LA Times, Tens of thousands of Turks waving the national flag took to the streets of the capital this week to celebrate the 80th anniversary of Turkey's emergence as a secular republic, but the festivities were overshadowed by bitter debate over the national law banning Islamic-style headscarves in public buildings and state-run schools.
The discord, pitting this predominantly Muslim nation's shrinking but rigidly secular elite against a growing number of openly pious Turks, was fuelled by President Ahmet Necdet Sezer's refusal to invite wives of law-makers and other top officials who cover their heads to his annual Republic Day reception.
Only a handful of law-makers from the conservative ruling Justice and Development Party showed up for the event on Wednesday at the pink presidential palace in Ankara's posh Cankaya neighbourhood.
“What the President has done is disrespectful,” said Mehmet Elkatmis, who was among some 300 ruling party law-makers who boycotted the bash. “Members of Parliament represent the people.”
Religious sensitivity is especially high now as millions of Muslims here keep daylight fasts for the holy month of Ramadan, which began on Monday. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose wife Emine was kept off the guest list, ordered members of his cabinet to show up at the party in a bid to ease tensions, and most did. “Even if our hearts are heavy, we will continue to serve,” Mr Erdogan said. “Republic Day is not exclusively celebrated in Cankaya (the presidential palace) but across the nation.”
More than half the cabinet ministers, including Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, are married to women who cover their heads. Recent surveys show that more than 60 per cent of Turkish women do this.
Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, soon to report on the headscarf issue in Turkey, accused President Sezer of undermining religious freedoms and equal rights for Turkish women.
Under Turkey's constitution, the president is meant to be a neutral figure. With its parliamentary democracy and free market economy, Turkey prides itself on being one of the most Western-oriented and modern societies in the Islamic world.
Turkish women enjoy many rights not extended to women in other Muslim countries. Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern republic, allowed women to vote as early as 1934 and encouraged them to work and shed the Islamic-style veil.
Ataturk saw the veil as a symbol not only of sexual repression but also of Islamic militancy. Such thinking is shared today by Turkey's powerful generals, who view themselves as the custodians of Ataturk's secular legacy, a role enshrined in the current constitution, which they drew after their third and last direct intervention in 1980.
In 1997, the military forced the country's first Islamist-led government to step down amid charges that it was seeking to introduce Islamic rule. It remains suspicious of Mr Erdogan, who began his political career anti-Western and overtly pro-Islamic. Since taking power in parliamentary elections a year ago, Mr Erdogan has disavowed his radical past and sought to steer a middle course between the restrictions imposed by the military and the constitution, and the demands of his pious constituents, a formula pundits here call “Islam Lite”. But the generals made it clear last week that they agreed with President Sezer's stance on headscarves.
