AFP: Turkish court annuls headscarf law in blow to government 07 June

The Turkish parliament early Thursday adopted a constitutional amendment allowing women to wear Islamic headscarves in universities, a move that is strongly opposed by secularists and still has to be ratified. An updated AFPTV report, first transmitted on Feb 1.

Turkey's recent constitutional reform has opened up the country's universities to women who wear the Islamic headscarf, but several institutions continue to resist. The belief in Turkey's traditional secular rules runs strong in some establishments, which see themselves as a bastion against growing religious conservatism in the mostly Muslim nation.

Protesters say the plan to allow female students to wear the Muslim headscarf at university will usher in a stricter form of Islam in Turkey.

The Turkish government has backed changes to the country's constitution that will, for the first time in 30 years, allow female university students to wear a headscarf. The decision has led to a series of large protest rallies by those who believe it will threaten the secular nature of Turkish society.

During six years in power, Turkey's conservative ruling party has built a strong alliance with the opposition. Now Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AKP is standing by a long-term promise: to lift a ban on headscarfs at universities. Erdogan, whose own wife and daughters wear the headscarf, insists it is a matter of human rights in a country where about two-thirds of women cover their heads. Debate over the potentially explosive issue is far from over in Turkey, which has a 99% Muslim population and a strictly secular regime.

On 19 January last year the Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was shot dead by an ultranationalist in Istanbul. Many writers and journalists put the blame for his death squarely on Article 301 of Turkey's penal code. This article punishes what it terms "denigrating Turkishness" with sentences of up to four years in jail. Hrant Dink, who was of Armenian origin, had run into trouble with the law for articles about the 1915-17 massacres of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire. Today the Turkish parliament is revising this article which many see as restricting freedom of expression. An AFPTV report.

As US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice lands in Ankara to urge Turkey not to carry out its threat to launch an offensive against PKK Kurdish rebels across its southern border with Iraq, the Turkish government faces equally intense pressure from its own angry citizens, including bereaved mothers, to take decisive action. A voiced report.

Just imagine if a radio DJ were to use his mic skills in the courtroom.

Fearing a Turkish attack, the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq has promised to crack down on separatist rebels operating out of its territory. Iraq's Kurdish population, however, fears Turkey's threat to root out PKK guerrillas conceals a broader strategy to undermine Kurdish autonomy.