And so it begins. Sharia Alert from Turkey. From Reuters :
ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was quoted in the Financial Times on Wednesday as saying he wanted to lift the ban on the Islamic headscarf in universities as part of a planned constitutional overhaul.
The remarks by Erdogan, whose Islamist-rooted AK Party won a new five-year mandate in July elections, could reignite tensions with Turkey’s powerful secular elite, including army generals, which suspects him of wanting to boost the role of religion.
“The right to higher education cannot be restricted because of what a girl wears. There is no such problem in Western societies but there is a problem in Turkey and I believe it is the first duty of those in politics to solve the problem,” he told the FT in an interview in Ankara.
The secularists regard the headscarf as a symbolic threat to Turkey’s separation of state and religion. They also fear any lifting of the ban would put social pressure on uncovered women to start wearing the headscarf in overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey.