In 1981, Turkish feminist Berin Sonmez suddenly started wearing a headscarf. But just as suddenly, she has recently parted with it. In both cases - in protest, surprising family and friends, writes the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung“ (FAZ).
In the early 1980s, she put on the headscarf to oppose a regulation prohibiting female students from covering their heads in educational institutions. Now Sonmez is protesting a sermon by the Turkish Religious Affairs Office, Diyanet, from early August, read in more than 90,000 mosques in the country. Sonmez believes that the suggestions contained in it are preparing for the gradual introduction of mandatory headscarves.
Turkey today cannot be compared to Iran
Today, Turkey is a country where most women neither wear headscarves nor dress traditionally - bare bellies and short skirts can be seen in the cities. A general compulsion to wear headscarves, as is the case in Iran, is not applicable, the German publication notes. But the Diyanet sermon says that “appearing in inappropriate clothing in public places is a challenge to even the most elementary rules of decency“.
The text of the religious service also says something else: “The “normal“ nudity shown in films, series or social media is an attack on the family as an institution“. The feminist believes that this is a kind of test, such as President Erdogan likes to organize to study public opinion, explains FAZ. In addition, the instructions of Diyanet reflect the increased influence of conservative religious bodies and Islamist parties in Turkish politics.
Sönmez told FAZ that she knows women who were denied leadership positions in state institutions because they did not wear a headscarf. At the same time, there were women who were aware of this and specifically covered their heads in order to enter into closer relations with the ruling party or to get a job more easily. According to Sönmez, all these are signs of “social decay”. “People are more interested in getting a certain position than in preserving their personal dignity.“
Creeping Islamization
The danger of a creeping Islamization of the country has been worrying secular Turkish women since long before Erdogan came to power in 2003, the German publication writes. Sönmez's position, however, is different - because she sees herself as a believing feminist and has a different attitude towards the headscarf. She does not hide her disappointment that many activists have reduced her protest to wearing the headscarf. “For me, it is about women's rights and the distortion of faith“, she says.
When she decided to wear the headscarf as a protest during her studies in 1981, a symbolic struggle was waged in Turkey against this piece of clothing. The military and Kemalist state elites believed that by banning headscarves, they had to protect the secular character of the state against the rising political Islam. For the Turkish courts, educated women wearing headscarves at the time were “a threatening vision for the freedom and equality of women and the basic principles of the republic“.
Sönmez wore the headscarf for ten years – she took it off only ten years later, submitting to the dictates of the state for the sake of her career. In 1997, however, she was fired from the university where she taught because she allowed her students to wear headscarves. FAZ recalls that 1997 was the year of the so-called postmodern coup, during which the military and Kemalist courts forced the Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan to resign. Erdogan, who is from the same Islamist movement, first disempowered the military, then lifted the ban on wearing headscarves, expanded the powers of the religious service and ensured its influence over the education sector.
Where are women's rights?
Sönmez does not hide her opinion that she is currently observing a dilution of women's rights, especially in relation to divorce rights. The government has just passed a law supporting the institution of mediators, in order to count divorces. Instead, however, greater protection against domestic violence is needed, the feminist emphasizes.
As the German publication points out, Turkish society is very divided on the issue of women's rights. Sönmez told FAZ that she sees "religious fatigue" in the younger generations, including because the government is instrumentalizing Islam.