President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday expressed his expectation that the constitutional amendment proposal including changes on the headscarf ban will be implemented with broad support.
"If not, we are ready to take other steps, including a public vote," he told a ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) group meeting in the capital Ankara.
Erdoğan said that after discussing their constitutional amendment proposal with the political parties with a group in Parliament, they will finalize the proposal and submit it to Parliament.
"Our friends are starting to discuss our constitutional amendment proposal, which we have completed, with our partner in the People's Alliance, the Nationalist Movement Party, and with other political parties that have a group in Parliament. After the negotiations that will be completed today, we will finalize our proposal and present it to Parliament," he said. The People's Alliance is mainly led by the AK Party and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).
"I believe that it will be a litmus test for the opposition as well as removing it from our nation's agenda, never to be opened again," he also said regarding changes in the laws about women's rights to wear headscarves in public life.
"We will see who stands for liberties and the family, who stands for fascism and perversions," he added.
Erdoğan also called on the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Chairperson Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu to determine candidates wearing headscarves for the upcoming 2023 elections to prove their sincerity on the issue.
Kılıçdaroğlu unexpectedly revived the issue of headscarves last month, announcing planned legislation amid efforts by his secularist CHP party to reach out to conservative Turks, among which the CHP has traditionally had little support.
Instead of a bill, the ruling AK Party sought to make constitutional amendments to guarantee the right to wear headscarves. Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ announced he would present the works on a new constitutional-level headscarf regulation to the president.
The People's Alliance is carrying out joint efforts for constitutional amendments and there will be consultation visits to political parties, AK Party spokesperson Ömer Çelik said Tuesday.
“One of the first goals of our Century of Türkiye vision is to draw a new constitution that will be the product of the national will,” Erdoğan recently said.
Speaking on a constitutional change regarding the right to wear headscarves, Erdoğan said that the amendment would be submitted to Parliament soon, thereby enabling the issue to be eliminated from Türkiye’s agenda for good.
“We have prepared a constitutional amendment that will protect the family from the threat of deviant movements and guarantee the educational and working rights of our daughters and ladies with or without headscarves," he had outlined.
Turkish women who wear the headscarf have long struggled under laws that prevented them from wearing headscarves at schools as students and in public institutions as professionals, despite the prevalence of headscarf-wearing women in the country. The issue of the headscarf ban held an important place in public and political debates in Türkiye throughout the 1990s and 2000s.
The headscarf ban in Türkiye was first implemented widely in the 1980s but became stricter after 1997 when the military forced the conservative government to resign in an incident later dubbed the Feb. 28 coup.
Parliament lifted the ban on female students wearing the headscarf at university in 2008 in a move championed by Erdoğan and which the main opposition CHP lawmakers had sought unsuccessfully to block in the constitutional court.
In 2013, Türkiye lifted the ban on women wearing headscarves in state institutions under reforms that the government said were designed to bolster democracy.
