The headscarf in Turkey : How the fabric of the country splits

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busra Cebeci some years ago, during the semester vacation of your family in the Anatolian small town of Boyabat, there was a thunder weather: The student had decided on the distant Uni, the Islamic headscarf. "My father was afraid that I will fry in hell," says the 25-year-old today. "My mother was ashamed to walk with me on the road."

Cebeci open to let your hair anyway and is now working as a journalist in Istanbul, where she has interviewed dozens of women to their decision against the headscarf. "I got lucky," she says in an interview with the daily mirror.

For many women, the pressure of the families on the women is very much higher, because the headscarf for conservative Turks is an indispensable part of their identity as Muslims. "There are women who have themselves made suicide attempts, or abuse has been involved," says Cebeci. In at least one case, a woman had even landed in the mental hospital.

"You will not be alone"

the women drop the head scarf, it has always been. However, many of those Affected have long wrestled silently with the decision. It is only since a relatively short time, the Internet and social media offer the opportunity to network with like-minded people.

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you can order "You will not be alone," a Website where women anonymously share their experiences with us. On Twitter, it rained under the Hashtag "#10YearChallenge" recent contributions of Turkish women, the most published images of themselves with and without a headscarf. Also Cebeci.

The "great power of solidarity", as he calls it, makes a lot of women of courage. Earlier the women did not want to talk in fear about your decisions today, you set your photos to the web.

About two out of every three women in Turkey wear a headscarf. The Islamic-conservative government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been giving the prohibition of female head-covering in state institutions abolished: before the age of 16 as an expression of the normalization in a 99 percent Muslim country, says the government. An alarm sign of a growing Islamization of society, say opponents of the President.

distant To the Religion

That the Turks under Erdogan have become Islamic, but not sure. A new long-term poll suggests that Turks are becoming more and more distant to the Religion. According to the study by the Institute Konda, the proportion of women without a headscarf has increased in the last ten years from 34 to 37 percent. Today, 51 percent of Turks describe themselves as pious, four percentage points less than ten years ago. to see

In the rejection of the headscarf is a departure from Islam, but it would be too easy. For some women it comes to very private things, such as the development of personality. You have created the age of twelve, the head cloth and it moved out with 18, writes a data on the Website "You'll be alone."

Has placed the headscarf: busra CebeciFoto: Private

The reaction of friends and Relatives had been unexpectedly hostile. "But I have done in my 18 years, for the first Time, something I feel quite like myself."

Some of the women in your life just things that are with a headscarf only difficult to achieve, has been observed to Cebeci. "The play in a Theater, the other wants to play sports, the third is simple with open hair more attractive – it can put daily things behind it."

manipulated Earlier with the headscarf: busra CebeciFoto: Private

Political

whatever the reasons for a decision against the headscarf: The cloth remains a politically sensitive issue. On the backs of the women in the dispute between religious and secular groups will be held in the company, says Cebeci.

This lead to some head-scarf-women's feel as a political "mascot": From the government, they are presented as worthy of protection victims of alleged attacks by Secularists, secular parties, they are instrumentalized as a religious Fig leaf.

is Often a private decision

With a headscarf, you will not automatically credited to the Erdogan AKP party, what every woman is long right says Cebeci. To wear a head cloth and to maintain a Western life style, but it is also almost impossible: "If you go with a headscarf in a pub, you will be photographed immediately Secularists, who spread your picture everywhere."

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Many of those Affected have, therefore, the nose full of it, to get your private choices are constantly judged by Others, as a comment on the Website makes it clear: "Let the women decide for themselves how they want to live."