Human Rights and Headscarves

[The item below is from today's online edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education.]

European Court Upholds Turkey's Ban on Student Headscarfs
By AISHA LABI

A Turkish medical student has lost her bid to be able to wear a headscarf while pursuing studies at the University of Istanbul. In a potentially precedent-setting decision, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that Leyla Sahin's rights to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion were not violated by Turkey's ban on students' wearing overtly religious garb at public universities.

"Measures taken in universities to prevent certain fundamentalist religious movements from pressuring students who do not practice the religion in question or those belonging to another religion can be justified," the panel of seven judges said in a unanimous ruling. Ms. Sahin is an observant Muslim who wears a headscarf because of her religious beliefs.

One of her lawyers said the ruling reflected the judges' preoccupation with "not strictly legal considerations."

"The big message is that the European Court of Human Rights has largely left it to states to decide whether they consider it necessary to forbid wearing of signs of religion in educational establishments in order to preserve secularity and religious neutrality," said Stephen Grosz, a human-rights lawyer in London who worked with Turkish lawyers on the case.

Other human-rights advocates also criticized the decision. "The ruling is a real disappointment, but not entirely surprising," said Rachel Denber of Human Rights Watch.

The court framed its ruling as a defense of secularism, but Ms. Denber said that the decision would in fact foster religious separatism. "It's not clear why this is supposed to encourage pluralism," she said. "It's going to push women into separate institutions or force them to abandon what they consider to be their religious obligations."

Turkey is predominantly Muslim, but since the founding of the modern Turkish state 80 years ago, its military has been an overwhelming force for secularism. In recent years, however, the balance between religion and secularism has shifted with successive governments. The current prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is himself an observant Muslim whose wife -- like most wives of members of his cabinet -- wears a headscarf.

Since the early 1980s, Turkish law has required students to dress according to the rules covering civil servants. "If applied uniformly, the code would also forbid women students from wearing miniskirts and jeans, but the prohibition is applied arbitrarily to the headscarf alone," according to a report published this week by Human Rights Watch.

The report, in the form of a memorandum to the Turkish government, goes on to note that despite the law, universities enforced the headscarf ban only sporadically until 1997. Following the installation of a new secular government that year, the military issued an ultimatum demanding that civilian authorities such as universities carry out the ban without exception.

As a result, thousands of women have had their access to higher education curtailed, said Jonathan Sugden, a researcher on Turkey for Human Rights Watch and the author of this week's report. Women who choose to cover their head, he said, "either can't get into university or are expelled, or they're forced to do things like wear the scarf under a wig."

Wearing the scarf under a wig is "quite a common practice," he said, "but in some universities that's not even allowed. I've spoken to women who said that they've had professors actually coming to them and lifting up the front of their hair to see if there's a scarf underneath."

In February 1998, the vice chancellor of the University of Istanbul issued a directive instructing staff members to turn away students wearing headscarfs or beards from lectures, courses, and tutorials. A month later, Ms. Sahin, then a fifth-year medical student, was refused entry to an examination because she was wearing a headscarf. She was later denied access to a course because of her insistence on wearing it. Ms. Sahin subsequently left Turkey and has been pursuing her medical studies at the University of Vienna since 1999.

Mr. Grosz said that he and Ms. Sahin's other lawyers plan to appeal the ruling. The appeal is likely to be heard by the court's appellate grand chamber within the next 18 months.

The European Court of Human Rights, which is based in Strasbourg, France, was established by the Council of Europe, a political organization of 45 member nations.

Turkey is the only member of the council with an across-the-board ban on headscarfs at universities. But the ruling could have broad implications for other member countries, where the court's rulings take precedence over national courts. In France, Germany, and the Netherlands, for example, the wearing of headscarfs in public educational institutions has also become a controversial issue.