Bishop Dewsbury Immigration 2 3 Ireland Mosques Religion of peace Sharia uk Sharia2 Soldier Students Translations Turkey Writings on the wall

RIP Turkey 1923-2008

Turkey's parliament resoundingly approved on Saturday controversial constitutional changes aimed at lifting a ban on female students wearing the Muslim headscarf in universities, the assembly's speaker said.

Lawmakers backed the amendments by 411 votes for to 103 against after lengthy and often emotional debate on an issue that has deeply split the overwhelmingly Muslim but secular nation.

Turkey's old secular elite, which includes army generals, judges and university rectors, fears the lifting of the ban will boost the role of religion and undermine the secular system of government founded by Kemal Ataturk in 1923.

"The proposal to change the constitution has been approved. I hope this will be for the best for Turkey and hope it is done in a spirit of tolerance and reconciliation," parliamentary speaker Koksal Toptan told lawmakers after the vote.

But underlining the powerful emotions the headscarf evokes, tens of thousands of people waving Turkish flags and chanting secularist slogans staged a protest rally against the changes just a few miles from the parliament in central Ankara.

The headscarf issue cuts to the heart of Muslim but secular, Western-oriented Turkey's complex identity.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's AK Party, which has Islamist roots, says the headscarf ban is an unfair denial of individual rights and religious liberty in a European Union candidate country where two thirds of women cover their heads.Erdogan's own wife and daughters wear the headscarf as do those of President Abdullah Gul and many AK Party ministers.

FEARS OF ISLAMIC STATE

Crucially, the government had the support on Saturday of a key nationalist party, the MHP, to push through the reforms. The staunchly secularist, main opposition CHP opposed the changes, saying they saw a slow slide towards an Islamic state.

"We are not here today to discuss developments on the headscarf issue. We are here to discuss how the republic will be destroyed by putting a headscarf on it," female CHP lawmaker Bihlun Tamayligil said before the vote.

At the anti-headscarf rally, the second in Ankara in a week, feelings were running high as protesters sang patriotic songs and waved pictures of Kemal Ataturk, revered founder of the modern secular Turkish republic.

"We are against lifting this ban, we do not want to live in a religious state," said Ebru Okay, 32, who had travelled from the Aegean city of Izmir to join Saturday's rally in Ankara."The government want us to become like Iran, they want to bring Sharia law to Turkey," said Okay.

The headscarf ban in universities dates back to the 1980s but was significantly tightened in 1997 when army generals, with public support, ousted a government they deemed too Islamist.

The army has remained silent during the latest debates, though senior judges and university rectors have condemned the planned changes as "unconstitutional" and dangerous.

The secularists tried last year to block parliament's election of the AK Party's Gul as president, forcing Erdogan to call early parliamentary polls that his party comfortably won.

Gul is now expected to sign the amendments swiftly into law, but CHP leader Deniz Baykal has said he will appeal to the Constitutional Court to block the changes.The government must also amend a law governing the body that supervises higher education before the headscarf ban is lifted.

Opinion polls show a majority of Turks back an easing of the ban. Even after the reforms, women professors as well as civil servants will still be prohibited from wearing the headscarf.

Turkey is on its way now to become an islamic state, on the borders of Europe, the secular days are over now. And still our politicians harp on about letting Turkey join the EU. Why? What are the benifits to us? More muslim immigrants. What is to become of Europe? The flag below says it all!

Bishop Dewsbury Immigration 2 3 Ireland Mosques Religion of peace Sharia uk Sharia2 Soldier Students Translations Turkey Writings on the wall