Turkey’s top general on Wednesday tacitly reaffirmed the army’s opposition to women wearing the Muslim headscarf at university, a day after the religiously oriented government proposed easing a ban on it.
The staunchly secular military’s comments on the role of religion are always closely followed by financial markets and the media in a country where as recently as 1997 the army ousted a government it deemed an Islamist threat to the state.
“All segments of Turkish society know what the military thinks about the headscarf issue. I do not want to speak on this matter,” General Yasar Buyukanit told reporters in his first public comments since the government announced its plans. The army views itself as the guarantor of Muslim Turkey’s secular order and has often warned of what it says is creeping Islamisation under Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government.
Turkish secularists see the headscarf as a threat to the separation of state and religion.
But it was not immediately clear whether or how the military might try to stop the planned reform. The army failed last year to block the election of ex-Islamist Abdullah Gul as president despite stiff warnings and mass secularist rallies. Nobody in today’s Turkey seriously expects a military coup, though as recently as 1997 the generals, acting with public support, ousted a government it deemed too Islamist. The present government has strong support in the country. Financial markets were little changed after Buyukanit’s comments, made during a televised meeting with a Macedonian minister visiting Ankara.
Erdogan’s ruling centre-right AK Party, which has Islamist roots, and opposition nationalists, who are traditionally seen as close to the army, sent a proposal to parliament on Tuesday aimed at easing the ban on headscarves in universities. The proposal involves amending two articles of Turkey’s constitution and a law governing the higher education body.
It would allow women who tie their headscarf in the traditional Turkish way under the chin to attend university. But the ban would continue to apply to the increasingly popular wrap-round headscarf, seen as a symbol of political Islam. Other forms of Islamic dress such as the Burqa, which conceals the whole body, would also remain banned.
Parliament will vote on the changes at two sessions on Feb 6 and Feb 9, said AK Party lawmaker Burhan Kuzu, who heads parliament’s constitutional commission.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s military on Wednesday dismissed suggestions of any link to an ultra-nationalist gang being investigated on accusations it sought to engineer a coup against the country’s Islamist-rooted government in 2009.
Police have filed charges against 29 people, including retired army officers, as part of their probe into a far-right group known as Ergenekon, suspected of planning bombings and assassinations calculated to trigger an army takeover.
The “Ergenekon” scandal has shone a spotlight on Turkey’s ‘deep state’, code for ultra-nationalists in the security forces and state bureaucracy who are ready to bend the law or act against the government in pursuit of their political aims.
The group’s aim was to stage a series of bombings and assassinations – including of Turkey’s Nobel Literature Laureate Orhan Pamuk – in order to frighten the public, sow chaos and provoke a military takeover, the newspapers say.
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