ANKARA: Turkish legislators opened debate Wednesday on one of their secular but predominantly Muslim country s most fiery issues: whether to allow female students to enter university campuses wearing Islamic head scarves. Parliament was to hold a first round of debate and voting on the Islamic-rooted government s proposed amendments to the secular constitution, which would remove the decades-old ban. The proposal includes the insertion of a paragraph stating that "no one can be deprived of (his or her) right to higher education. A second and final round of voting is slated for Saturday. The head scarf issue is a source of tension in Turkey and has divided the population among those who consider the ban an affront to religious freedoms of pious Muslims and those who fear removing the ban would erode Turkey s secular education system. Military-backed secularists regard the head covering as a political statement and argue it has no place in schools. They also fear that lifting the ban at universities would pile pressure on female students to cover themselves up. On Wednesday, around 200 leftists gathered near the parliament building to protest the government s proposal. Hundreds of riot police, reinforced by armored vehicles, set up barricades to prevent them from marching to parliament. "We won t allow the head scarf! and "Down with the AKP! the group chanted in reference to the acronym of the ruling party. More than 125,000 people - mostly women - marched in Ankara over the weekend to denounce plans to lift the ban. University deans from dozens of private and state universities also gathered in the capital last week to show their opposition. The deputy head of Turkey s Appeals Court joined the fray on Monday, warning that the move would "weaken secularism. The military, however, has chosen to stay out of the debate for now even though generals have periodically spoken up against what they view as moves to undermine secular principles introduced by the national founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The government has the backing of a nationalist opposition party, and together they have more than the two-thirds majority in the 550-seat assembly required to amend the constitution. But the secularist Republican People s Party - which has said that lifting the ban would amount to a first step toward a more Islamic rule - has vowed to challenge any change at the Constitutional Court. To ease concerns, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan s party has stated that a loosening of the ban would be limited to universities, and would not be expanded to high schools or public offices. In an attempt to soften secularist opposition, the government is also making changes to regulations governing higher education, to make clear that female students would be allowed to wear head scarves at universities as long as they tied them under the chin, leaving their faces more exposed. That attire, is accepted in barracks and military guest houses and is not necessarily associated with Islam. Ataturk, who founded modern Turkey after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, banned religious attire in daily life. The ban has been vigorously enforced in public office and schools since a 1980 military coup. Both Erdogan s wife and President Abdullah Gul s wife wear Islamic-style head scarves. Gul s wife challenged Turkey s head scarf ban at the European Court of Human Rights after being barred from university in 1998 - only to withdraw her complaint when her husband became foreign minister.
