mideastmessenger.com

PHOTO: Turkish women in head scarves, Charles Roffey, flickr. 

Turkey’s parliament voted on Saturday to amend the constitution allowing women to wear head scarves on college campuses.

Turkey’s population is overwhelmingly Muslim, but the country’s secular nature has resulted in a wide range of adherence to religious practices.

The changes immediately brought cries of foul from politicians and Turkish citizens who saw this as a slight to the extreme secularism that modern Turkey was founded on. Tens of thousands participated in protests in Ankara, the capital. Many carried pictures of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the man who took power after a coup brought down the crumbling sultanate in 1909. 

Ataturk, whose last name was given to him after he took power and means “father of the Turks”, commanded a strict secularism and led the country through a series of modernizations.

The current prime minster Recep Erdogan is head of a party that does not shy away from religion and has instituted changes to allow Islam to be practiced more freely in the country.

“We will end the sufferings of our girls at university gates,” he said.

Will women who wear head scarves on campus be discriminated against? What will be Europe’s reaction be to this development? Turkey has hopes to join the European Union, but some European nations are nervous to allow a majority Muslim country.