Turkey's Delayed Hijab Dream

With universities refusing to allow veiled students on campus and the ruling Justice and Development Party facing ban threats in court, many students are shelving their earlier hijab dreams and bracing for a long battle. “Everyone was hopeful. I thought I would be able to study in the way that my religion requires,” Ayse Sekerci, 20, was reported as saying on April 14. “It really seemed that this time it would happen. But after the recent events, all my hope has been destroyed.”

The parliament passed in February a constitutional change easing restrictions on hijab on campus. The change allows university students to cover their heads only with traditional scarves tied loosely under the chin. Veils covering the neck are still banned. The move riled the country’s secularist elite, including army generals, judges and university rectors, which sees any sign of Islam in public life as a threat.

Many universities still are defying the new law and refusing to allow students wearing hijab, an obligatory code of dress in Islam.

Worse still, the top prosecutor has filed a lawsuit with the Constitutional Court, a bastion of secularism, demanding the closure of the AK on claims of undermining secularism. Hijab has been banned in public buildings, universities, schools and government buildings in Muslim-majority Turkey since shortly after a 1980 military coup. Many fear a court ruling against the governing AK party kill stone dead any hijab dreams. “I think if the AK Party is closed down, we will have 10 to 15 more years of struggle to normalize these issues,” Neslihan Akbulut, who heads the activist group AKDER. “If the party is closed and a new party appears, of course they will be afraid of even talking about religious freedom.”

Akbulut cited the fate of the coalition government led by Necmettin Erbakan of the Welfare Party which was toppled in a military coup in 1997. “Every 10 years we see the same picture.” The Constitutional Court has in the past banned more than 20 political parties on anti-secularism accusations, including the Welfare Party.