Turkey: After Headscarves, What's Next?

"What will happen now that the turban is permitted? [turban: "a specific, nontraditional type of headwear that arose in Turkey during the early 1980s after first appearing in other Muslim countries. The turban exposes no hair and, unlike the other scarves, covers part of the face."] Conditions in much of Istanbul and the West will not change much. In low-tolerance areas, however, things will be different. In rural central Turkey, women may feel uncomfortable without the turban, and in the southeast women will feel compelled to wear them. Instead of resolving the issue, lifting the turban ban will create a new problem for the many Turkish women who choose to not wear the turban. These women will be under social pressure to conform to the new practice of "virtuous living."
In order to resolve this issue, the AKP must convince the Turkish population that it is ready to protect women who do not wear the turban and that it is genuinely interested in women's freedom. For instance, the AKP could pass legislation protecting women who do not cover their heads as well as those who do. According to a recent poll, 10 percent of women who cover their heads are forced to do so by their families and husbands. What is more, to assure secular Turks that it is not a single-issue party, the AKP should pass the turban legislation as part of a package of freedoms and liberties towards European Union (EU) accession -- lately, the party has shied away from EU reforms. Third, the AKP should allow more room for debate; the amendments passed after only three weeks of public discussion.
In the absence of these steps, Turkey will not necessarily become a fundamentalist state overnight, but it will become a country in which one symbol of religious practice -- the turban -- will become universally enforced in many areas. Religious homogenization will ensue, resulting in court interventions and counter-protests by secular Turks. What lies ahead for Turkey is a period of soul-searching and, unfortunately, political turmoil, until the country settles on a new balance between religion and politics."

Soner Cagaptay, Washingtoninstitute.org/PostGlobal, February 13, 2008

The Muslim World's Embattled Secularists

"Who will defend the Muslim who doubts his faith? Who speaks for the man or the woman who might believe in Allah, by his or her own lights, but does not wish to worship? We hear a great deal in the West about the need for freedom of religion in the Muslim world, usually meaning for observant Christians and Jews. But what about freedom of non-religion: the liberty of the individual to think, to reason, to speak out loud rejecting the dictates of public piety? Few voices are raised, if any, in his or her defense.

[...]

Perhaps this was inevitable. Not so long ago, in mid-20th century, secularists were the great "modernizers": the leading intellectuals and artists, the ambitious military officers, the charismatic politicians and, yes, the dictators of the Arab world. They saw themselves and were widely seen, then, as the cosmopolitan voices of progress and, not least, of a proud and assertive nationalism.

Today Arab secularists are silent if not, in fact, silenced. The ideologies that once united many of them (Communism, Nasserism, Baathism) have been discredited by time and tyrants. The milder forms of intellectual liberalism – an openness to other cultures, faiths and ways of life; the questioning of opinions presented as absolute truths – find themselves branded as treason to some greater Muslim identity, or worse, as heresy."

Christopher Dickey, On Faith/Newsweek, July 2007