To the Editor:<\/p>\n
The Turkish government\u2019s lifting of the ban on head scarves in government offices (news article, Oct. 9) should not be taken as a sign of democracy, despite what Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan claims.<\/p>\n
Instead, it is another insidious step toward the Islamist state he desires and against the secular republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Don\u2019t forget that Mr. Erdogan is the man who declared: \u201cDemocracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Furthermore, this step diminishes rather than promotes the equal rights of women in that country. The wearing of Islamic head scarves in Turkey is quite a different thing from what it is in the United States, and American citizens and politicians should not so easily be deceived.<\/p>\n
CAROL DELANEY<\/p>\n
Providence, R.I., Oct. 9, 2013<\/p>\n
The writer, emerita professor of anthropology at Stanford University, has spent years doing research in Turkey.<\/p>\n
A version of this letter appears in print on October 14, 2013, on page A24 of the New York edition with the headline: Head Scarves in Turkey.<\/p>\n
via Head Scarves in Turkey – NYTimes.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To the Editor: The Turkish government\u2019s lifting of the ban on head scarves in government offices (news article, Oct. 9) should not be taken as a sign of democracy, despite what Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan claims. Instead, it is another insidious step toward the Islamist state he desires and against the secular republic founded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":643583,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[3824],"class_list":["post-84307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-usa","tag-headscarf-ban"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}