Turkey's
prime minister and president have urged the abolition of a ban on the Islamic
headscarf in universities amid a simmering controversy on whether a planned
new constitution should lift the restrictions.
Both
leaders, former Islamists whose wives and daughters wear the headscarf,
argued that the ban violated individual freedoms and the right to education
of women who cover up.
"The
right to higher education cannot be restricted because of what a girl
wears," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan said in an interview with the Financial Times published Wednesday.
"There
is no such problem in western societies but there is a problem in Turkey and
I believe it is the first duty of those in politics
to solve this problem," he said.
Secularist
forces, which include the army, senior judges
and the academic elite, see the headscarf as a symbol of defiance of Turkey's
fiercely-guarded secular system.
Many
fear that easing the restrictions will erode the country's secular fabric and
raise the profile of religion in public life.
Turkey's
top academics on Wednesday strongly objected to any moves to allow the
much-disputed headwear on to campuses as unlawful.
"The
headscarf ban is a legal situation based on rulings passed by Turkish courts
as well as the European Court of Human Rights," Erdogan
Tezic, the head of the Higher Education Board, said here after an
extraordinary meeting of the rectors' committee.
"It
is not possible to make changes in the constitution that would allow freedom
of dress," he added.
In
2005, the European Court of Human Rights
ruled that the headscarf ban in Turkish universities was not a violation of
fundamental freedoms and could be necessary to protect Turkey's secular order
against extremist movements.
Public
servants are also barred from wearing the headscarf in Turkey.
Erdogan's
Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) has started drafting a
new constitution, boosted by its landslide election victory in July that gave
it a second five-year mandate.
The
current constitution is a legacy of the 1980 military
coup. It has been amended several times but its many critics say a
fundamental overhaul is needed to stamp out its authoritarian spirit and make
it fully democratic.
But
there are widespread concerns that the new code will be the fruit of the AKP
rather than one of national consensus.
"The
fact that the constitutional amendments are being drawn up by one political
party casts a shadow on democracy," Tezic said. "The way the draft
is being prepared has led to social unease and insecurity."
According
to media reports, AKP leaders, wary of a secularist backlash, are hestitating
on whether to press ahead with lifting the headscarf ban in the new
constitution and have left the decision to Erdogan.
President
Abdullah Gul, who belonged to the AKP until he became head of state in a
crisis-ridden election last month, also backed the abolition of the ban.
"It
is much better for (women who cover up) to go to university than to stay home
and be isolated from social life," Gul told the Milliyet newspaper.
"We
have to see the issue from the point of individual freedoms and as a result
of modernity," he said.
Gul
played down concerns that lifting the ban might result in women who do not
wear the headscarf coming under social pressure from conservatives to cover
up.
"We
are people who have lived side by side in peace... There can be both girls
who cover up and who do not in the same family. This is our social structure
and we have lived like that for years," he said.
Erdogan
pledged that a comprehensive debate would be held on the new constitution
draft before it is brought to parliament for a vote.
"We
want a constitution that is going to provide and protect a state that is a
democratic, secular, social state of law," he told the Financial Times.