Turkish Debate

There’s a bit of a dust up taking place in Turkey right now.  The moderate Islamic AKP party that came to power in the early 00s in Turkey have successfully pushed through constitutional amendments that lift a ban on wearing head scarves.  The ban was put in place in the mid 90s by the ruling secular government as a reaction to a growing religious middle class in Turkey displaying more traditional Islamic garb.

The fear amongst secular Turks is that allowing head scarves is just the first step down a slippery slope that will end with Turkish society looking a lot more like their theocratic Islamic neighbors in the Middle East and a lot less like the liberal Western democracies to the in Europe. 

I have to say, however, that I’m on the side of the Islamic Party this time around.  This quote by Cemil Cicek, a member of the conservative party, from the article above sums up the situation quite nicely:

We are not trying to bring a ban; we are trying to lift a ban.

Imposed secularism isn’t much better than imposed religion, especially when your country is trying to model itself off of Western democracies where freedom of religious practice is tolerated or accepted.  If Islamic women want to express their religious values by wearing a head scarf then they should be allowed to.

In the end this issue boils down to wealthy elites trying to impose their will on an Islamic middle class that would just like freedom of expression.  Secular elements of Turkish society are acting no better than the religious regimes that they are trying to combat.  The instant the Islamic party in Turkey starts behaving like a theocracy is the instant that secular Turks should take to the streets in protest, but marching against freedom of expression just hurts their cause in the end and paints the secular movement in a bad light internationally. 

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