Science: Since the 1920s the Turkish constitution has banned the wearing of headscarves by women who work in the public sector. However, the ban has always been controversial, and since 2003 Turkey’s government has been dominated by a moderate Islamic political party, the Justice and Development Party. Now a senior astrophysics professor could go to prison for preventing female students wearing scarves from attending his class. Rennan Pekünlü, who teaches at Ege University in Izmir, claims he was upholding the Turkish constitution. Nevertheless, he was found guilty last September of violating the rights of women and faces 25 months in prison unless he wins his appeal next month. And he is not the only secularist academic having problems. In June of last year, Kemal Gürüz, the former head of Turkey’s Council of Higher Education and a prominent academic reformer, was arrested; Gürüz remains in prison.
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I am an undergraduate physics student in Turkey. I can assure you that these radical secularists are the primary reason why we are stuck with a party with an Islamist agenda on our heads. Kemal Gürüz was never an accomplished scientist or a successful academic. All he ever did was power mongering. He made sure that all academic and scientific institutions were under his control. But when JDP came to power he started losing his grip so he conspired with many other so called scientists and professors to overthrow the government with a military coup. That’s why he is in prison not because he is a simple secularist. Now JDP grows ever more powerful because compared to these people they look like angels(which they are not). I am a firm believer in human rights and scientific thinking. Everyone should have the right to recieve education no matter what they wear or think.