ANKARA—Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has accused opponents of the Islamic-style headscarf for women of seeking to sow division in secular but predominantly Muslim Turkey.
Turkey's Islamist-rooted government has come under pressure from secular opponents for its plans to lift a decades-old ban on women students wearing the headscarf at university.
"I have a few words for those who claim that secularism will be destroyed, Turkey will become a state of religion, the basic values of the Republic will be demolished, and people who do not wear headscarves will be under pressure," Erdogan was quoted as saying in a speech in Istanbul late on Saturday.
"Aren't you the ones dividing the society by blaming everybody, who does not think or dress like you, for being the enemy of secularism or the regime," Erdogan said, according to state news agency Anatolian.
More than 100,000 secular Turks rallied on Saturday against the headscarf reform, a move they say would usher in a stricter form of Islam in Turkey.
Turkey's powerful secular establishment, which includes army generals, judges and university rectors, sees the headscarf as a symbol of radical Islam and believe it threatens the country's secular order. Turkey is 99 percent Muslim.
As recently as 1997, Turkey's army generals, acting with public support, ousted a government they deemed too Islamist.
Financial markets are nervously watching the debate.
Last year's secular rallies against the ruling AK Party's choice of a former Islamist, Abdullah Gul, as president sparked an early parliamentary election.
Parliament is expected to approve a constitutional amendment this week sponsored by the centre-right, pro-business AK Party and the opposition Nationalist Movement Party.
Erdogan said the constitutional amendment was solely related to the freedom of clothing at higher education institutions. He said the issue was a matter of religious and personal freedoms.
The ban would remain for teachers and civil servants.
