A law banning Turkish public workers from wearing Islamic head scarves was lifted on Tuesday, after decades of division between the country's secular population and its religious conservatives.
All state employees except military and judiciary workers are eligible to participate in this change, which was put in effect after the Official Gazette published the law, the Wall Street Journal reported. The bill was a portion of a bigger package proposed last week that the government claims will bolster democracy in the country. The ban was lifted after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party, or AKP, finished up the package, which aims to open up rights for the country's people.
"We are lifting bans and impositions on different parts of society," Erdogan told the Wall Street Journal. "We are ending prohibitions, oppression. No one can see themselves as the sole heir of the republic - those with head scarves are heirs as much as those who don't cover their head."
Head scarves have been banned in Turkey for about 90 years, after the Ottoman Empire collapsed shortly after World War I. The Turkish government moved to a republic, and strived to mimic the Western style of governance.
Erdogan and his political party have long-disagreed on the head scarf issue with secularists who want there to be no defining marks of religious affiliation in the Turkish community. Wearing head scarves in public was a point of contention that highlighted Turkey's social and ideological divide for decades. But since the AKP, rooted in Islamic political beliefs, has steadily gained clout by winning more than three elections since 2002, the government is attempting to move closer toward an Islamist state. Some critics of the government told the Wall Street Journal that lifting the ban on head scarves is Erdogan's latest effort to move Turkey away from its secular beginnings.
According to the CIA World Factbook, over 95 percent of Turkey's people are Muslim.