By DPA
Ankara : The Turkish parliament Thursday morning approved changing the constitution in the first-stage of a two-round vote to lift a ban on wearing Islamic headscarves at universities.
After a sometimes raucous debate lasting more than 12 hours, 404 deputies in the 550-seat parliament voted in favour of an overall motion changing two articles of the constitution. The parliament had earlier voted on individual points of the proposed changes.
With all of the changes expected to pass, the parliament will convene again Saturday for a final round of voting on the measures.
The move to allow the Islamic head-coverings comes after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) was returned to power last year in early elections forced following a series of spats with secularists over the nomination of Abdullah Gul – whose wife wears a headscarf – for the presidency.
Members of the AKP argued that the constitutional changes were a women’s rights issue, but opponents said that the moves were part of a creeping Islamification of Turkish society and that Erdogan’s government ultimately seeks to undermine the secular nature of the Turkish state.
The government has pointed to public opinion polls in support of the measure as evidence that the moves are democratic. The latest polls from Metropoll Research showed 65 percent of Turks support lifting the bans.
Establishment groups such as the judiciary, top business groups and academics have condemned the plan to lift the restrictions. The staunchly-secularist military has refused to get involved in the debate, but has made it clear it is watching events carefully.
On Saturday, more than 100,000 people gathered at the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish republic who entrenched secularism, to protest the lifting the bans.
The opposition Republican People’s Party has vowed to go to the Constitutional Court in an attempt to block the changes.
Wearing headscarves at universities was first banned after the 1980 military coup but was not strictly enforced until the late 1990s. Rather than take off their head-coverings many devout Islamic women have refused to go to university and some, including Erdogan’s daughters, have studied abroad to get around the ban.