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A saga the Sikhs should know before rushing

There is no end to the number of Sikh organisations threatening to take the French government to one or the other international courts, particularly the European Court of Human Rights, on the issue of ban on wearing of turbans by Sikh students. But before the community takes such a step, it is necessary to know about precedents and be aware of what has happened to others who thought along similar lines. It is with such an aim in view that the WSN editors thought it prudent to tell this tale.

On November 10, 2005, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg threw out an appeal by a Muslim student against Turkey's ban on women wearing headscarves in universities. The court ruled that the prohibition did not breach the fundamental rights of the secular state's Muslim population. Leyla Sahin had appealed to the court claiming she was excluded from Istanbul University during her medical studies in 1998 because she insisted on wearing a headscarf. Sahin, 34, now lives in Austria where she finished her studies and works as a doctor. Bringing her case against the Turkish state, she had argued that the ban violated Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

But in a definitive ruling, the court upheld its June 2004 decision that the headscarf ban could be considered "necessary to protect the democratic system in Turkey." As there were extremist political movements in Turkey "which sought to impose on society as a whole their religious symbols," the university ban could be seen as upholding secularism, which was consistent with the values of the rights convention, the court ruled. The ban "primarily pursued the legitimate aims of protecting the rights and freedoms of others and of protecting public order," it found.

The court noted in addition that "regulations on wearing the Islamic headscarf had existed at Istanbul University since 1994 at the latest, well before the applicant enrolled there." Despite the ruling, the Turkish foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, insisted that the ban was undemocratic and said he was confident it would eventually be lifted. "At a time when the rights of religious minorities are being debated in Turkey, one cannot defend restrictions on the rights of the majority," he said. So far, the ban is still in place.

Many universities tolerated the headscarf until the mid-1990s.

But the enforcement of the ban, based on constitutional court judgments, was tightened since 1997, when the army forced Turkey's first Islamist prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, to resign. Even prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who sent his two veiled daughters to study in the United States, offered little comment on the Turkey case though governing Justice and Development Party, a conservative movement with Islamist roots, opposed the headscarf ban but did nothing to overturn it.

This definitive ruling of the European court's was the first concerning the Muslim headscarf and served as a precedent in many similar cases. Even in France, it is being quoted in the current context in which Sikhs too have become a sort of a party.

6 February 2008
 

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