TURKEY:The ban on women wearing headscarves on the campuses of Turkey's state universities should be lifted as part of a proposed constitution, its prime minister has insisted.
The long-awaited draft proposals for a new constitution were being considered yesterday by Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and are expected to be the focus of a major public national debate on Turkey's secularist tradition and the place of minorities like the Kurds.
Mr Erdogan said in an interview on Tuesday, however, that Turkey had to solve "the problem of the headscarf" in the changes to the constitution which he insisted would strengthen the country's democratic and secular foundations.
He told Turkey-based foreign journalists that it was unfair that some girls were denied a higher education because they were not allowed to wear the headscarf at state universities.
"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 this problem," Mr Erdogan said.
It was part of a wider ambition to introduce a fully civilian constitution for Turkey, a goal that was shared by Turks of all political and social persuasions, he said.
He pointed out that Turkey's two most recent constitutions were drafted by the military after coups in 1960 and 1980.
Mr Erdogan promised that a wide-ranging debate would be held on the draft which has been prepared by constitutional scholars but whose final shape has been moulded by AKP representatives.
"We want a constitution that is going to provide and protect a state that is a democratic, secular, social state of law," he said. "This constitution is going to point Turkey in a certain direction and it is our duty to debate it and consult with people in the widest possible sense." Women have not been allowed to wear the headscarf on state university campuses since 1982.
Several commentators have warned that any removal of the ban at state universities would be the beginning of a slow but inexorable move towards forcing all women to cover their heads in public.
Mr Erdogan was clearly enjoying himself as he sparred with reporters about how his young but over-achieving party is portrayed abroad.
By turns combative and smiling, Mr Erdogan appeared to be as frustrated as some other party officials at the constant references to the fact that the AKP has its roots in political Islam and that it is obsessed with social and religious issues.
"What you write about the AKP in your newspapers makes me sad. Doesn't a person have the right to be in politics while being religious in his private life? In western countries this is considered a good thing. So why not in Turkey?" said Mr Erdogan.
Following the party's second landslide election victory in July, the AKP has been seeking to steer the party's image away from the Islamic headscarf and towards its own view of itself a party as committed as any that has governed in the past to maintaining the country's secular and democratic traditions.
The prime minister is aware that his radical vision for political, constitutional and social reform rests on the success of his economic programme. At the centre of this is his often-stated aim of raising per capita income to $10,000 (€7,200) by 2013 from about $6,000 today.
He reiterated this aim and promised to continue the reform programme that the government had pursued in its first term. "We have made very good economic progress that we believe in," he said, citing as evidence the 2.4 million jobs that were created in the government's last term in office.
A theme of the discussion was his clear impatience with the association between his party and religious conservatism. He deliberately eschewed the label "Muslim democrats" for his party because "it exploits religion", he said. Instead, he insisted, the AKP was comprised of "conservative democrats".
He would not countenance any accommodation with what he called the government's "three red lines" - ethnic, regional or religious nationalism. The government, he stressed, has MPs from 80 of Turkey's 81 provinces. Mr Erdogan is clearly proud of the enhanced mandate won in the July election sparked by a confrontation between the government and the military over alleged threats to Turkey's secular system.
"The decision-makers are not the military but the people," he said.