Turkish Islamists Back Down on Headscarves

Sat, Aug 2, 2008 at 8:19:57 pm PDT

A setback for the Islamist ruling party of Turkey: Turkish Rulers Backtrack on Head Scarves.

ANKARA, Turkey, July 31 — Turkey’s ruling party has dropped for now its attempts to lift a decades-old ban on wearing Islamic head scarves in universities, a campaign that infuriated defenders of the country’s secular principles and nearly brought down the government.

Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek signaled Thursday that the government would not push for a fresh round of legislation to lift the head scarf ban, a day after the country’s top court narrowly decided not to shut down the ruling party on grounds that it was trying to impose an Islamic regime.

“The head scarf issue is not on our agenda now,” Cicek told NTV television in an interview.