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Erdoğan renews call for CHP to lift scarf ban after referendum
Erdoğan’s remarks came during a Justice and Development Party (AK Party) rally in the northwestern province of Edirne on Tuesday.
Turkey’s longstanding headscarf issue was swept back onto the agenda last week after Kılıçdaroğlu pledged to solve the issue if his party came to power. “I promise that the CHP will allow people to wear the headscarf. The prime minister will see. He couldn’t manage it, but we will,” the CHP leader vowed.
However, Erdoğan expressed doubts about the CHP leader’s sincerity on the headscarf issue.
“Kılıçdaroğlu keeps backpedaling on his pledges. He goes to Batman and says his party will introduce a general amnesty [for members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)]. But when he returns to Ankara, he retreats from his pledge. Then he goes to Tunceli and renews his pledge for a general amnesty. In Kayseri, however, he says the contrary. He says he did not mean a general amnesty. And in İstanbul, he says that his party will solve the headscarf problem. But what happens next? Women wearing the black chador are kicked out of the CHP rally buses,” the prime minister said.
In March 2009, CHP members attacked a woman wearing a chador who tried to get on Kılıçdaroğlu’s bus. The woman was thrown from the bus, suffering minor injuries. The CHP’s failure to appear sincere in its support for the lifting of the ban stems from past disappointments arising from previous promises it made to resolve the headscarf issue -- promises that went unfulfilled. In early February 2008, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), with the support of the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), passed a constitutional amendment that would have lifted the ban on the wearing of headscarves on university campuses. However, upon an appeal by the staunchly secular CHP and its ally, the Democratic Left Party (DSP), the Constitutional Court ruled that Parliament had violated the constitutionally enshrined principle of secularism and annulled the amendment.
Erdoğan also slammed a CHP party member’s recent calls for a compromise on the way the headscarf is worn. “It is not a must to cover the entire hair in the traditional style,” CHP Council Member Sencer Ayata said, hinting that female students could be allowed to enter university campuses if they agreed to leave some parts of their heads uncovered.
“What kind of freedom is this? Do they say similar things for uncovered girls? Do they discuss whether uncovered female students should wear stretch pants or baggy trousers?” he asked.
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