Turkey's Prime Minister, Recep Thayyip Erdogan, intends to lift the ban on headscarves across universities. He considered that the ban on the hijab violates religious freedom.
The party he leads, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP), will keep trying, even though in 2008 the Constitutional Court rejected the AKP's request to lift the ban.
After last month's referendum on constitutional changes to overhaul the courts, the AKP brought the sensitive issue back on the government's work agenda. "We agree with the public on the issue of the headscarf," Erdogan said in a speech to students in Istanbul.
"We don't want to disappoint the younger generation. There is no point in interfering too much in religious freedom and education, ”said Erdogan.
Even though it has a Muslim majority population, even the former center of the Islamic Khilafah of the Bani Utsmani, Turkey adheres to secularism. The headscarf is banned in public universities and in government offices. Secular circles argue, the prohibition is to maintain a secular Republic as founded by Kemal Ataturk in 1923.
After winning a referendum on constitutional changes on September 12, Erdogan plans to draft a new constitution after elections in July 2011.
Apart from the issue of the headscarf, Erdogan's government will also revive Arabic lessons in schools. Teaching Arabic will be applied to secondary schools as an elective subject in the curriculum, in addition to English, French and German.
The spread of Arabic language teaching will be implemented not only in secondary schools, but also in a number of Turkish universities and private educational institutions. (al-arabiya / afp / islammemo). *
