Turkey’s progress fosters retardartion
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Imagine a group of high school girls being stopped at the entrance of their school building by a barricade of armed security forces because they choose to wear the veil. This happens every day in present-day Turkey, which was established under secular principles, and is now uprooting and shattering the public religious identity. And all the clamor and tumult is because veiling is favoured among the youth. Is that comprehensible?
For more than 10 years, Turkey’s Republican People’s Party (CHP) has made it their mission to ban the hijab among women, to uphold Ataturk’s secular ideology. This meant girls were dragged out of class, put on a bus, driven out to the middle of nowhere and told to get off and go home. Others were locked in a classroom and convinced that the veil, a symbol of Islam, retards modernisation. Fed up with the constant harassment, Turkish girls either dropped out of school, moved to a different country to receive an education or wore wigs on top of their veil to enter government buildings. For 10 years this has been the case: veiled women were oppressed, deprived of a higher education and seen as parasites infecting society.
A few weeks ago, however, the government made an unexpected decision. The pro-Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), which received the majority of votes at the parliamentary elections last summer, enforced a new law allowing Turkish girls to go to university wearing the veil. While some were celebrating this reform, others were outraged.
Even with the new law, some professors aren’t allowing veiled girls to enter their lectures. Their main concern is: Islam will bring us down; Islam will corrupt us and hinder our progress. But how can they preach this when 98% of Turkey’s population is Muslim? How can they force a person to choose between their faith and their education? More importantly, how can they discriminate against the majority of their population but tolerate a Christian wearing a cross?
If secularism is the way leading to modernisation and Islam isn’t, then isn’t it true that depriving veiled women of a higher education —- despite the new law —- is also a form of retardation?
Bear in mind, Turkey is struggling to become a part of the European Union (EU), but if it doesn’t respect its own people and drives them to seek scholarships for an education in Christian countries like Austria and Germany, then how in the world can they expect the EU to respect them? Too bad Turkey is unaware that it’s chasing its own tail.
kkhalifa@aucegypt.edu