Would he also publicly side with Turkish leaders and opinion makers who call for lifting the notorious headscarf ban in Turkey? I strongly doubt it. It is good that the US administration feels relatively more comfortable in criticizing Article 301, which makes it a crime to insult "Turkishness." Thanks to a broad interpretation by some ultra-nationalist lawyers and prosecutors, the law has effectively been used as a tormenting tool against some of the countries finest minds, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and assassinated Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink. I'm sure the US government would be happy if the country it wants to see become a future EU member leaves behind such laws and practices.
In the meantime, one cannot help but ask whether the US has a clear position on the decades-old headscarf ban, especially in universities, which have been turning away some of the country's finest female minds. Same nationalist anti-reform circles in civil society and the state establishment are leading the persecution of these women. Yet we have not observed a principled approach on the matter from successive US administrations. True, they always mention the debate in their annual human rights and religious freedom reports, but they never take sides.
Let alone criticizing the headscarf ban, throughout my more than 10-year journalistic career in Washington, I have never heard a US official publicly say the headscarf ban (at least the one at universities) in Turkey is a "human rights violation." And that includes those who specialize in human rights and democracy.
The last time I asked this question to a US official was when I interviewed Fried on July 3, 2006. (I didn't know back then that Fried's notion of democracy promotion in Turkey would not go further than saying the US doesn't take sides when the Turkish military issued a coup threat in April 2007). Fried replied, "I certainly don't want to express an opinion about this debate in Turkey, except to say that this is -- like in Turkey as in France -- part of a normal debate of a normal democratic society."
Obviously, this was not Fried's personal position, because US officials are under strict guidance on what to say or not to say publicly. One of the most far-reaching comments I've heard on the headscarf problem from a US official came from Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom John Hanford on Sept. 1, 2004. Hanford spoke of the "controversial" headscarf issue in "certain countries" of the world, France in particular. He went on to say: "And we have spoken out on this and said we believe that Muslims, as long as they have peaceful intentions and are simply acting on the dictates of their conscience and are not doing so under provocation and are not provoking others, why shouldn't they be allowed to wear this? Why shouldn't Sikhs be allowed to wear turbans? This is the standard of religious freedom that we seek to promote around the world."
It was good to hear that. But the US government's history of talking about and pursuing that "standard" in Turkey is an embarrassing one. US policy toward Turkey is mainly formulated by Fried's office, not Hanford. Although Fried once depicted the headscarf law in France as "controversial" (Senate testimony on April 5, 2006), one cannot imagine him stating that the headscarf ban in Turkey is also "controversial."
The US State Department notes, "Because the promotion of human rights is an important national interest, the United States seeks to hold governments accountable to their obligations under universal human rights norms and international human rights instruments." Do they honor their principle on the headscarf issue? Not that I know of.
Most people in charge of American policy on Turkey might sincerely think by using the previous approach they are protecting overall US national interests. They refrain from intimidating the oppressive civilian and bureaucratic elite and the social base that the latter represents. Although these people have lost ground lately to the ongoing silent revolution of the conservative middle class, they still enjoy a lot of influence. On the other hand, American rhetoric on non-Turkish minority rights and restrictive laws like Article 301 also intimidates them. Why, then, do they keep so silent on headscarf issue? Is it because this is the most emotionally charged domestic debate in Turkey? Or is there also an Islamophobic element in US government thinking? I frankly can't tell.
Not taking sides at times of clear violations of democratic and human rights principles is actually equivalent to taking sides with the oppressors. Being indifferent to Turkey's Rosa Parks incidents is not only un-American but also detrimental to long-term American interests, especially if the US is really serious about promoting women's rights worldwide and supporting further integration of Muslims with global society through modern, higher education.
