"The proposal to change the constitution has been approved. I hope this will be for the best for Turkey and hope it is done in a spirit of tolerance and reconciliation," parliamentary speaker Koksal Toptan told lawmakers after the vote.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's AK Party, which has Islamist roots, says the headscarf ban is an unfair denial of individual rights and religious liberty in a European Union candidate country where two thirds of women cover their heads.
Erdogan's own wife and daughters wear the headscarf as do those of President Abdullah Gul and many AK Party ministers.
But Turkey's old secular elite, which includes the judiciary, university rectors and army generals, regards the headscarf ban as crucial for maintaining a strict separation of state and religion.
They say lifting the ban will put social pressure on women to cover up and pave the way for a gradual lifting of a similar ban in high schools and government offices. |
Mass rally But underlining the powerful emotions the headscarf evokes, tens of thousands of people waving Turkish flags and chanting secularist slogans staged a protest rally against the changes just a few km (miles) from the parliament in central Ankara.
"Turkey is secular and will remain secular," shouted the protestors, who packed a square in downtown Ankara, filling the main artery running through the heart of the city.
A majority of the demonstrators, who were waving the red and white star and crescent flag of Turkey and bearing portraits of modern Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, were women, including some who wore headscarves.
Some were wearing headbands that read "We are following your oath" along with pictures of Ataturk, who set up the republic in 1923 on the strict separation of state and religion.
Organizers did not give a figure for the protestors, but a police officer estimated that there were less than 100,000 people at the demonstration.
It was the second large-scale demonstration against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which tabled the reform package. A similar demonstration last weekend drew 125,000 people.
"Tayyip, take your headscarf and stuff it," said the demonstrators in Ankara.
"What is being done today in parliament is to eliminate the republican regime and replace it with bigotry. They want to destroy the secular democratic republic," Gokhan Gunaydin, from the organising committee, told the crowd.
Another organiser, Tuncay Ozkan -- the owner of a television network that broadcast the protest live -- accused the government of treason.
"I am warning them, changing the constitutional regime is a crime. They should be tried for treason," he said. "We are here to defend the country."
The AKP, which is largely distrusted by secularists for its roots in a banned Islamist party, says the headscarf ban violates freedom of conscience and the right to education.
Leading academics have also warned that lifting the ban on headscarves would lead to clashes on campuses and a boycott of classes by some female academics.
The AKP says it is fully committed to secularism and has given assurances that the headscarf reform will only be extended to university students.
The ban on headscarves in universities was imposed after the 1980 military coup and has been implemented at varying degrees over the years, forcing many women to abandon their education and others to hide theirheadscarves under wigs to attend classes. |
