Berkley Center

Like all study abroad experiences, my understanding of my host country has been a work in progress. In my case it has been a particularly slow one, but one that has been all the more eye-opening. As I discussed in my first post, my initial beliefs about Turkey were colored by assumptions about Islamic culture—especially in regard to the religious tradition of females wearing headscarves. I was just then discovering that Turkey is officially secular and not Islamic; however, to attempt to label Turkey as one or the other would be utterly misleading. There are so many different cultural, social, and political factors that make up this beautifully complex country.

Here’s an interesting fact: the origin of headscarves was not religious, but rather weather-related. Women would wear head coverings to protect themselves from the sun and to keep cool. This cultural tradition just happened to occur in many arid Arabic countries, thus coinciding with the rise of Islam. As a result, it was adopted as a religious tradition in the form of the headscarf.

The symbolism of the headscarf, however, has come a long way from its roots. With the rise of the new Turkish Republic in the twentieth century, a fear of extreme religiosity came to the forefront of social and political issues. There was a stress on becoming a rational, reasonable citizen. Along with this focus on modernization, however, came great prejudice against the “backwards” practice of wearing religious head coverings. Somehow religion became juxtaposed with the nationalist ideals of modernity and progress, and thus headscarves became banned in public areas, including universities.

This ban on headscarves adversely affected the amount of women who attended school: they were forced to choose between their religion or their education. A professor at Boğaziçi described the history of this prejudice: girls were considered “expendable. If they wore a headscarf they couldn’t come to class [or] tests. Then they would get expelled.”

Oddly enough, in a country that is overwhelmingly Muslim (approximately 99 percent according to the US Department of State), religious rights seemed to have taken a back seat to the efforts to modernize the country. The current Prime Minister Erdoğan promised to lift the ban as part of his campaign in 2007; however, not only was this met with great public opposition, the lifting of the ban was annulled by the Constitutional Court because it went against the founding principles of the constitution of the Turkish Republic. The ban was not formally removed until just last year.

The social repercussions of this ban cannot be ignored: no one should ever be forced to choose between their basic human rights—religion and education. I have noticed that a good number of women currently wear headscarves at my university, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi, which is known as one of the more liberal schools. This does not mean, however, that these girls do not face any stigma. One of my professors commented, “There is a strong fear of Islam in higher educated groups. They see it as a symbol of oppression.” The simple presence of headscarves on campus, however, gives me hope that these prejudices will one day be overcome, and that the narrow focus on progress will broaden to a more inclusive perspective on modernity.