Premier favors ending scarf ban

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan challenged a ban on women wearing head scarves in Turkey’s universities and public offices, saying there is no need to wait for a constitutional change to remove the ban, state-run media said.

The attempts to lift the ban have alarmed secularists who fear the government is raising the profile of Islam in the largely Muslim but secular country.

“There is no need to wait for the new constitution,” the state-run Anatolian news agency quoted Erdogan as saying.

Erdogan says that lifting the head-scarf ban is merely a question of individual liberty, but the country’s secular establishment, including the military, regards it as a political statement aimed at undermining the nation’s secular principles.