Turkey’s first and last headscarved deputy, Merve Kavakçı, on Thursday testified to the prosecutor overseeing the probe into the Feb. 28, 1997 unarmed military coup.
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Kavakçı arrived at the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office early in the morning. She testified to prosecutor Mustafa Bilgili as a “victim.” Kavakçı’s testimony lasted for around two hours. She was accompanied by her lawyer.
Speaking to reporters afterwards, Kavakçı said she arrived at the courthouse upon a request from the prosecutor. She also said she will testify to the parliamentary Coup and Memorandum Investigation Commission today.
Kavakçı was elected to Parliament from the Virtue Party (FP) in 1999 but was not allowed to serve as a deputy because she wore a headscarf. She was forcefully removed from Parliament on the day she was supposed to take the oath of office. Kavakçı was later stripped of her Turkish citizenship and deported to the US as she held dual citizenship.
In April, Kavakçı filed a criminal complaint against the perpetrators of the Feb. 28 coup. Kavakçı stated in the complaint that she was the target of malicious news stories at the time because of her headscarf.
Turkey’s de facto ban on the use of headscarves in public offices dates back to the 1980s but was significantly tightened after Feb. 28, 1997, when the military ousted a government it deemed too religious. It is still widely observed in the country. State offices do not hire headscarved women. Covered women are also denied employment in most private companies despite the lack of a law that prohibits the use of the headscarf in private businesses. They are not elected to Parliament, either. A scarf ban was imposed for many years on university campuses, and it ended only in 2010.
