February, 14th 2008 | ISTANBUL

What lies behind the row over lifting the headscarf ban in universities

TO TURKEY'S secular elite it is a step back to the dark ages; to its conservatives, an overdue right. Either way, the constitutional changes approved by parliament to ease the ban on the wearing of the Muslim headscarf in universities will trigger a new battle between the mildly Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his secular opponents.

Scores of university heads have declared they will ignore the changes, although they were approved by a big parliamentary majority on February 9th. Tens of thousands of Turks have taken to the streets in protest. The opposition leader, Deniz Baykal, promises to go to the constitutional court, arguing that the measures contravene constitutional guarantees of secularism. The court may rule in his favour, as it did in a dispute about the Turkish presidency last May. In any case, before the measures take effect the government has to change more specific rules about garb on campuses. Some doomsayers predict the sort of violence that flared between leftist students and nationalists and Islamists in the 1970s.

Mr Erdogan's Justice and Development (AK) party has been under pressure from its base to scrap the headscarf restriction, which was imposed only in the 1990s, ever since it came to power in 2002. Polls show that most Turks favour lifting the ban for university students. Even the country's generals have remained silent, for a change. So what is all the fuss about?

One answer is that the battle over headscarves is not really about religion at all. Rather it is a power struggle between a rising class of observant Turks from the Anatolian hinterland and an entrenched elite of secular “white” Turks, backed by the generals and the judiciary. “Women with scarves used to be our maids, now they have become our neighbours,” sniffs one Istanbul socialite.

But snobbery and power are only part of the story. The headscarf debate reflects a clash between tradition and modernity as much as one between Islam and democracy. Many Westernised, middle-class Turks, especially women, fear for their lifestyle. They cite government plans to ban the showing of alcohol on television as another example of creeping conservatism. It did not help when one AK member of parliament crowed that, after getting the headscarf into universities, government offices would be next.

Even headscarf campaigners complain that they knew nothing about the government's plans. Some believe they were designed merely to win votes in the local elections due next year. If the AK were serious about bolstering equality between the sexes, “there would be more than one woman in the cabinet,” says one AK-supporting lady. And if letting women cover their heads were a matter of rights, as Mr Erdogan claims, why has the government not scrapped Article 301 of the penal code, which criminalises free speech? (Its most recent victim is Atilla Yayla, a liberal academic, given a suspended three-year jail sentence for calling Ataturk “that man”.) The government is also dragging its feet on European Union demands to make it easier for non-Muslim minorities to reclaim properties confiscated by the state.

One reason for this, some suggest, is that the AK government needed to placate a small far-right party whose support it needed in parliament to secure a two-thirds majority on the headscarf. At all events, Mr Erdogan's waning interest in joining the EU has led to growing disenchantment among his liberal supporters. Their problem is that they have nowhere else to turn. Mr Baykal, who purports to stand for Ataturk and modernity, is among the country's most strident opponents of EU-imposed reforms. Despite losing three elections within the space of a decade, he remains firmly in position.

The bigger worry is that Turkey has not yet devised a system of checks and balances that can protect the rights of all individuals, be they secular or pious, Turks or Kurds. As Abdullah Gul, the pro-European Turkish president, argued this week, EU membership could offer a panacea for Turkey's ills. If only Mr Erdogan (and existing EU members) would agree.