The Turkish Akp government makes the headscarf seriously: students from class 5 will be allowed to cover their hair. Teacher unions fear that society will thus thrown back into the Middle Ages.

Turkish classrooms will look different in the future: The Government of Turkey has allowed the wearing of headscarves from class 5. Students should continue to be paid by the first year of secondary school in a headscarf, the Islamic-conservative government under Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced on Tuesday.

“Who wants to wear the headscarf, it can carry, who does not want, it does not contribute,” Davutoglu told NTV television. “Everyone can live their life the way it seems right to them.” The measure is part of the policy of the ruling party, to expand “freedoms,” Davutoglu said.

The step is very controversial. The conservative religious ruling AKP and the Kemalist secular party CHP for years battling over the headscarf in public authorities, schools and universities. Since then, the AKP has taken over the government in 2002, the party seeks to loosen the recent bans in public places.

Culture battle in Turkey:Teachers Union: The company is “traumatized”

Secular opposition fears that the new headscarf freedom could lead to the spread of Islamic veiling. Sharp criticism came from several teachers’ unions. “The society is reflected by the use of religion to the Middle Ages,” the president of the union Egitim-Sen, Kamuran Karacan said. He warned that the new measure would “traumatize” the country.

Davutoglu pointed out, however, that the repeal of the headscarf ban had not triggered a conflict for state employees in 2012. Since last year, MPs are allowed to wear a headscarf. In the fall of 2010, the headscarf ban had already been abolished in Turkish universities. Until then, it had seemed that students were expelled with headscarves college.

The prohibition of the emblematic garment goes back to the secular reforms of the country’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, but provides it in Turkish society for a long time for dispute. According to surveys, hold two-thirds of Turks wearing the headscarf for a religious duty and a civil right.

Former Turkish President Abdullah Gul spoke out during his tenure against the admission of headscarves at primary school pupils, the relaxed dress code in colleges but welcomed. Since the end of August 2014, Recep Tayyip Erdogan is President; Since 2003, the AKP politicians Prime Minister of the country had been. Erdogan’s party had so far not officially defined in the question of the headscarf in schools.

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