Pengharaman pemakaian tudung di Turki ditarik balik

Disertakan oleh EditorWednesday, 30 January 2008

ISTANBUL 29 Jan. – Pengharaman pemakaian tudung ditarik balik sepenuhnya apabila parti yang memerintahTurki berjaya mendapatkan persetujuan bersama dengan parti pembangkang mengenai isu itu hari ini. Perdana Menteri,Recep Tayyip Erdogan dan Parti Tindakan Kebangsaan (NAP) bersetuju untuk melakukan perubahan padaPerlembagaan Negara dan Undang-Undang Pendidikan Tinggi bagi membolehkan pelajar wanita di universiti memakaitudung. - AP ________________________________________________________________________ Turkish PM wants headscarf ban lifted asapJanuary 27, 2008 06:19am   TURKISH Prime Minister Recep TayyipErdogan said he wants a ban on the Islamic headscarf in universities abolished "as soon as possible" despite harshobjections from secularists, Anatolia news agency reported. "We want this issue to be resolved as soon as possible within the democratic parliamentarian order... It is time for thisproblem to come to an end," MrErdogan told a gathering of his Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) inIstanbul, Anatolia reported.The AKP reached a preliminary deal with an opposition party on Thursday on a constitutional amendment to lift the ban,despite severe criticism from the judiciary and members of the academic community.The AKP, the offshoot of a now-banned Islamist party, has long opposed the ban, arguing that it violates both thefreedom of conscience and the right to education.Secularist forces, including the army, senior judges and many top academics, see the headscarf as a symbol of defianceagainst Turkey's fiercely guarded secular system.Easing the restrictions, they argue, will increase conservative social pressure on women to cover up.Mr Erdogan rejected accusations that the AKP was seeking to erode secular traditions."How can you say that people who wear the headscarf are not secular?... We have a society in which those who coverup and those who do not both defend the democratic and secular state," he said."We are all defenders of the secular state," he added.In 2005, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the headscarf ban in Turkish universities was not a violation offundamental freedoms and could be necessary to protect Turkey's secular order against extremist movements.The headscarf is also banned in public offices in Turkey. Some AKP lawmakers have called for extending the plannedreform to cover public servants too. ___________________________________________________________________ Turkish Secularists Rally Against Head Scarf ReformANKARA, 18 January 2008 — A top Turkish court prosecutor condemned as unconstitutional yesterday plans by PrimeMinister Tayyip Erdogan to end a ban on the Islamic head scarf in universities, rekindling tensions over the role ofreligion. The head scarf is a highly sensitive issue in Muslim but secular Turkey, pitting Erdogan’s Islamist-rootedgovernment against a secular elite including judges and army generals who see the garment as a threat to separation ofstate and mosque.Last year, the issue triggered early parliamentary elections following mass secularist rallies and tough army warnings.“Allowing the wearing of certain garments in institutions of learning will turn them into areas of activities counter tosecularism and the unitary structure of the state,” the chief prosecutor of the Court of Appeals, Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya,said in a statement run by the state Anatolian news agency.Political parties supporting such change would bear legal responsibility for fomenting divisions among the population, hesaid, in language clearly intended to warn the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) against trying to dilute one ofthe secular republic’s key taboos.But Erdogan, who sees the head scarf as an issue of freedom of expression, is under pressure from AK Party grass-roots supporters to act quickly to remove the ban after he swept back to power in last summer’s early election. The AK