Turkish parliament speaker provokes row with call for religious constitution

ISTANBUL/ANKARA | BY AYLA JEAN YACKLEY AND ERCAN GURSES
Tue Apr 26, 2016 2:32pm EDT

A call by Turkey's parliament speaker for a new constitution to drop references to secularism provoked opposition condemnation and a brief street protest on Tuesday, potentially undermining government efforts to forge agreement on a new charter.

Speaker Ismail Kahraman said late on Monday that overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey needed a religious constitution, a proposal which contradicts the modern republic's founding principles. He later said his comments were "personal views" and that the new constitution should guarantee religious freedoms.

His comments and the reaction highlight a schism in Turkish society reaching back to the 1920s when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk forged a secular republic from the ruins of an Ottoman theocracy. He banished Islam from public life, replaced Arabic with Latin script and promoted Western dress and women's rights.

President Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling AK Party he founded, their roots in political Islam, have tried to restore the role of religion in public life. They have expanded religious education and allowed the head scarf, once banned from state offices, to be worn in colleges and parliament.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-politics-constitution-idUSKCN0XN0MD