Turkey’s staunchly secularist military shunned the president’s Republic Day reception on Friday evening, attended for the first time by his headscarf-wearing wife, in a snub to the country’s pious rulers.

In the past President Abdullah Gül had given two separate parties, pandering to secularist sensitivities by conducting the higher-profile evening affair without his spouse, but this year he held just one event, which she co-hosted.

The military held a separate party, Turkish media reported, demonstrating the lingering divide between the secularist old guard and the rising class of conservative Muslims, epitomised by Gül and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.   »»» Reuters

Turkey is an overwhelmingly Muslim country but the Turkish military imposes a public secularism that goes far beyon what Mustafa Kemal Ataturk himself promoted.

Kemal’s own wife was usually seen in public wearing a headscarf. Even more important, Kemal himself once said that women’s headscarves did NOT threaten the secular foundation of the modern Turkish State.

Kemal wrote, “The religious covering of women will not cause difficulty…. This simple style [of headcovering] is not in conflict with the morals and manners of our society.” (Quoted in Atatürkism, Volume 1 (Istanbul: Office of the Chief of General Staff, 1982), page 126).

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