BY NURAY MERT
RADIKAL- Scholar and regular columnist Nuray Mert comments on yesterday’s reception given by Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc in honor of April 23 National Sovereignty and Children’s Day. A summary of her column is as follows:
I’m afraid that Turkey’s headscarf issue will never cease to plague this country. Yesterday, this simmering controversy threatened to boil over once again with the occasion of Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc’s reception celebrating April 23 National Sovereignty and Children’s Day. Recent weeks have seen the very political foundations of the world shaken and our neighbor under invasion, and with each passing day our region is dragged further and further into chaos. But who cares! It’s all about the headscarf issue and the image of our ‘westernized woman,’ this is what we should be concerned about right now. The rest is just a never-never land. Believe me, the very thought of this makes me every day grow more and more ashamed of the freedoms I enjoy as an unveiled woman.
Days before the reception, the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) announced that it would protest the occasion should Arinc’s headscarved wife [Munevver Arinc] attend the gathering. Well, a splendid piece of ‘effective’ opposition politics indeed. Take a look at what CHP Izmir Deputy Canan Aritman said on Tuesday: ‘Enough is enough. They must immediately stop testing our limits. Her husband sits at Ataturk’s chair. The Clothing Reform is the most important accomplishment this country has ever witnessed.’ This is it. This is the precise mentality of those in Turkey who are obsessively, steadfastly opposed to headscarves, deeming the 1920’s Clothing Reform as our most magnificent achievement ever. I would like to congratulate Mrs. Aritman for her frankness. For many years, I have argued that behind the surface of the heated secularism debate in Turkey has lain the mere desire to ape Western styles and modes of doing things. Thanks to Mrs. Aritman’s statements, my thesis has been handily reconfirmed.
In short, this sums up the whole discussion: When one talks about the republican regime, one instantly thinks about apparent Westernization attempts such as wearing Western-type clothes, going to balls and receptions and dancing, etc. As if these were the only things that make Turkey’s republican revolution a significant event. Apparently, the utmost concern of such a mentality is not the republican regime or secularism, but forging a Western identity and making people accept it. And the headscarf is the number one obstacle to such a project. Because to the extent that the obsession with adopting a Western identity has to do with physical appearance, wearing headscarves constitutes a challenge to this Western identity. A single offending picture of a headscarved woman is just what they don’t want to see, as it threatens to sweep away all of their fond dreams of feeling like a complete Westerner in a Westernized environment and country.
We should stop looking at ourselves through the gaze of the other. Internalizing the Western perspective as a criterion for assessing ourselves is just what makes Turkey a third-world country.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION