The headscarf is finally free; the country is not
More than a decade ago, this column predicted that what most Western pundits then labeled as “Turkey’s pro-freedom reformists” would bring “reforms” merely about to broaden freedoms for political Islam and its symbols and restrict (non-Islamist) freedoms in general. More than a decade later, the prime minister, Ahmet Davuoglu, declared that “finally the [Islamic] headscarf is totally free.” Only a few months earlier, Freedom House, a prestigious institute, had to put Turkey into the category of countries it labels as “not free.”
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