Word: headscarfs
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...First elected in 2002, Erdogan has until now skirted the politically sensitive headscarf issue. But the July election, in which his party won 47% of the popular vote, together with the appointment last month of President Abdullah Gul, a conservative Muslim, appear to have emboldened the religiously conservative party. One of its main tasks now is to revise a constitution that was introduced by a military government after a coup in 1980. The government has assigned a team of academics and lawmakers to come up with a new one. Wording of a first draft was recently leaked to the Turkish...
...scores of police armed with riot shields and metal-tipped bamboo staves. Parliamentarian Tamina Dultana, vice president of Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League party, jumped out of her Land Cruiser and charged the police, shouting, "Do or die, we will go to the airport." Within seconds her pink headscarf was swallowed by a sea of uniformed officers. As party leaders swarmed out of their cars to shout slogans they were picked up one by one by apologetic police officers who politely allowed them to finish their impromptu press conferences first. "We were ordered to arrest all the party leaders," admitted...
...President, Gul has the power to approve or veto legislation, and secularists fear that he will sign into law any bill passed by Erdogan's government without concern for the separation of religion and politics. They are also infuriated by the fact that his wife Hayrunnisa dons a headscarf - Islamic attire is restricted in government offices under laws that date back to Ataturk?s reforms...
...staunchly secular military, which rejected the nomination of Gul, the foreign minister, for the largely ceremonial presidency. The military opposed Gul's initial candidacy on the grounds that it represented a violation of Turkey's founding secularist principles - the fact that Gul's wife, a conservative Muslim, wears a headscarf in public represented a symbol of the Turkish state intolerable to the generals. Gul's nomination was eventually blocked by a parliamentary maneuver by secularist opposition parties, and the AK Party responded by calling new elections. Now, having received a resounding vote of confidence from 47% of voters in last...
...downside to this surfeit of temerity, however. When minority groups have their religious and cultural identities sidelined by policies geared at preserving laïcité, the result can be paradoxical; a retreat into the very ethnic and religious communities that French politicians so fear. Defenders of the headscarf ban are quick to point to private parochial schools as alternatives for those pupils who are unable to comply for religious reasons. But marginalizing into separate schools the very individuals to whom the Republic ought to reach out the most might not be such a good idea in the long term...