Posted on Wednesday, October
09 @ 07:31:04 MYT
Dilulus untuk paparan oleh Penjual Cendol
Luar Negara Ankara: Turki
memansuhkan larangan ke atas wanita memakai tudung di kawasan bangunan kerajaan
semalam, antara langkah pembaharuan bertujuan memperkuat demokrasi.
Larangan itu sudah wujud lebih
90 tahun lalu sejak pembentukan Republik Turki. Ia menyebabkan ramai wanita
Turki tidak menyertai perkhidmatan kerajaan.
“Satu peraturan yang secara
rasmi campur tangan ke atas kebebasan berpakaian dan gaya hidup hingga menjadi
punca ketidaksamaan taraf, diskriminasi dan ketidakadilan terhadap rakyat,
sudah menjadi sejarah," kata Timbalan Perdana Menteri, Bekir Bozdag di
Twitter.
Bagaimanapun, golongan sekular
masih percaya pemansuhan itu adalah bukti kerajaan masih meneruskan agenda
agama.
Peraturan itu tidak
membabitkan badan kehakiman dan tentera disiarkan oleh Pekeliling Rasmi dan
berkuatkuasa serta- merta.
Cara kikis sekular
Perdebatan mengenai pemakaian
tudung adalah punca utama ketegangan antara golongan agama dan sekular serta
menjadi isu di kalangan penduduk.
Pengkritik terhadap Perdana
Menteri, Recep Tayyip Erdogan melihat Parti AK pimpinannya sebagai cuba
mengikis asas sekular republik itu selepas era pemerintahan Uthmaniyah oleh
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk pada 1923.
Bagi penyokong Erdogan, beliau
hanya memulihkan kesimbangan dan kebebasan meluahkan soal agama kepada
penduduk.
Pemansuhan larangan itu adalah
berasaskan kepada perintah Kabinet pada 1925 apabila Ataturk memperkenal
beberapa pembaharuan bertujuan menamatkan cara berpakaian menunjukkan simbol
agama di kalangan pekerja kerajaan.
Ia disifatkan sebagai
sebahagian daripada usaha pendemokrasian oleh Erdogan sejak minggu lalu.
REUTERS
Turkey lifts generations-old ban on Islamic head scarf
ANKARA | Tue Oct 8, 2013
1:03pm EDT
(Reuters) - Turkey lifted a
ban on women wearing the Islamic head scarf in state institutions on Tuesday,
ending a generations-old restriction as part of a package of reforms the
government says are meant to improve democracy.
The ban, whose roots date back
almost 90 years to the early days of the Turkish Republic, has kept many women
from joining the public work force, but secularists see its abolition as
evidence of the government pushing an Islamic agenda.
The new rules, which will not
apply to the judiciary or the military, were published in the Official Gazette
and take immediate effect in the majority Muslim but constitutionally secular
country.
"A regulation that has
hurt many young people and has caused great suffering to their parents, a dark
period, is coming to an end," Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told a meeting
of his AK Party, which has its roots in Islamist politics.
The debate around the head
scarf goes to the heart of tensions between religious and secular elites, a
major fault line in Turkish public life.
Erdogan's critics see his AK
Party as seeking to erode the secular foundations of the republic built on the
ruins of an Ottoman theocracy by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923.
His supporters, particularly
in Turkey's pious Anatolian heartlands, say Erdogan is simply redressing the
balance and restoring freedom of religious expression to a Muslim majority.
"There was a witch hunt
for civil servants with a head scarf," said Safiye Ozdemir, a high-school
teacher in Ankara who for years had to remove her head scarf at work against
her wishes, but had started to defy the ban in recent months.
"Today it became clear
that we've been right. So we are happy, and we are proud. It's a decision that
came in very late, but at least it came, thank God."
INTRUSIVENESS
The lifting of the ban, based
on a cabinet decree from 1925 when Ataturk introduced a series of clothing
reforms meant to banish overt symbols of religious affiliation for civil
servants, is part of a "democratization package" unveiled by Erdogan
last week.
The long-awaited package - in
large part aimed at bolstering the rights of Turkey's Kurdish community -
included changes to the electoral system, the broadening of language rights and
permission for villages to use their original Kurdish names.
An end to state primary school
children reciting the oath of national allegiance at the start of each week, a
deeply nationalistic vow, also took effect on Tuesday.
But Erdogan's opponents have
found little to suggest he is curbing what they see as his puritanical intrusiveness
into private life, from his advice to women on the number of children they
should have to his views on tobacco and alcohol.
They leapt on the dismissal on
Tuesday of a television presenter - after she was criticized by AK Party deputy
chairman Huseyin Celik for wearing a revealing evening dress - as evidence that
the government's tolerance went in only one direction.
"These policies ... show
not only the government's attitudes to women but also its understanding of
freedoms," said Sezgin Tanrikulu, deputy head of the main opposition
Republican People's Party (CHP), which was founded by Ataturk.
"There are countries
which interfere in the outfits worn by television presenters, but in those
countries we can't talk about democracy," he said in a statement.
Celik dismissed such
criticism, emphasizing that he had not specifically named the television
channel or presenter involved.
"As an individual, a TV
viewer or a politician, it is my right and freedom of expression to express my
opinion," he said on his Twitter account. "To exploit my comments by
saying it is intervention in lifestyles is malicious."
(Writing by Nick Tattersall
and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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