Such an innocent scene — the receiving line of a reception at the presidential residence in Ankara… Yet contained within this image are the powerful contradictions of Turkish political and social life.
On Oct. 29 the Republic of Turkey celebrated the 87th anniversary of its founding. Representatives from the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and the main [...]
Leyla Şahin v. Turkey was a 2005 European Court of Human Rights case brought against Turkey by Leyla Şahin that challenged a Turkish law which bans wearing the Islamic headscarf at universities and other educational and state institutions. The verdict upheld the Turkish law with 16 votes to 1. While recognizing the Turkish state’s right to intervention, the [...]
Chief Prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals, Abdurrahman Yalçınkaya, citing the Turkish constitution and the European Court of Human Rights, announced that the recent actions of the Higher Education Board (YÖK) to allow headscarves on campus contradicted both national and international law.
“Recognizing the validity of [wearing] the headscarf at higher education institutions on the basis [...]
This post was updated.
Here’s the predictable fallout of the Higher Education Council’s recent tacit permission for women students to wear headscarves on campus (see my post below). President Gul’s wife attended a formal reception for the first time (even though I believe it is illegal for women with headscarves to attend formal government events. (In [...]
While the “headscarf problem” is being solved in practice at universities, which will now allow them in classes, no such “opening” has occurred in politics where separate dual receptions have been the norm, one inviting politicians and uncovered wives, and one to which politicians could bring their covered wives, including the wives of the president [...]
It now seems possible in practice for women who cover their heads to attend university. Richard Peres, an expert on discrimination law living in Istanbul, writes this essay about the problems Turkish women face AFTER they graduate. Where will they work? What can they do with their degrees? He discusses the discrimination faced by women [...]
This post has been UPDATED.
The AKP and now the opposition secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP) under its new leadership are both seeking a way to change the constitution to allow women who cover their heads to attend university, something that is presently banned. But it looks like YÖK (the Higher Education Council that sets the [...]
This old shoe leather scrap of an idea keeps coming up again and again: The problem of banning headscarves from campus can be solved if the students simply tied their scarves differently! Here’s my response to this when the idea was debated two years ago. As I wrote in an Op-Ed for Zaman: Meaning is in our [...]
Updating his 1999 social survey of Turkey, Sabanci University political scientist Ali Çarkoglu along with Ersin Kalaycioglu reported new research findings on religiosity in Turkey under the framework of the International Social Survey Program, or ISSP, which measures religious values from 43 different countries. Below are some excerpts. Click here for a news article in [...]
Photos from Hurriyet
For her column in Hurriyet (click here, in Turkish), Ayse Arman, a statuesque blonde, covered her head and, dressed in modest but fashionable ‘tesettur’, walked all over secular Istanbul’s hot-spots with a similarly veiled friend, loitered in fancy shops, sat at sidewalk cafes and entered restaurants. Although she had expected resistance, nowhere did [...]