Secular Turks rally against Muslim headscarf reform

Thousands of secular Turks rallied on Saturday against a plan by the government to allow women students to wear the Muslim headscarf at university, a move they say will usher in a stricter form of Islam in Turkey.

Parliament is expected to approve a constitutional amendment next week sponsored by the ruling AK Party, which has Islamist roots, and a nationalist opposition party that is aimed at easing a 1989 headscarf ban for students in higher education.

Secularists fear lifting the ban would, over time, lead to heavy pressure on uncovered women to wear the Muslim garment.

"Turkey is secular and will remain secular," shouted protesters as they waved national flags and banners of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, revered founder of the republic which separated religion and state, at his mausoleum in the capital Ankara.

Turkey's powerful secular establishment, which includes army generals, judges and university rectors, sees the headscarf as a symbol of radical Islam and believe it threatens the country's secular order. Turkey is 99 percent Muslim.

As recently as 1997, Turkey's army generals, acting with public support, ousted a government they deemed too Islamist.

Last year's secular rallies against the AK Party's choice of a former Islamist as president sparked an early parliamentary election.

Opinion polls suggest a majority in the country of 70 million, where some two thirds of women cover their heads, back a relaxation of the headscarf ban.

The headscarf debate is central to Turkey's complex identity, as the young democracy struggles to meet the demands of both a pious Muslim population and also a secular, pro-Western elite that sees Islam as backwards.