Headscarved Turkish women prepare for long struggle

By Emma Ross-Thomas

ANKARA (Reuters) - Ayse Sekerci was set to go to university this year, free at last to wear her Muslim headscarf. Then the party that championed her cause landed in court, and covered women fear their campaign will be set back a generation.

Turkey's parliament, controlled by the AK Party, passed a constitutional change in February to allow students to wear headscarves at university. That riled a secularist establishment made up of judges, generals and university rectors, who see the scarf as a symbol of political Islam, in which the AK Party has its roots.

Turkey is 99 percent Muslim, but the republic was founded as a secular state by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923 from the crumbling Islam-based Ottoman Empire.

Last month, a prosecutor launched a case to close down the AK party for anti-secular activities. His indictment is packed with references to the headscarf, while a separate case filed at the same court challenges the headscarf reform itself.

The AK Party denies the charges and says the closure case is politically motivated.

Headscarf-wearing women say the outlook is grim, with many predicting the Constitional Court, a bastion of secularism which has ruled against the AK Party in the past, will do so again. If it does, commentators and activists say devout women face a long wait before any party tackles the headscarf issue anew.

Twenty-year-old Sekerci has already decided that rather than not study, she will wear a wig to cover her hair at university. But after graduating, she says she would prefer not to work than to do so without her headscarf.

"Everyone was hopeful. I thought I would be able to study in the way that my religion requires," Sekerci, wearing a knee-length dress over jeans and a silky black scarf, told Reuters. "It really seemed that this time it would happen. But after the recent events, all my hope has been destroyed."