But the country was in for a shock.

Munevver Arinc, wife of the new head of Parliament from the Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), wore her headscarf, which is banned at schools and public offices and often identified with religious resistance to established secular values, if not a symbol of fundamentalism.

President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and his wife, both staunch secularists, avoided confrontation and went through the motion of shaking Mrs. Arinc's hand and took off - leaving behind a rekindled debate on the headscarf
controversy that has been dogging Turkey for decades and, more recently, other countries in East and West.

To many secularists - which in Turkey include the powerful military that carried out three coups d'etat since 1960 and forced the last Islamic government out of office - Mrs Arinc's headscarf was a sign that AKP, despite disclaimers, was planning to undo Turkey's staunchly secular system.

â??Don't act against secularism, directly or indirectly,â?? warned Deniz Baykal, leader of the opposition and secular Republican People's Party.

AKP and in particular its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, know they are walking a fine line and they quickly stated that the headscarf issue was not a priority of the new government.

The ruling party said it sees wearing headscarves as one element in increased freedoms that it says it plans to introduce in Turkey through social consensus.

The party also points to the fact that the AKP women MPs come to Parliament in newly-coiffeured hairdos, in sharp contrast to the wives of a large majority of AKP members including Erdogan and Prime Minister Abdullah Gul.

Erdogan often laments that he had to send his daughters to U.S. schools so they can sport their headscarves at universities.

The issue, watched closely beyond Turkey, is unlikely to go away. If the headscarf returns officially, it will be freedom to some, while to others defiance of secularism.

Currently, Turkish women are turned away from university or barred from working in hospitals or public offices for covering their heads.

Merve Kavakci, who was elected to Parliament in the 1999 elections under an Islamic ticket, was even booed out of the assembly chamber when she walked in with her scarf and was unable to take her oath. She was later stripped of her nationality for having failed to inform Turkish authorities of her U.S. citizenship and never returned to Parliament.

Many covered women say that they wear the headscarf out of tradition and not as a symbol challenging the secular establishment that has ruled Turkey since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk created the modern state in 1923.

â??I am a Turk and a Moslem and have no interest in fundamentalism,'' says Istanbul housewife Nebile Kastamonulu. ''But I want to be free what to wear. And I like covering my head.'' Her point is that there should be no ban on wearing or not wearing it.

Women throughout the Turkish cities and countryside, but also in Orthodox Christian Greece or in Catholic Sicily, wear the headscarf out of tradition. The Roman Catholic Church prefers women's head to be covered in
church.

Headscarves are particularly visible in the older generations and some also wear the traditional baggy shalvar pants.

In practice, there are headscarves and headscarves. Some are long and black while others short and colourful. The young even mix headscarves with fashionable Western clothes, including tight blue jeans, and elaborate
makeup.

In the Kanli family in a village near Fethiye in southern Turkey, mother Zeynep wears it, but her two teenage daughters do not in a sign of generational change. But it is not unusual that some who have not worn
headscarves in the past do so now in Turkey and abroad in what is seen as much a sign of defiance as expression of belief.

The headscarf issue has also haunted authorities in Europe. In France, the question of whether girls could wear the head covering in secondary schools led to a fierce debate opposing the national education authorities and
France's large North African community.

In Germany a court recently ruled that a Turkish woman was wrongly dismissed after her German employees fired her for wearing the scarf at work. The issue also ended up in court in Denmark and became a cause
celebre in Spain.

Two Turkish university students have filed a complaint against Turkey to the European Court of Human Rights after they were disciplined for insisting on attending classes with their scarves in 1998. They are claiming that the punishments breached the Europe Human Rights Convention's Article 9 regarding the freedoms of religion and conscience.

And there is strong support for a lifting of the ban, within and beyond the AKP electorate. According to a 2000 poll funded by the Economic and Social Studies Foundation of Turkey, 74.2 percent of Turks think that women state employees should be able to wear headscarves at work, 76.1 percent think that university students should also be allowed to wear headscarves to university.

But the secular powers have warned that they will not give in on the issue easily.

After the possibility of lifting the ban in universities was raised, the head of the Higher Education Council, Kemal Guruz said: â??The headscarf issue is a closed case for us and it will never be opened to discussion again. There is nothing else to say on that.â??

What is likely to concern AKP leaders even more is a recent warning from Turkey's Chief of General Staff Hilmi Ozkok with oblique reference to the current headscarf flap: â??Turkey's armed forces have the will and determination to look out for and protect the republic against all types of threats, especially fundamentalism .â?? (END/2002)
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