CHAPTER 20 Özlem Denli Harvey, Between Laicist State Ideology and Modern Public Religion: The Head Cover Controversy in Contemporary Turkey
In this chapter, Özlem Denli Harvey provides an overview of the head-cover controversy in contemporary Turkey, a secular country with a Muslim majority. The state-imposed head-cover ban has far-reaching consequences for women who consider veiling in public life to be a religious obligation. Such women are excluded from the entire public sector, which is rather sizeable in Turkey, and deprived of the opportunity of a university education. Veiled woman are consequently prevented from being productive members of society through education and employment. For the last two decades, this controversy has set the tone for public debate on freedom of religion or belief. Harvey demonstrates how the head cover issue has become a non-negotiable boundary between laicism and Islamism, and how official laicist policies is systematically biased and exclusionist in its make-up.
