ANKARA—Turkey's president and prime minister pledged on Tuesday to uphold secularism as they sought to ease tensions over a plan to lift a ban on women students wearing the Muslim headscarf at university.
Turkey's secular establishment, which includes army generals, judges and university rectors, fear lifting the ban would undermine the separation of state and religion, one of the founding principles of the modern Turkish republic.
"What we are trying to do is completely (about) the right to education at university," Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told his ruling AK Party in a speech broadcast live.
Two-thirds of Turkish women wear headscarves and many of them stopped going to university after a ban on wearing them in public institutions was extended to universities in 1989.
Those opposed to lifting the ban see the headscarf as a symbol of their worst fears that Turkey could eventually slide into Islamic sharia law as practised in neighbouring Iran. "We are closely following the worries and criticisms expressed in public," Erdogan said, in an apparent softening of tone towards his opponents.
Erdogan, a pious Muslim whose wife and daughters wear the headscarf, repeated his AK Party's pledge to uphold secularism.
In a separate statement Gul, a popular former Islamist, also vowed to uphold the secular order. Turkey is 99 percent Muslim, although many are not practising.
More than 120,000 secular Turks in the capital Ankara and other cities rallied on Saturday against the headscarf reform.
Last year's secular rallies against the Islamist-rooted AK Party's choice of Gul as president helped prompt an early parliamentary election.
The headscarf debate is central to Turkey's complex identity, as the young democracy struggles to meet the demands of a secular, pro-Western, and predominantly urban population and a pious Muslim one that used to be based in rural areas.
Divisive Issue
Many secular Turks remain sceptical about Gul and Erdogan's promises to uphold secularism given their past in political Islam and their long-standing desire to lift the headscarf ban.
Deniz Baykal, leader of the largest opposition Republican People's Party, has threatened to go to the Constitutional Court if the ban is lifted.
"He (Erdogan) says 'entrust secularism to us.' I would rather entrust liver to a cat than secularism to you (Erdogan)," Baykal said to the applause of his party members.
An opinion poll published this week by Ankara-based Metropoll Research showed that 65 percent of Turks backed removing the ban on headscarves at universities.
Parliament is expected to approve the constitutional amendment this week sponsored by the centre-right AK Party and the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).
The decision by the AK Party to push the reform reflects its confidence after it won a sweeping re-election last July.
Financial markets are closely following the headscarf debate, which analysts say is one of the most significant moves on religious rights since a military coup in 1980.
As recently as 1997, Turkey's army generals, acting with public support, ousted a government they deemed too Islamist.
Under the new proposal the headscarf ban would remain in place for teachers and civil servants.
Headscarves have been discouraged by authorities since the modern Turkish state was founded in 1923, although the real crackdown came after a military coup in 1980.
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