Headscarf Politics in Turkey: A Postcolonial Reading (review)

The founders of the Republic of Turkey are often praised for undertaking a successful modernization project, and the country is presented as a model to be emulated by the rest of the Muslim-majority countries. However, some analysts also point to the shortcomings and socio-political costs of their nation-building and modernization efforts. The implementation of a particular secularism, called "laicism" — which curbs the role of religion in the public domain, on one hand, and maintains the state funding and control over the religious affairs of the public and imposes the Hanafi Sunni teaching on all Muslims on the other — has been one of those problematic aspects. Headscarf Politics in Turkey focuses on the impact of the state policies of laicism and modernization on women who have been covering their hair and chronicles their saga.

The practices of concealing, segregation, and seclusion of Muslim women have been a recurrent item of debate in both Muslim and non-Muslim communities. Some oppose various garments that attempt to conceal women's hair, neck, face, and/ or the curvature of the body and consider them repressive, traditional, and a signifier of the subjugated or low status of women. Others defend them as requirements of Islam, for underscoring the Islamic identity of the women wearing them, or for allowing women from conservative circles to enter the public space and acquire instruments of empowerment such as education, employment, and socialization. The rise of political Islam since the late 1970s, which involved both state-mandated dress codes (e.g., Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia) and a spread of notions about "proper Islamic attires" led "covered women" to increase in number and become more visible on the streets of Muslim-majority states or countries with sizeable immigrant Muslim populations. The fact that many of these women are highly educated or brought up in "secular households" has challenged the assumptions about "concealing" being a marker of traditionalism, ignorance, or subjugation.

Thus, the literature on the conditions and concealing of Muslim women — including the predicament of women who assume "concealing" as a requirement of their religion but face public harassment, exclusion, and state-imposed bans, as in the cases of France and Turkey — has proliferated during the last two decades. What would distinguish Headscarf Politics in Turkey from the other writings on the subject is its author's background. Merve Kavakci Islam is not only a social scientist but also a "covered Muslim woman" who personally suffered the consequences of the state policy and institutional regulations that ban the wearing of headscarves by public employees, school teachers, and students. The relatively quietly pursued policy became a controversial issue in the 1980s, when the military government issued a regulation that intended to forcefully implement the ban for civil servants and the Council of Higher Education, which it established to depoliticize and regulate universities, barred female students with headscarves from attending classes and taking exams. Students resisted the ban in various ways, including hunger strikes and street protests, and faced violent repression by the police and military forces. Some compromised by removing their headscarf on university premises, wearing a hat over the headscarf, or putting on a wig. Others gave up their education, but those who had the means and family support left the country to pursue their higher education abroad.

Merve Kavakci Islam started to study at the Medical School of Ankara University but left for the United States to complete her college education. She later returned to Turkey and joined an Islamist political party. When the Welfare Party was closed down for anti-secular activities, she joined its re-embodiment, the Virtue Party (VP), and was elected to the parliament in 1999. However, she was prevented from taking the parliamentarian oath, when she approached the platform wearing a headscarf. Her seat in the parliament and Turkish citizenship were revoked on the grounds that she had assumed US citizenship without following the proper procedures. When the VP was closed down for anti-secular activities, she...