BY ISMET BERKAN
RADIKAL- Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan got nervous after the statements of the Supreme Court of Appeals chief public prosecutor and then the Council of State. He said that everybody should know their position. Of course, it's important under the rule of law that everybody knows their position. This also applies to Erdogan. He also should know where he should stop and try not to go beyond it.
You know the reason for all this noise; debates over the headscarf issue and efforts to lift the headscarf ban at universities. Now people are talking about changing the Constitution and going beyond a 1989 Constitutional Court ruling. I'd like to reiterate that under the relevant law, students are free to wear whatever they want at universities, so long as their attire does not break the law. Despite the law, under the Constitutional Court ruling, headscarves are banned. Rightist governments have long argued that actually there's no legal ban on headscarves, but that rectors and the Board of Higher Education (YOK) banned them illegally. They must have abandoned this position, or why would a constitutional amendment be necessary?
Let's say that there was a constitutional amendment was made, not in the useless way the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) suggested, but as Professor Ergun Ozbudun and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) suggested, saying that the right to education can't be violated due to a headscarf. If such a phrase were added to the Constitution, do you think that the ban would be automatically lifted? It wouldn't. Probably a student wearing a headscarf would be expelled, and then the issue would go to the Administrative Court. In other words, a judicial process lasting for a few years would start.
Actually the Council of State would decide if the ban would end. Let's say that the rector of a university lifted the ban, following a constitutional amendment. This time a Kemalist student would apply to the court, complaining of `religious pressure' from students wearing headscarves. Then the Council of State, who was scolded by Erdogan, would again make the decision.
Neither democracy nor freedoms come down from the sky. They must be fought for. But fighting isn't enough. You should convince most of the public that your cause is justified. Politicians inclined to free, democratic ideas aren't enough for democracy and freedoms. Without judicial support, a fight for democracy and freedom can't be won. Democracy can't be brought in a country whose judges aren't democratic.