AKI, Italy
Feb 8 2008
Turkey: Nobel laureate Pamuk defends the veil
Rome, 8 Feb. (AKI) – Nobel prize-winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk
has signalled cautious support for women being allowed to wear the
Islamic headscarf in universities.
"Wearing the veil in Turkey is not in itself fundamentalism," he told
the Italian daily La Repubblica.
Turkish MPs voted on Thursday to lift the current constitutional ban
on the wearing of the Islamic headscarf in universities. A second
vote is due to be held on the issue on Saturday.
"In Turkey, women traditionally wear the headscarf, just as Italian
women did in the past," Pamuk noted.
"A high proportion of Turkish women cover their head, not just the
followers of the [ruling Islamist rooted] Justice Development Party
(AKP) party."
"The veil is a very complex issue, and patronising decisions imposed
from on high would be wrong."
"Ideally, we should respect people, have compassion and decency and
seek to understand people and problems in a non-authoritarian way. I
have always tried to convey this message in my novels."
Pamuk, known for novels such as ‘My Name is Red’ and ‘Snow’, won the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006 and currently divides his time
between the US and Turkey.
He is one of Turkey’s best selling authors and his books have been
translated into more than 40 languages.
The issue of the headscarf is the central issue of ‘Snow’, which is
set in the city of Kars in eastern Turkey on the border with Armenia.
In the novel, devout female Muslim students commit suicide because
they are not allowed to attend university if they refuse to remove
their headscarves
Paradoxically, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s
daughters, who wear the headscarf, "had to study in the United States
of fundamentalist George W. Bush to feel free," Pamuk told La
Repubblica".
Turkeys’ current Islamist-rooted government’s controversial proposal
has broad public support.
But it is fiercely opposed by Turkey’s republican establishment,
which fears that easing the ban will weaken the constitutional
commitment to secularism in the overwhelmingly Muslim country.
Restrictions on the wearing of the Muslim headscarf date from the
founding of Turkey by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and his followers in
1923.