Ms. Erdogan, please stay home

[Behind the Aegis]

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni merited a special honor during her visit to Turkey: Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul received her as the first visitor to his newly refurbished office. In general, it seems the Turks made a special effort to make the stay by Livni a pleasant one, despite the fact that they were not exactly excited about her remarks about Hamas.

Her visit was so nice that she probably did not notice the protest that began a week before her arrival. The protest was actually against Emine Erdogan, the wife of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Emine angers secular Turks because she appears in public with her head covered, not just in Turkey but during official visits abroad with her husband. Her head scarf was last seen during the official visit to Sharm el-Sheikh for the International Economic Conference in late May. Muslim Turkey, which was educated to be a secular state, still has trouble digesting the reign of a religious party. It cannot comprehend why it must tolerate the prime minister's wife appearing in public in traditional Muslim garb.

A sharp expression of these sentiments was voiced last week by journalist Nursun Erel in a strongly-worded article that appeared in the English-language Turkish paper, The New Anatolian. Erel quoted at length from an open letter to Emine Erdogan written by a female parliamentary deputy of the Republican People's Party (CHP), Canan Aritman.


more...