Four female lawmakers of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) today entered the Turkish Parliament wearing headscarves, 14 years after a similar move led to tensions.
Nurcan Dalbudak, Gülay Samancı, Gönül Bekin Şahkulubey and Sevde Beyazıt Kaçar became the first women to wear headscarves in a parliamentray session. Deputy Parliament Speaker Meral Akşener, who was chairing the session, called for a recess after the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) called for a debate on the procedure.
The response from the CHP was being followed closely, as the party has labeled the move “insincere” and announced that it “will not fall into AKP’s trap” by overreacting.
“All the AKP is intending to do with this headscarf issue is play the role of the ‘mistreated.’ We will not fall into this trap. We will not let the AKP play the role of the mistreated while they are the haughty party. We will take Erdoğan’s trump card from his hands,” the CHP’s deputy parliamentary group chair Muharrem İnce told reporters, following his party’s closed-door parliamentary group meeting Oct. 30.
President Abdullah Gül, for his part, said there was no legal obstacle against the attendance of veiled lawmakers at Parliament, emphasizing that the CHP had also made contributions to pave the way for the recent legislative change.
“This issue was once seen as taboo. We should see that they [the CHP] also made a constructive contribution,” Gül said during the Republic Day reception he hosted at the Çankaya Presidential Palace on Oct. 29.
Sevde Beyazıt Kaçar, Gülay Samancı, Nurcan Dalbudak and Gönül Bekin Şahkulubey have all separately announced they will soon come to the General Assembly meetings at Parliament wearing headscarves. All three are among the female AKP deputies who recently performed the annual Hajj.
Although Parliament’s General Assembly opened at 2 p.m. yesterday, the three did not appear at Parliament. AKP deputy parliamentary group chair Mustafa Elitaş announced that they would come to Parliament on Oct. 31.
The CHP held the closed door meeting at Parliament before the General Assembly meeting opened, in a bid to determine a common stance on the issue.
İnce said the female deputies’ decision to wear headscarves was “politically motivated,” rather than being genuinely based on their religious beliefs, recalling they had never covered their heads before.
“[The female] deputies who never covered their heads before are to wear headscarves to find favor in the prime minister’s eyes. They never took the floor at Parliament and never ever voiced women’s problems. It shows they have a special mission. But we will not let the AKP play the role of the mistreated before the local elections,” he said.
“Erdoğan will keep saying, ‘Our covered sisters were mistreated.’ We will not let him exploit this issue,” İnce added.
The AKP’s Elitaş, however, strongly denied the CHP’s claim that it was a political maneuver for the local elections.
Pavey expected to voice the CHP’s objections
During the closed-door meeting, the CHP discussed different options, sources told the Hürriyet Daily News. Some deputies proposed not to attend the General Assembly meetings for three days in protest, while some proposed remaining totally silent as if there was no an issue.
In the end, the CHP decided to explain its objections from the parliamentary rostrum by arguing that wearing the headscarf is against Parliament’s internal regulations. The CHP’s Şafak Pavey is expected to deliver a speech and voice the CHP’s objections during debates at the General Assembly on Oct. 31. However, this is not the party’s final decision, as some lawmakers have suggested that it should be CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu who makes this statement.
Meanwhile, Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli has appealed to all parties to act with “common sense,” calling on all lawmakers not to treat headscarved lawmakers in a prejudiced way.
Rapporteur: Freedom for all
People should be free to decide whether or not to wear headscarves, European Parliament Rapporteur on Turkey Ria Oomen-Ruijten told reporters on Oct. 30.
Oomen-Ruijten stated that she had been criticized when she said people were free to wear headscarves in her own country and that everyone should be free to do the same in Turkey, during a visit to Turkey one year ago. However, she maintained that this should apply and that whether or not to wear headscarves should not be an obligation for the rest of society, Anadolu Agency quoted her as saying.
“Everybody should be free,” Oomen-Ruijten said.
She held talks with EU Minister Egemen Bağış and Parliament Speaker Cemil Çiçek in Ankara. For his part, Bağış said permission to wear headscarves in Parliament should not be presented as an extraordinary situation, but was “merely normalization.”
