Turkey upholds university headscarf ban

TURKEY’S top court has annulled a law allowing women to wear Islamic headscarves in universities on grounds it violates secularism, in a huge blow for the prime minister and his Islamist-rooted party.

In a brief statement after a seven-hour session, the 11-judge tribunal said it scrapped the law because it ran counter to constitutional provisions that say Turkey is a secular republic and that this principle is unalterable. The constitutional amendment, pushed through by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), was cited by the country’s chief prosecutor as a key piece of evidence in his pending bid to outlaw the party on charges that it is covertly seeking to replace the secular order with an Islamist regime.

The ruling is largely seen as an indication that the Constitutional Court will also go against the AKP when it rules on whether to ban it and bar 71 party officials, among them Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul, from politics.