Amnesty International is urging the Turkish government to use this crucial moment to act concretely to decriminalize dissent, at a time when a new constitution is being written where such issues are being debated and when promises have been made in this respect to the PKK in return for peace. A package of reforms called the [...]
Publication date is early November. The excitement (well, my excitement) is mounting. Here’s the publisher’s website with a pdf of chapter 1.
Such an innocent scene — the receiving line of a reception at the presidential residence in Ankara… Yet contained within this image are the powerful contradictions of Turkish political and social life. On Oct. 29 the Republic of Turkey celebrated the 87th anniversary of its founding. Representatives from the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and the [...]
Leyla Şahin v. Turkey was a 2005 European Court of Human Rights case brought against Turkey by Leyla Şahin that challenged a Turkish law which bans wearing the Islamic headscarf at universities and other educational and state institutions. The verdict upheld the Turkish law with 16 votes to 1. While recognizing the Turkish state’s right to intervention, the [...]
Chief Prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals, Abdurrahman Yalçınkaya, citing the Turkish constitution and the European Court of Human Rights, announced that the recent actions of the Higher Education Board (YÖK) to allow headscarves on campus contradicted both national and international law. “Recognizing the validity of [wearing] the headscarf at higher education institutions on the [...]
This post was updated. Here’s the predictable fallout of the Higher Education Council’s recent tacit permission for women students to wear headscarves on campus (see my post below). President Gul’s wife attended a formal reception for the first time (even though I believe it is illegal for women with headscarves to attend formal government events. [...]
While the “headscarf problem” is being solved in practice at universities, which will now allow them in classes, no such “opening” has occurred in politics where separate dual receptions have been the norm, one inviting politicians and uncovered wives, and one to which politicians could bring their covered wives, including the wives of the president [...]
It now seems possible in practice for women who cover their heads to attend university. Richard Peres, an expert on discrimination law living in Istanbul, writes this essay about the problems Turkish women face AFTER they graduate. Where will they work? What can they do with their degrees? He discusses the discrimination faced by women [...]
This post has been UPDATED. The AKP and now the opposition secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP) under its new leadership are both seeking a way to change the constitution to allow women who cover their heads to attend university, something that is presently banned. But it looks like YÖK (the Higher Education Council that sets [...]
This old shoe leather scrap of an idea keeps coming up again and again: The problem of banning headscarves from campus can be solved if the students simply tied their scarves differently! Here’s my response to this when the idea was debated two years ago. As I wrote in an Op-Ed for Zaman: Meaning is in our [...]