Turkish PM: Head scarf ban can be lifted

Turkey's prime minister on Wednesday challenged a ban on women wearing head scarves in universities and public offices, saying there is no need to wait for a constitutional change to remove the ban, state-run media said.

The attempts to lift the ban have alarmed secularists who fear the government is raising the profile of Islam in this Muslim but secular country.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday the ban could be lifted even before a proposed constitutional amendment.

"There is no need to wait for the new constitution. Its solution is very easy. It can be solved through consensus over a sentence," the state-run Anatolia news agency quoted Erdogan as saying.

Erdogan insists that lifting the head scarf ban is merely a question of individual liberty but the country's secular establishment, including the military, regards it as a political statement aimed at undermining the nation's secular principles.

Erdogan's government is increasingly pressing for the lift of the ban, especially in universities. But Turkey's generals regard themselves as the upholders of the nation's secular traditions and have not hesitated in the past to stage coups to protect them.

When Erdogan first proposed Abdullah Gul, an observant Muslim, for president in April, the military issued a statement that hinted at intervention.

The ensuing crisis forced Erdogan to call an early general election. The ruling party's landslide victory resurrected Gul's presidential bid and Parliament voted him into the post in August.

Secularists unsuccessfully opposed Gul's candidacy partly because his wife wears a head scarf. She challenged Turkey's head scarf ban at the European Court of Human Rights — after being barred from university in 1998 — only to withdraw her complaint when her husband became foreign minister.

After the elections, Erdogan's Justice and Development Party began preparing a new constitution that will replace the current one, written during military rule following a coup in 1980.

A copy of the first draft published by Turkish media includes alternative wordings for a possible article that would allow head scarves to be worn on campuses.

The wearing of head scarves in universities was first banned shortly after the 1980 coup but the implementation of the rule varied during the law's early years.