ban. Still, the reaction from Turkey’s secular establishment has been forceful. While parliament was voting February 9 in Ankara, tens of thousands of flag-waving demonstrators turned out for pro-secularism rally only a few blocks away.
Although Turkey’s powerful military, considered the ultimate guardian of the country’s secular tradition, has, for now, remained quiet on the issue, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the main secular opposition party in parliament, has vowed to appeal to the country’s top court to annul the vote lifting the headscarf ban.
"The aim [of the legislation] is to erode the principle of secularism in the constitution," said Kemal Anadol, spokesman for the CHP, at the start of the debate in parliament.
Editor’s Note: Yigal Schleifer is a freelance journalist based in Istanbul.
Posted February 13, 2008 © Eurasianet http://www.eurasianet.org