Turkish president challenges opposition party with constitutional guarantee on headscarf

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on October 5 called on political parties to make necessary constitutional regulations to ensure the legal framework of women's freedom to wear a headscarf in public life during a speech at the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) meeting in the capital Ankara.

Commenting on the main opposition Republican People's Party's (CHP) recent call to make an amendment to the constitutional rights regarding the women's freedom of wearing a headscarf in public life, Erdoğan said that "Let's provide the solution at the level of the Constitution, not the law," Turkiye's Daily Sabah reported on October 5.

He underlined that there is no such problem in practice anymore thanks to steps taken by the AK Party governments and said: "Today, the headscarf issue is no longer on Türkiye's agenda, thanks to our struggle and the arrangements we made."

"The issue of dress in general and the headscarf, in particular, is a natural right that should not be the subject of either the law or the Constitution," he said.

“Let's reissue the constitutional amendment proposal numbered 5735, which we prepared as the AK Party and MHP in 2008, including working in the public sector, with the clear condition that the opposite regulation cannot be made and implemented in this regard,” Erdoğan said.

On October 3, the CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdardoğlu published his video saying that he aimed to “close the wounds of the country and look at the future with confidence” and said that if its coalition of six parties won the elections, it would end polarization among the people.

“One of these wounds is the headscarf issue,” he said, admitting that the CHP has made mistakes in the past.

“It is time to leave this issue behind. We created a statutory framework compatible with universal law principles. We take out the issue of women’s clothing from the monopolization of politics,” Kılıçdaroğlu said. The CHP announced on Tuesday that it submitted the bill to Parliament.

Turkish headscarf-wearing women have long struggled under laws that prevented them from wearing headscarves at schools as students and in public institutions as professionals, despite the prevalence of headscarf-wearing women in the country. The CHP had fueled anti-headscarf sentiment among the people and supported laws banning it.

Erdoğan, during his speech, reminded the main opposition of its previous stance and published videos and documents showing Kılıçdaroğlu supporting the CHP's previous anti-headscarf policy.

Erdoğan reminded Kılıçdaroğlu that in 2008 when the AK Party sought to amend the related Turkish constitution on headscarves, he had said that “the headscarf poses a threat to modern democracy and would harm public order, social peace and unity.”

The issue of the headscarf ban held an important place in public and political debates in Türkiye throughout the 1990s and 2000s.

The headscarf ban in Türkiye was first implemented widely in the 1980s but became stricter after 1997 when the military forced the conservative government to resign in an incident later dubbed the Feb. 28 "postmodern coup."

It was gradually lifted for students in universities after 2010, while the ban for public employees was lifted in 2013 and the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) changed the regulation on June 1, 2015, allowing female judges wearing headscarves to conduct hearings.

Following the AK Party group meeting, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ said that he received the order and would start efforts for a draft proposal for constitutional change.