Turkey to allow Islamic head scarves in Uni

ANKARA, Turkey, Saturday, AP -- Turkey's government is expected to lift a decades-old ban on Islamic head scarves in universities today in a significant victory against the secular establishment.

In predominantly Muslim Turkey, which seeks European Union membership, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party has channeled the frustration of devout masses who feel excluded from the establishment into political action.''We will end the sufferings of our girls at university gates,'' Erdogan said Thursday in reference to pious female students who have been forced to remove their head scarves at the entrance to campuses. Some have attended classes wearing wigs.

The Parliament will hold brief debates and vote on two crucial amendments to the secular constitution to allow female students to wear head scarves on campus. The ruling party and a conservative nationalist party that supports the changes has the required two-thirds majority.

The main opposition Republican People's Party does not have enough seats to stop the measure but said it would appeal to the Constitutional Court to try to cancel it. In a second protest within a week, tens of thousands of secular Turks were expected to hold a demonstration against the measure in Ankara today.

Many analysts have cautioned that the government's move threatens to spark tensions with the secular establishment as prominent judiciary authorities _ who disbanded an Islamic party in 1998 _ vowed to defend the secular regime.

Islam and secularism are long-standing rivals in modern Turkey, founded by the revered Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923. Ataturk sought to eliminate religion's place in a society with a 99-percent Muslim population by banning religious garb and changing the alphabet from the Arabic of the Koran to Latin. Secularism became a deeply ingrained ideology.

The military leads the forces committed to preserving the staunchly secular principles of modern Turkey and have stepped into politics before. However, Erdogan, who won 47 percent of the votes in general elections, last year, has strong public backing and insists that his party is loyal to the secular traditions.

The government defends that the measure is aimed at expanding democracy and freedoms to promote the country's EU membership bid. But secularists harbor deep suspicions about real intentions of Erdogan -- who had tried to criminalize adultery before being forced to step back by the EU.

Many secular women fear that allowing head scarves in universities will lead eventually to their being pressured to cover their bodies as well. Modern Turkey has had its first Islamic-led government and an observant Muslim, Abdullah Gul, elected president last year. Heavily scarved women wearing Islamic-style robes no longer startle in fancy neighborhoods and Gul's wife, who was prevented from enrolling in university because of her head scarf, now hosts foreign dignitaries at the presidential palace. The ban on head scarves in universities has been enforced since a military coup in 1980.