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Al-Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 May 1999 Issue No. 429 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 May 1999 Issue No. 429
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Books Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Furore over a headscarf
By Gareth Jenkins
Early this week, Turkish security dispersed demonstrators protesting a ban on head scarves in public offices
and schools (photo: AP)
Last Friday, Vural Savas, Turkey's chief public prosecutor, applied to the Constitutional Court for the closure of the Islamist Virtue Party (VP) just five days after the swearing in of new members of parliament had to be suspended when Merve Kavakci, a newly elected VP deputy, entered the chamber in a headscarf.
The Turkish establishment maintains that the wearing of a headscarf in an official institution is an assault of the secular nature of the Turkish State. Noisy protests by members of the Democratic Left Party (DLP) of caretaker Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit forced Kavakci to leave the chamber without taking the oath, and triggered a week-long barrage of outraged accusations from the Turkish establishment.
The affair has dominated the Turkish press, overshadowing ongoing negotiations to form a coalition government following the inconclusive 18 April general elections in which the VP emerged as the third largest party with 111 seats in the 550-seat unicameral parliament, behind the DLP with 136 seats and the ultra-nationalist National Movement Party (NMP) with 130 seats.
Yet Kavakci remains defiant. In a press conference held after the furore in parliament she attacked those who had prevented her from taking her oath. "They say that my headscarf is a political symbol. But I wear this headscarf because of my personal choice," she said.
But there is also little doubt that Kavakci has built a political career around her decision to wear a headscarf. A divorced mother of two, the 31-year-old Kavakci trained in the US as a computer engineer before returning to Turkey to spend six years working in the women's commission at the Islamist Welfare Party (WP), the forerunner of the VP. In the run-up to the 18 April elections Kavakci repeatedly insisted that being able to wear a headscarf was a matter of "humanrights".
For the last week the Turkish mainstream press has published a series of allegations against Kavakci, ranging from claims that she is an American citizen to reports that, at a conference of the Islamic Association of Palestine held in Chicago in 1997, she called for armed struggle to establish an Islamic state in Turkey.
The furore also prompted a statement by Turkey's rigorously secular army. "While the Turkish Armed Forces are here the fundamentalists will never come to power," declared Lieutenant General Sami Zig. "However difficult the conditions, however many traitors appear in our midst, we shall always be strong enough to annihilate them."
Over the last 40 years the Turkish Constitutional Court has banned 22 political parties. Few doubt that there is a real possibility that VP will also be closed.
In January 1998 the court banned the WP on the grounds that it had violated the constitution's provisions on secularism. A few weeks before the announcement, at a private meeting with his colleagues, the then Chief of Staff Hakki Karadayi predicted that the ban would divide the Islamist movement. At the time most analysts thought the opposite, predicting that closure would make the Islamists stronger. But Karadayi appears to have been proven right.
In the 18 April elections the VP won only 15.4 per cent of the vote, compared with 22.1 per cent for the WP at the last election it contested in December 1995. Kavakci's decision to enter parliament in her headscarf now threatens to split the VP with many party members arguing that the party was not yet strong enough and should have bided its time before trying to confront the secular establishment. Last Thursday (6 May), VP Deputy Chairman Aydin Menderes submitted his resignation, citing the damage to the party as a result of the Kavakci incident.
The Constitutional Court has yet to announce a date for a decision on the VP's closure. But the application has nevertheless ensured that none of the other political parties will allow the VP in any government coalition.
Just as Kavakci is unlikely to remove her headscarf, so is her being sworn in as an MP while she is still wearing it. Many in the VP, who had worked hard to convince the public that the VP was more moderate than the WP, are furious over what they see as Kavakci's obstinacy while her supporters are bitter at the half-hearted support she has received from the party moderates. With the party excluded from power, the internal recriminations and divisions are likely to intensify.
