Post date: Sep 30, 2013 1:55:50 PM
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan announces a rights package for the country's citizens, including the right to wear Islamic-style headscarves in state buildings.
ANKARA, TURKEY (SEPTEMBER 30, 2013) (TURKISH PRIME MINISTRY) - Turkey will end a ban that bars women from wearing the Islamic-style headscarf in state institutions, part of the government's long-awaited package of proposed human-rights reforms, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday (September 30) in a major policy speech.
"We are going to amend the regulation on employees' appearance in state offices and we are lifting the ban that bars women wearing headscarf. The regulation includes restrictions on women and men's appearances and this is a violation and discrimination against the freedom of religion and consciousness," Erdogan told a news conference in Turkish capital of Ankara.The new rules will not apply to the judiciary or the military.
Muslim but secular Turkey has long had tough restrictions on the garb worn by women working in state offices.
Turkey may also eliminate an electoral threshold that has kept pro-Kurdish groupings outside of parliament, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said, a reform that may help advance a flagging peace process with Kurdish militants.
"We can continue with a national threshold of 10 percent. We can reduce the threshold to 5 percent and implement a narrowed regional electoral system in five groups and, as a third option, we can remove the national threshold and implement a narrowed regional electoral system," Erdogan said as he ran though options for bringing pro-Kurdish groups further into the political process.
Erdogan has repeatedly said that the proposed reforms, which the government has spent months working on, are not directly linked with efforts to end a 29-year conflict with the outlawed KurdistanWorkers Party (PKK).
But the changes should go some way towards addressing Kurdish grievances after the PKK declared a ceasefire in March in their armed campaign against the Turkish state that has claimed 40,000 lives, mainly Kurdish, since 1984.
The rebels, based in northern Iraq, have halted their withdrawal of fighters, complaining that the government was dragging its feet on legislative changes.
Proposed changes to the voting system would either halve or eliminate all together the election threshold, which is among the world's highest at 10 percent, Erdogan said.
Other changes likely to be welcomed by Kurds, who make up about 20 percent of Turkey's population of 76 million people, include allowing villages and towns to revert to their historic names.
Erdogan also said that the so-called "democratisation package" would allow for education in languages other than Turkish at non-state schools, a long-held demand by Kurdish politicians and activists.
The prime minister also announced plans to return monastery property belonging to Syriac Christians that was seized by the state.
"The property of the monastery of Mor Gabriel will be turned over to the monastery foundation. We will be returning the rights of Syriac Christians" he said.
Mor Gabriel, which is still a working monastery, is the oldest surviving Syriac Orthodox monastery in the world.