The Quiet End of Secularism in Turkey

The ban on headscarves at Turkish universities and in public places, one of the pillars of the formerly secularist regime, has quietly ended this school year. In September, the Islamist party of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, issued a statement saying that it would support any female student expelled or disciplined for wearing a head covering. The recent undermining of Turkey’s staunchly secular Constitutional Court and Board of Education, allowed Erdogan’s party to end by stealth what they could not overrule in a 2008 constitutional amendment.