Istanbul, Turkey - The men and women stand separately but their chant is the same: "Long live the fight for the headscarf!"
The women at this protest in Istanbul's old quarter want to wear their headscarves in school, university and parliament, but Muslim Turkey's secular system forbids that, with laws pious Muslims see as a breach of their personal and religious freedom.
The Islamist-rooted ruling AK Party says it wants to lift the ban, a key demand of its grass-root supporters, but has faced fierce opposition from Turkey's powerful secular elite.
However, the issue is now back on the agenda as Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan considers running for president in an election next month. That would put a scarf-wearing first lady into the presidential palace in Ankara for the first time.
Outgoing President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, an arch-secularist, currently forbids such headgear on the premises of the palace.
Such an outcome would shock the secular elite, but not the 60 percent of Turkish women who cover up, nor the 59 percent of Turks who according to a survey by think-tank TESEV think Muslim women must cover their heads.
Ayse Nur Bulut, 20, is one of them: she left university because she could not wear a headscarf to class.
"I cried a lot, I thought a lot, I talked to everybody about it and in the end I decided this," she told Reuters. "It's an identity problem ... and it's a religious command."
Thousands of women have made the same decision since a ban previously applied only sporadically was enforced in 1997 after the army ousted a government it deemed too Islamist.
Some make the same decision for their children, pulling them from school in their teens.
Others, not wanting to miss out on the fast growth that reforms and modernization have brought to EU candidate Turkey, go to university, and either uncover at the gates or wear a wig.
The obstacles do not end with university. Parts of the private sector are also reluctant to employ covered women, as a glance around Istanbul's business district suggests.
"There are very few companies which employ women with headscarves ... They think their image will be harmed," said Fatma Disli, a columnist at Today's Zaman, adding that her headscarf was a factor in her career choice.
Turkish women have low work force participation rates and hold only 4 percent of the seats in parliament.
"Whether you're talking about women's rights, women's progress or women needing to participate more in society, you just can't ignore those 62 percent (who wear headscarves)," said lawyer Fatma Benli.
Benli, who quit a masters degree she was about to complete because of the ban, cannot appear in court because of her scarf so passes cases to her brother when it's time to go to court.
Secularists tend to see the headscarf as a threat to the modernizing reforms of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who threw religion out of public life as he rebuilt Turkey from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. They say any relaxation of the ban could quickly turn Turkey into another
Iran.
The headscarf is so controversial, and so politicized, that the two sides cannot even agree on its name.
Secularists tend to call it a "turban" when they consider it political, and a "basortusu" or "headcover" to denote what their grandmothers or rural women might wear, either for tradition or religion. They say hair can poke out of a headcover, which they don't consider a threat, but not out of a turban, which they do.
But many of the women who according to the secularists wear turbans refuse to accept the word, calling any kind of scarf a "headcover" and denying any political motive.
"Turban is the name given by those favoring the ban about those who want to go to school, work in the government, be a doctor, a pharmacist or work in a company using a headscarf," said Ayse Irem Demiriz, from human rights group Mazlumder.
Hundreds of women, including Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul's wife, have applied to the European Court of Human Rights, but the court has upheld the ban.
Wearers reject claims that if the headscarf is allowed, uncovered women will feel under pressure to follow suit and deny that the headscarf is the thin end of an Islamist wedge.
"Turkey really cannot get rid of its fears that it will be divided, that sharia will come to power, that it will destroy secularism and democracy. It's not possible, we've digested democracy and secularism," Disli said.