A ban on female army officers in Turkey wearing the Muslim headscarf has been lifted by the government.
The
military is the last Turkish institution to see the ban removed. It has
long been seen as the guardian of Turkey's secular constitution.
Wearing headscarves in public institutions was banned in the 1980s.
But Turkey's Islamist-leaning President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, argues that the ban is an illiberal vestige of the past.
The issue has been controversial in Turkey for many years.
Secularists
regard the headscarf as a symbol of religious conservatism and have
accused President Erdogan of pushing an Islamist agenda, converting many
public schools into religious ones as part of his pledge to raise "a
pious generation".
The new rules apply to regular women military officers, non-commissioned
officers and female cadets.
They will be allowed to wear a headscarf
under their caps or berets as long as they are the same colour as their
uniforms and are not patterned, Hurriyet Daily News reported.
No comments: