Turkey: headscarf squabble

Turkey's Islamic-oriented government continues to squabble with secular groups. The country's Constitutional Court has said it will very soon start hearing a case brought by two opposition parties to overturn recent legislation to remove the ban on university students wearing the Islamic headscarf or 'turban' on university premises. 

This reform was the catalyst for a zealous secularist prosecutor to bring a case to the court seeking to close the ruling AKP and to ban 71 leading officials, including President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, from politics for five years on the grounds that they are seeking to create an Islamic state.  Tensions have mounting in recent weeks, with accusations being traded between the AKP government and various elements of the staunchly secularist judiciary.  The judiciary sees itself as the custodian of secularism after the failure of the military last year to prevent Gul's election as president. 

Secularists see the headscarf ban as creeping Islamicisation.  The AKP and many independent observers see it as a human rights issue.  The secularist nationalist elite in Turkey seems stuck in a xenophobic and conspiracy-prone time warp that is hard for outsiders to understand. It often seems to at odds with the pious provincial bourgeoisie that is the bedrock of AKP support, the liberal EU-supported reforms it advocates, and the modern world itself.