World | Other World Stories
Rectors warn of campus chaos over headscarf
Controversial move will provoke violence and destroy secular state, say university officials.
- Reuters
- Published: 01:39 February 2, 2008
Ankara: The Turkish government's plans to allow female students to wear the Muslim headscarf at university will provoke campus chaos and street violence and end up destroying the secular state, university rectors said on Friday.
The rectors are part of a Turkish secular elite, which also embraces army generals and the judiciary, that sees the headscarf as a symbol of political Islam and thus a threat to the separation of state and religion.
Parliament is expected to approve next week a constitutional amendment sponsored by the ruling AK Party and the MHP nationalist opposition party, aimed at easing the ban on the headscarf for university students.
"After such changes in the constitution and the law, the Republic of Turkey would inevitably turn into a religious state," Mustafa Akaydin, head of Turkey's inter-university council, said to loud applause from dozens of academics. "We are worried that the universities will be plunged into chaos... Universities are the venue for knowledge, not for [religious] faith," he said, reading out a statement unanimously approved by the rectors after an emergency meeting in Ankara.
Some professors chanted "Turkey is secular and will remain secular" and held up a banner that read: "Enough already, wake up! Let's protect the principles and revolution of Ataturk and the secular republic!"
Kemal Ataturk is the revered soldier-statesman who founded the secular Turkish republic in 1923. Secularists plan a rally against the headscarf today at his Ankara mausoleum.
Related Links
Under the government plan, the ban on the headscarf would remain for teachers and civil servants, but Akaydin said the change would "inevitably" spread in time to the civil service.
More from Other World Stories
More from World
News Editor's choice
-
Allies quit ruling coalition in Nepal
Political row could trigger months of street protests and violence
-
Qatar blaze 'started at nursery'
Fire killed 19 including 13 children, at Doha’s main shopping centre
-
Jagan jailed over illegal assets
Andhra Pradesh leader accused of corruption, cheating, conspiracy
