Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Sept. 22 that his government’s decision to allow headscarves after primary school should be considered as a step to strengthen the country’s freedoms and democracy. The government rewrote the dress code regulation for the public schools by lifting the obligation that female students attend school without head coverings. “Those who try to draw restrictions argue this will lead to pressure on some people. That is to say that there is a forced pressure on some people for others not to come under a potential pressure,” Davutoglu said. “There is no such freedom perception. Everyone lives their own life.”
With the advance of radical terrorists such as the Islamic State giving Islam a bad name, and the overall impasse in the Muslim world over fighting radicalism, a goodly portion of the population is concerned that these steps will drag the country into some sort of darkness rather than toward advanced democracy. The Islamist-based Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has been good at arguing tirelessly for the last 12 years that pious people have been oppressed by the previous secular governments.
