The Veiling Issue

In the Turkish elections of December 1995, the Islamic Welfare Party became the biggest party in parliament and proceeded to form a government in coalition with ex-Prime Minister Tancu Ciller's True Path Party. For the first time in history, an Islamic party had come to power by means of free elections. The rise to power of the Turkish Islamists is a result of several decades of revivalism. In this process the yashmak has been a prominent symbol of the new religious puritanism, causing resentment among those who regard the bare-headed woman as the symbol of progress and emancipation. In the light of a century-long conflict between secularism and popular Islam in Turkey, this volume describes the conflict over the yashmak as it became a burning issue in the decade following the military intervention of 1980. The author argues that the fact that the Islamic movement is on the rise does not mean that it threatens the very foundations of modern Turkish society.
Whereas the controversies of the 19th century could be described as a "clash of civilizations" (between Islam and the West), those of today have shrunk into conflicts over certain cultural symbols that are part of the same globally-expanding technological civilization.