Secular party now courting the pious

The move by the head of the CHP has sparked a heated debate within the party and the media in Turkey.

ISTANBUL // After spending much of the year attacking the government over alleged Islamist tendencies, the veteran leader of Turkey's main secularist party surprised many by welcoming a group of pious Muslim women with headscarves and veils into his party, a move that shows how important religiously conservative voters have become in Turkey. At a rally of his Republican People's Party, or CHP, in Istanbul this month, Deniz Baykal accepted several new female party members in strict Islamic robes, known as carsaf in Turkey, into his group by pinning CHP buttons on their dresses. The carsaf is a black veil that covers a woman's body and shows only her eyes and nose. According to polls, fewer than two per cent of Turkish women wear the carsaf and more than 60 per cent wear a headscarf. Press photographs of the rally in Istanbul showed several women in headscarves next to a smiling and waving Mr Baykal. The initiative of the 70-year-old CHP leader, one of the most experienced politicians in the country, has triggered a heated debate in his own party and beyond, as the step is seen to contradict the long-held opposition of the CHP to what it says is a government-sponsored wave of Islamisation in Turkish society. "For years, the carsaf has been seen as a symbol directed against secularism," Nur Serter, a CHP parliamentary deputy, said last week. "That's why it is not right to put the carsaf on centre stage." Gursel Tekin, the leader of the CHP in Istanbul who is thought to have been a driving force behind Mr Baykal's move, disagreed strongly. "Does this headscarved group consist of criminal citizens?" Mr Tekin asked in an interview with the Milliyet daily newspaper. He said many CHP officials in conservative Anatolia expressed their support. "At least 20 of our provincial leaders called me from Anatolia to say, 'Bravo, we are behind you'." Newspaper columnists have been debating whether Mr Baykal was serious or if his action was a purely tactical step before local elections scheduled for March. Whatever the motive, by openly welcoming religious Turks into the CHP, Mr Baykal has demonstrated that a Turkish party needs support from conservative circles if it wants to be successful in a country with a 99 per cent Muslim population but a secular structure. Mr Baykal told the CNN-Turk news channel on Friday that the women he welcomed into the CHP had been supporters of the religiously conservative Justice and Development Party, or AKP, of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister. Thousands were disappointed with the AKP, he said. "How can we reject those people who come to us?" Ferhat Kentel, a sociologist at Istanbul's Bilgi University, said traditional support for the CHP in urban circles and in Turkey's academic, bureaucratic and military elites, who feel strongly about secularism and see Islam with suspicion, stood at between 20 per cent and 30 per cent of the electorate. "If the CHP really wants to rule Turkey, if it wants to be seen as an alternative, it has to somehow convince a part of the remaining 70 per cent," he said. Under Mr Baykal's leadership the CHP won a little less than 22 per cent of the vote in last year's general elections, while the AKP raked in almost 47 per cent. When the AKP pushed a constitutional amendment through parliament in February to allow female students to enter universities with headscarves, the CHP took the matter to the constitutional court, saying the decision was a threat to Turkey's secular order. The court annulled parliament's headscarf bill in June. Given Mr Baykal's previous uncompromising attitude towards Islamic clothing, it is no wonder he has been under pressure to explain this latest move. When he told newspapers last week CHP members in carsaf were different from others because they had put on the veil for non-political, "innocent" reasons, commentators and Mr Erdogan joked that Mr Baykal must have a special device that allows him to know what goes on in women's heads. "Does he run around with an X-ray machine?" Mr Erdogan asked. A cartoonist in the Sabah newspaper drew Mr Baykal being hit on the head by a ballot box and exclaiming: "Now I see! There are women wearing the carsaf in this country." The biggest pressure on Mr Baykal has come from within his own party and from his traditional allies in the media. "This must not be repeated," Ms Serter, the MP, said. According to press reports the CHP's general secretary, Onder Sav, one of Mr Baykal's closest aides, said the carsaf initiative was furthering the Islamisation of Turkey. Mr Sav is reported to have compared the situation to an experiment in which a frog is exposed to slowly rising water temperatures and does not react to the danger of being boiled alive until it is too late. Oktay Akbal, a columnist of the strictly secular daily newspaper Cumhuriyet, accused the CHP, created in 1923 by Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, of betrayal. All big parties in Turkey now accept the headscarf and other Islamic clothes, Mr Akbal wrote last week. "It's over. Ataturk's revolution, his modernity, his initiatives for civilisation are all finished." Mr Baykal has tried to reassure his critics by saying he is still opposed to allowing headscarves in universities and other institutions such as parliament. But that statement immediately triggered a new round of criticism, this time from liberals who had initially welcomed Mr Baykal's carsaf move as a long overdue acceptance of social realities. If Mr Baykal was drawing the line for headscarves at university gates, he was denying headscarved women the chance to rise in society, wrote Taha Akyol, a columnist for Milliyet. According to Mr Akyol, Mr Baykal is in effect telling that part of Turkish society: "Be a doorman, a laundress, a servant, a cleaning woman, a tea boy and vote for the CHP. But don't step over the line! Don't go to university! Don't get an education to be a professional! Stay in the slums!" Mr Kentel said it was uncertain whether Mr Baykal would succeed in opening up the CHP for new segments of the electorate without risking a weakening of his core support. "It may be that he loses some of that 30 per cent, but wins nothing on the other side," he said. [e-mail]