Why the end of the headscarf
ban is good for secularists
ELDAR MAMEDOV
Thursday, October 21, 2010
It’s business as
usual in Turkey. The ruling Islam-rooted Justice and Development Party, or AKP,
in power since 2002, received another ringing endorsement from the voters –
this time on its proposal for constitutional reform. And, just like after its
previous major triumph – in the parliamentary elections in 2007 – the AKP seems
to be more interested in lifting the headscarf ban in the universities, a
hot-button issue for its electorate, than in pressing for a full reform that
would enhance individual freedoms for all and enjoy support across Turkey’s
various divides. What is different this time is that the main opposition
secularist Republican People’s Party, or CHP, seems to be ready to support the
government on the headscarf issue.
It is right for
CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu
to do so. Much has been written about the unjustness of this ban insofar
as it denies adult women their right to dress as they please. What is seldom
mentioned is that the end of the ban could actually be good news for Turkish
secularists.
Setting the
headscarf free will deny the AKP and the wider conservative constituency one of
the two main grievances (the other one being the Palestinian issue) that glues
it together. The AKP will have to compete on real, bread and butter, issues,
rather than symbolic ones. The headscarf ban explains why the AKP, despite
being in power for eight years, is still able to portray itself as an underdog
party. Now the military tutelage has effectively been abolished, removing the
headscarf ban is another decisive step to end this aberration.
Second, the end
of the state-enforced ban on headscarves will shift the attention to the
problem of "neighborhood pressure" – a term coined by prominent
Turkish sociologist Şerif Mardin
to describe the creeping imposition of conservative and religious norms on the
country. Abundant examples of this pressure were reported in the research
project led by another Turkish scholar, Binnaz Toprak, in 2008. The findings of this study suggest that
many women wear headscarves for reasons other than faith and choice.
Seen from this
perspective, the choice of the woman who, after studying religious texts and
considering other alternatives, has decided to veil herself can reasonably be
deemed free. However, if a woman has done so simply by bowing to the
expectations of others in her family, community, neighborhood or village, the
actual freedom of her choice should be questioned. It would be naive to assume
that all the girls strolling down İstiklal
Avenue in Istanbul in their fashionable headscarves have made a fully free and
informed choice to cover themselves, much less so their counterparts in small
Anatolian towns. Veiling is not a spontaneous trend. It should be seen within
the context of a conscious campaign to, as Perry Anderson put it in his
elegantly written “New Old Order,” bend the society in a more consistently
observant mould. This includes faith-based literature, religious courses,
advice from the state-run Religious Affairs Directorate and coercion, as well
as more subtle forms of pressure, even Islamic fashion.
AKP rule has
greatly enhanced this trend. When Turkish women accept the first lady and other
covered wives of the AKP leaders as their role models, it is not because they
have suddenly become more pious. It is because the headscarf now symbolizes
their belonging to the “right” community. There is a widespread perception that
government contracts and promotions are now more easily available to men whose
wives are covered.
In the meantime,
the reality of women who object to the headscarf and other forms of veiling is
distorted. Their concerns about the veiling trend are dismissed as the
prejudices of “upper-class, elite, Westernized” women, alien to “the values and
the culture of the nation.” If lifting the headscarf ban is an exercise in
democracy, nothing can excuse the failure to take the concerns and fears of
these women very seriously. Islamic conservatives and their liberal allies must
accept that it is not only the state that cannot impose on the woman the way
she lives and dresses, but also other people, be it family, neighborhood or
religious community.
The third reason
secularists should welcome the end of the ban is because it could re-invigorate
their intellectual opposition to the headscarf as opposed to relying on the
state to repress it. They should base their arguments not on the outdated
discourse of “reaching Western civilization,” but on the broader issues of
gender equality and female advancement. There is an intrinsic link between the
headscarf and inequality. The headscarf sexually segregates women and men,
erects countless walls between them, with women mostly relegated to home-making
duties. The republican Kemalist project has been
caricaturized by conservatives and liberals alike as a poor mimicry of the
West, but the fact remains that by discarding the veil and promoting sexually
mixed public space it achieved much better results in liberating women than any
Islamist project.
While the AKP
has distanced itself in many ways from it’s
explicitly Islamist predecessors, its views on gender issues remain heavily
patriarchal. It is no coincidence that under the AKP Turkey is seriously
slipping in terms of women’s employment, political participation and
leadership. While women are numerous and often occupy leading positions in
secular institutions, such as the top business club Turkish Industrialists' and
Businessmen's Association, or TÜSİAD, they are firmly confined to the
backstage in the conservative establishment.
Secularists are
right to oppose the headscarf. However, bans and discrimination are not only
unjust and undemocratic, they are also counterproductive. What secularists
should aim at instead is creating conditions that would make the use of the
headscarf redundant in the long run: support free and informed choice for every
woman as opposed to relying on state and/or community pressure and work
relentlessly to achieve real gender equality.
*Eldar Mamedov is an international
relations analyst based in Brussels.
© 2009 Hurriyet Daily News
URL: www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=why-the-end-of-the-headscarf-ban-is-good-for-secularists-2010-10-21