TURKISH Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's answer to the Hijab issue was very simple: wearing the Hijab falls perfectly within the guidelines of personal freedom. That was after the proposal to ban his ruling AK Party, which chief prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya had submitted to the country's Constitutional Court. But who exactly is working against Turkey's fundamental principles here? Is it the AK, with its recent changes that allow Muslim Turkish women to wear the Hijab in public institutions like universities? Or is it the chief prosecutor, whose move has sparked condemnation across the European Union, which Turkey had been trying to join for years, if not decades? European Union Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn suggested that the proposal to ban the ruling AK was not in line with the democratic standards expected of would-be member states, saying that in a normal European democracy, political issues are debated in the parliament and decided through the ballot box, not in the court rooms. “The executive shouldn't meddle into the court's work, while the legal system shouldn't meddle into democratic politics,” he said. What this really means is that it was the chief prosecutor, not AK, who is damaging Turkey's chances of joining the EU. That said, there is ample reason to believe that Yalcinkaya's move was more of a political jibe against the AK and its position on the Hijab issue than an attempt to protect Turkey's secularism. But there is little reason for the secularists to equate the wearing of the headscarf with political Islam as they do. They would serve themselves and their country better if they agreed with Erdogan in seeing it as a personal issue that goes to the core of one's beliefs. After all, Islam is very personal, and it is up to a Muslim person to show – or not to show – his or her religious convictions. And that is really what Turkey's secularism and freedom of expression are all about. No one has seen the secularists trying to stop Turkish Muslims from expressing their condemnation for the recently re-published cartoons that angered Muslims worldwide. So, their logic that by allowing the Hijab the AK had infringed on Turkey's core principles is just that dubious. But they probably don't realize that protecting democracy and free speech does not come about by gagging them. So the question remains as who it is that is undermining Turkey's precious secularism. That question has already been answered at the ballot box. __
