Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has advised the constitutional alternate to ensure the correct to put on a headband within the civil carrier, faculties, and universities must be determined via a referendum.
“If you have the courage, come on, let’s put this to a referendum,” he mentioned in a televised deal with.
“Let the nation make the decision,” Erdogan added, talking to the chief of the principle opposition celebration Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who had first of all proposed a legislation to ensure the correct to put on the veil.
In reaction, Kilicdaroglu on Saturday night time rejected the theory of a referendum, accusing Erdogan of “imitating” Hungarian nationalist chief Victor Orban, who has turn out to be the icon of the arduous proper.
“Do you intend to imitate Orban, Erdogan? Where do you get the referendum from?” he tweeted.
The debate over the scarf in Turkey has lately heated up forward of the presidential and parliamentary elections subsequent 12 months.
With a Muslim majority, however having secularism enshrined in its charter, Turkey has lengthy been a rustic the place dressed in a headband used to be banned in public establishments.
But restrictions at the veil had been lifted in 2013 by way of Erdogan’s conservative executive.
The Turkish president ceaselessly portrays himself because the protector of Muslims in opposition to secular “elites,” suggesting that with out him, “gains” such because the lifting of scarf restrictions might be jeopardised.
Although the scarf provoked heated debate, no political motion is now proposing a ban on it in Turkey.
In July 2008, Constitutional Court knocked down an try by way of Erdogan’s ruling AK celebration to boost the scarf ban at universities at the grounds that it used to be anti-secular.
Erdogan’s partner, Emine Erdogan, is understood for dressed in a headband whilst accompanying her husband at the marketing campaign path and all over respectable purposes.
