Bill Moyers program “Selling the War” aired last night on PBS is perhaps the best documentary ever seen on America’s media and its collusion with Washington and without doubt an indictment of the independence of media as guardians of the debate over public issues, especially with important issues such as going to war. Read the rest of this entry »
Quoting from today’s New York Times article written by Sabrina Tavernise, regarding the on going debate in Turkey of the forthcoming selection of a new president “Mr. Gul’s candidacy goes to the heart of the secular-religious debate, because the presidency is such a revered symbol with real powers-he is commander in chief and has a veto. Turkish military leaders in the past have remarked that they would refuse to visit the presidential palace if a woman in head scarf were living in it”
This is the real debate and the real issue with Turkish secularist and the military who have defined Turkish secularism as a way to deny the very nature of Turkey as a state where the majority of the population is Muslims.
It is one thing to be secular and it is another thing to take secularism to the point of denying the citizens the right to express their faith and value system.
The military in Turkey have been the guardian of “secular” Turkey in the same way the “Mullahs” of Iran are the guardians of Iran Islamic Republic. Both parties appointed themselves as the guardian of the state, making sure the state is a defined through their own eyes. It is not the nation that counts it is their privileges that matters, preserving that interest at all costs.
In Turkey, women with traditional headscarf are forbidden from entering any governmental buildings and forbidden from entering public universities. A Turkish-American woman was elected to the Turkish parliament was refused the right to take her seat and was not sworn in because she was wearing headscarf.
Turkey like Iran both are doing their best with the first defining secularism in complete denial of the people faith, tradition and value system while the later is refusing to acknowledge the fact that people and citizens have a varying degree of commitment to traditions or Islamic life style.
Turkey takes secularism too many steps toward total denial of the rights of people to choose what they wear and the right to exercise their religion and values without the state denying them full access to its institutions. As if secularism is a form of National Socialism like that of Germany where only members of the Nazi party had full access to the state and its institutions. Perhaps Turkish secularist like women in mini-skirts to suite their own taste of fashion designs. There is nothing wrong with secularism as long as it recognizes and accepts that people have certain religious and traditional value system that shape their private and public behavior and value systems. Even a secular country like the US with separation of church and state many if not most of its laws and constitutional value systems are imbedded in religion and the believe in God. With both mini-skirts living in harmony with headscarves.
Secular Turks and especially the military are trying to preserve the most restrictive form of secularism which is denial of religious values and beliefs. As if secularism is the religion of the state and as if belief in secularism is a condition of membership n the state. One has to ask the question why a mini-skirt is accepted as a fashion while secularist denies Turkish women the right to wear a head scarf. Perhaps it is time for secular Turkey to accept both the right of the mini-skirt and the head scarf as a private choice not a state regulated national dress code. Attaturk was not very successful when he mandated that Turks not only change their traditional dress but the letterings of their language. Turkish military leaders must not think they are the guardians of secular Turkey, but must think of themselves as professional soldiers leaving the people with the right to define their own value system. The Turkish military leaders are no different than Iran’s Mullahs who made sure they write their own selfish and personal interest in the country constitutions. I am often asked the questions of my preference between a “secular” state and an “Islamic” state and my answer always was and will be ” I want to live in secular state where my rights as a Muslims are fully respected and not defined by my faith rather than live in an Islamic state that define my rights as citizen only through my faith and consequently denying people of other faiths full rights and citizenship” Perhaps Turkey should and can learn from the American model of a “secular” state where people value systems and faith or lack of it are fully respected and this protection is imbedded in the constitution. There are no reasons for a Muslim, a Jew or a Christian or Hindu or Atheists not fully exercising their rights and value systems in a secular state, but not the Turkish model. It is time for both Iran and Turkey to redefine what a secular or a religious state is all about.
Abdullah Gul, no doubt will make a first class president and his wife with the headscarf will also make a first class first lady. Perhaps it is the Turkish military that have to take their hats off when entering the presidential palace in honor of its resident, President Abdullah Gul and his wife Hayrunisa.
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