Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ announced Thursday he would present the works on a new constitutional-level headscarf regulation to the president on Monday.
Speaking to reporters at Parliament in the capital Ankara, Bozdağ said that a consultation meeting was already held to discuss the framework of the president’s proposed regulation.
He added that the bill will be submitted to Parliament as the People’s Alliance with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).
On his return flight from Prague, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan touched upon the issue and said that he discussed the headscarf issue with the MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli.
"For one thing, there is no need for a legal regulation at the moment. Can our girls go to university, get a secondary education, become police officers or become a soldier currently? Yes. If you are honest, then let's get this into the constitution so that no one can play on it from now on," Erdoğan said, referring to the main opposition Republican People's Party's (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu
“Actually, this thesis put forward by Kılıçdaroğlu shows how much he does not know politics.”
Erdoğan on Wednesday called on political parties to create the necessary constitutional regulations to protect the legal framework surrounding women's freedom to wear a headscarf during a speech at the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) meeting in the capital Ankara.
Commenting on the CHP's recent call to amend constitutional rights regarding the choice to wear a headscarf in public life, Erdoğan said: "Let's provide the solution at the level of the Constitution, not the law."
He underlined that there is no longer such a problem in practice thanks to the steps taken by the AK Party government and said: "Today, the headscarf issue is no longer on Türkiye's agenda, thanks to our struggle and the arrangements we made."
Main opposition leader Kılıçdaroğlu unexpectedly revived the issue this week, announcing a planned legislation amid efforts by his secularist CHP party to reach out to conservative Turks, among which the CHP has traditionally had little support.
“One of these wounds is the headscarf issue,” he said, admitting that the CHP has made mistakes in the past.
“It is time to leave this issue behind. We created a statutory framework compatible with universal law principles. We take out the issue of women’s clothing from the monopolization of politics,” Kılıçdaroğlu said. The CHP announced on Tuesday that it submitted the bill to Parliament.
Bozdağ said that although a negative answer came from the CHP’s group deputy chairperson, “I have not heard a statement from the chairperson (Kılıçdaroğlu), rejecting this process.”
“If he stands by his word, he will probably accept. There are different statements from other parties as well. We'll see all this when the time comes.”
Evaluating the law proposed by the main opposition, Bozdağ continued: “When you look at the CHP's offer; it can be seen that it is not an offer that solves the problem but a proposition that could turn a solved problem back into a problem and into a bigger crisis. For one thing, this proposal text does not cover the right to education. Secondly, this offer covers women working in the public sector who practice a profession. There is no coverage for those who do not work in the public sector.”
Kılıçdaroğlu gave a cautious welcome to Erdoğan's proposal on Wednesday, saying: "If there is no cunning agenda behind it, of course, we are ready to give all kinds of support to your proposal on rights and freedoms."
Turkish headscarf-wearing women have long struggled under laws that prevented them from wearing headscarves at schools as students and in public institutions as professionals, despite the prevalence of headscarf-wearing women in the country. The CHP had fueled anti-headscarf sentiment among the people and supported laws banning it.
The issue of the headscarf ban held an important place in public and political debates in Türkiye throughout the 1990s and 2000s.
The headscarf ban in Türkiye was first implemented widely in the 1980s but became stricter after 1997 when the military forced the conservative government to resign in an incident later dubbed the Feb. 28 "postmodern coup."
Türkiye's Parliament lifted a ban on female students wearing the headscarf at university in 2008 in a move championed by Erdoğan and which the CHP lawmakers, including Kılıçdaroğlu, had sought unsuccessfully to block in the constitutional court.
In 2013, Türkiye lifted a ban on women wearing headscarves in state institutions under reforms that the government said were designed to bolster democracy.
