Amid heated controversy and the threat of protests from Turkish students who support strict separation of church and state, former Turkish politician Merve Kavakci demanded Thursday to be respected for her intellect and not for what she wears around her head.
“(The headscarf) is part of my identity,” Kavakci told more than 120 students at Fisk Hall. “It is not something you can hide or choose not to wear. I need to be respected so that I can express myself in the proper context of identity.”
Kavakci, who was elected to the Turkish National Assembly in 1999, was forced out of her oath-swearing ceremony for wearing a hijab, the traditional headscarf for Muslim women. Members of the Turkish National Assembly who believe in secular government forced her out of the ceremony because public officials are not supposed to wear religious apparel.
Last week some students in the Turkish Students Association expressed opposition to Kavakci’s speech because they found the event’s title “Unveiling Turkey’s Injustice” offensive. They said Kavakci was removed from the Turkish National Parliament because she had dual citizenship in Turkey and the United States, not because she wore a hijab.
Although no protests occurred at the speech, some Turkish students distributed pamphlets at the entrance of Fisk 217 that tried to dispel some of the facts Kavakci has stated.
“We believe some of (Kavakci’s) information was misleading,” Weinberg freshman Ahmet Zagra said. “(We distributed pamphlets) just to provide some more information and our own perspective of the issue,”
Medill junior Abed Moiduddin, president of the Muslim-cultural Students Association, said the group brought Kavakci to raise awareness of the issues that are affecting the Turkish community.
“She can offer an academic perspective and a personal perspective of that account, both as a Muslim and as a person,” he said.
Kavakci said that in the continuum of secular government — from a religious state to a utopic secular state — Turkey falls more closely to “secular extremism,” she said.
“(Turkey) has strayed from falling into a religious state, but we’ve also fallen into the fallacy of turning into a state religion,” she said. “The (Turkish government) intervenes with religion, controls religion and can even change religion,” she said.
This extremist secularism has created a new social class in Turkey: “victimized women with headscarfs,” she said.
“You see the hope that one day they (women with headscarfs) will take their place in society — not as homemakers — but as professionals,” she said. “They also deserve a public life, a public identity.”
Kavakci also tried to dispel the stereotype that women who wear headscarfs are backward.
“(Women with headscarfs) drive and ride horses and ice skate and the whole nine yards,” she said.
While many Turkish students said that most of Kavakci’s speech was a lie — McCormick freshman Merve Hasoglu said her speech “has nothing to do with (Turkish people)” — those not directly involved said they appreciated the information she provided.
“She definitely didn’t persuade me,” said McCormick freshman Brandan Higgins. “But she was very informative.”
Reach Allan Madrid at [email protected].
