The AK party government democratization approach in uplifting the headscarf ban in Turkey

Abstract

The headscarf issue is a long-standing issue inside the secular Republic of Turkey. It has started in 1982 when the military elite decided to take charge of institution of higher education which made headscarf become their central focus and was seen as one of the threat for secularization process inside Turkey. After that, the law banning the headscarf inside the institution has been executed. This situation has worsened in 1997 when the next coup occurred. As a result, thousands of female students quit school while some of them chose to study outside Turkey. Therefore, this article is going to discuss the effort the Islamists group has taken to lift the ban since then. Most importantly, the article focus is on the uplifting process done by the AK Party through democratization approach. For this purpose, content analysis of Today’s Zaman newspaper articles was done to see the process. The findings show a pattern inside Turkey’s political landscape. The early effort of the Islamist group and even AK Party failed when they tried to uplift the ban using their own capacity as authoritative figure through legal or constitutional amendment because the military would fight the effort. However, when the AK Party educate the people regarding basic rights and used referendum as a medium to gain support for constitutional amendment or in other word through democratic approach (political education), they managed to lift the ban easily in 2010. Public consensus has been found the best weapon for the government to face the military and thus realizing their islamization goal.