When I go before a judge wearing a headscarf while I’m on trial

When I go before a judge wearing a headscarf while I’m on trial, I doubt that she would protect my rights and do justice to me. (Fikri Saglar, former CHP lawmaker)
Aformer lawmaker from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) said those words at a televised debate program on Halk TV last week. His remarks rekindled an old but “recently settled” matter of the dress code in the public service. After all, the existence of hijabi women in positions of power was only a recent phenomenon, something that only became possible following a century-long socio-political struggle over the definition of laicism — the constitutional building block of Turkey’s modern political system — and whether hijab (presumably as a religious symbol in the eyes of the seculars) violates that fundamental secular principle.

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The country soon devolved into tit-for-tat recriminations between the government and the secular political opposition, throwing the headscarf back to the heart of the national debate above the pressing bread-and-butter issues amid a punishing pandemic.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan quickly capitalized on the debate that serves as a source of distraction from more compelling issues that concern people’s wallets and health. He voiced sharp criticism of Saglar on Friday.
“This person no longer lives in this age; he is far behind. Unfortunately, this is a reflection of the fascist mindset of the CHP mentality today, as it was in the past. The fascist mindset is still alive. When you ask them, they talk about freedom of belief. What kind of freedom of belief is this?” (President Erdogan)
The former minister’s televised remarks even generated fissures in the secular quarters of the political spectrum as the CHP felt compelled to distance itself from him. CHP Chairman Kemal Kilicdaroglu unsparingly criticized Saglar for his discriminative discourse against hijabi women over their outlook.
“In which age do we live?” Kilicdaroglu asked, expressing his disbelief over the resurgence of a matter that many supposedly believe belongs to a bygone era.
“Whether a person wears a headscarf or not, it is her choice. My duty is to respect her choice. I never accept such discrimination and I do not fight it right,” he told media members when asked to comment on Saglar on Thursday.
What matters most, the CHP leader emphasized, is that whether the judge acts according to his conscience and the rule of law. The personal dress style, he mused, should not count as the marker of good or bad judgeship.
The barrage of criticism on social media, even from his party fellows, prompted Saglar to carefully reword his initial remarks. The more he tried to fine-tune his script by manufacturing a distinction between ‘turban’ (traditional Anatolian headwear used by rural women) and ‘basortusu’ (headscarf or hijab preferred by urbanized, educated women), the more the reaction grew and the more he undercut his own argument. At the heart of criticism directed toward Saglar lies the question of who decides over such a distinction seemingly drawn arbitrarily. And his insistence that the latter version of the headscarf constitutes the essence of the problem — the violation of secularism — because it is a religious symbol ideologically and consciously espoused by women only reflects his own fixed ideological conviction.
A lawmaker from the nationalist IYI (Good) Party did not mask his skepticism over Saglar’s motivation. He soberingly noted that such remarks have only solidified the AKP’s hold on power over the past 18 years.
Erdogan: CHP Enlists Hijabi Women As Stage Models
Apart from the headscarf itself, who wears it has also become a vexing matter in the latest back and forth barbs traded between President Erdogan’s party and the CHP. Erdogan charged CHP leader Kilicdaroglu with being insincere after accusing him of enlisting a few “mannequins” for window-dressing. What he meant was that the hijabi CHP officials were nothing but some stage models to dupe the public as part of CHP’s “self-proclaimed” diversity policies and public relations strategy to expand its social reach. His castigating depiction of hijabi CHP officials reinvigorated a strong backlash from feminists, the CHP base, and other parties.

“The depiction of headscarf women as mannequins [showcase models] is the reflection of Erdogan’s subconscious. I demand him to apologize to all women wearing a headscarf,” the CHP leader said.
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CHP official Sevgi Kilic is seen to the right of CHP Chairman Kemal Kilicdaroglu, C, at a press conference in Istanbul in this photo.
Sevgi Kilic, who was the target of Erdogan’s vilification, chimed in a message on her Twitter account. “I strongly condemn the insult of AK Party Chairman against us women by calling me a showcase model,” she wrote.
The Legacy of Kemalist Persecution
Saglar’s disparaging remarks against hijabi women in the judiciary or other departments of public service has reignited the old debate that came to characterize Turkey’s culture wars and identity politics for nearly a century. According to the unflinching stance of many Kemalists, the hijab is a religious symbol that stands in stark contrast with the secular character of the public service and political representation. But this broad interpretation of the secular identity of the state solely through the lens of dress code, or hijab, suffers reductionism that seriously hampers the prospect of a reasoned debate about the ideal nature of the political system, and the individual access to public service without any restriction for any social group.
To reach the point where Turkey is now, many heads rolled down and many prices have been paid. The Kemalists’ thinly-concealed dream of the unmaking of all the progress in terms of the expanded share of political power (with broader segments of society) runs counter against the spirits of time. It is also a nonstarter for a comprehensive overhaul of a party that suffers a state of stasis that perpetually limits its political appeal among the masses.
The truth is that there is a long, undeniable history of Kemalist persecution of the hijabi women.
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“Let’s start with the fact, to over-simplify, that Mustafa Kemal’s revolution and establishment of the Turkish Republic took place in a Muslim country in which religion and the state were fused together, resulting in the dismantling of the head of Islam as a political power,” Virginia-based writer Richard Peres told me in an interview for this piece.
Peres reminds us that the hijabi women immensely suffered long before President Erdogan’s ascent in politics. During his sojourn in Turkey, the American writer personally observed the secular crackdown on headscarfed women. The famous case of Merve Kavakci, a lawmaker from the conservative Felicity (Fazilet) Party who was banished from Parliament during the oath ceremony in 1999, still haunts the memory of generations of pious women.