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Turkey's Constitutional Court Invalidates Constitutional Changes On Headscarves

By Howard M. Friedman

Hurriyet reported yesterday that Turkey's Constitutional Court has struck down constitutional amendments adopted in February designed to lift the ban on wearing of Muslim headscarves at universities. (See prior posting.) By a vote of 9-2, the court held that the provision in Article 2 of the country's Constitution providing that Turkey is a secular and democratic state is, according to Article 4 of the Constitution, unamendable. The Court announced its decision in a short statement, indicating that full opinions will be released later. The Court's statement read:

The law of February 9th making constitutional amendments to lift a ban on headscarf at universities has been cancelled based on the constitution's articles no. 2, 4 and 148. The execution of the law has also been stopped.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday in the case of Karaduman and Tando?an v. Turkey, the European Court of Human Rights rule that two Turkish high school teachers who had been fired for refusing to remove their Muslim headscarves had been denied the right to a fair trial because they had not been allowed to respond to the opinion of Principal State Counsel at the Supreme Administrative Court. (ECHR press release).

Full post as published by Religion Clause on June 06, 2008 (boomark / email).