Headscarf Politics in Turkey ― A Postcolonial Reading

Covering of Muslim women is often perceived as a sign of oppression in the Western eye. Nonetheless, there are a soaring number of women who choose to wear the Islamic headgear as a sign of their liberation and commitment to God. Although these women have long been of interest for the peoples of the Occident with endless material produced about them in the past, it was invariably through the monotonal voice of the Orientalist from a position of outside authority. Here the reader will hear, for a change, the insiders' voices from within the Orient, the voices of the contemporary Turkish women who cover, willingly and decisively. Their day-to-day struggles in search for their niche in the secular Turkish society are intended to open a new window and provide an alternative perspective for the Western reader.

Merve Kavakci is Lecturer of Political Science at Howard University, USA. She was elected to the Turkish Parliament, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in 1999. However she was prevented from serving her term by the secularists because she wears a headscarf. Kavakci's political party was closed down and her Turkish citizenship was revoked, banning her from politics for a period of five years. She took her case to European Court of Human Rights and won in 2007.