President Ahmet Necdet Sezer came under fire Wednesday in Turkish newspapers after refusing to invite headscarf-wearing wives of parliamentarians to a reception next week to mark Turkey's national day. His move highlights tensions in mainly Muslim Turkey between the secular establishment, which includes the powerful military, and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has Islamist roots.
The secularists oppose the wearing of Islamic-style headscarves in public buildings, seeing it as an Islamist challenge to the strict separation of religion and state enshrined since the modern Turkish Republic was founded in 1923.
Sezer sent out invitations to the October 29 reception to all members of the Turkish parliament, but only to those wives known not to wear headscarves, Turkish media said.
The president's office declined to comment on the decision.
"This discrimination is very bad. Even those who took power after military coups never went this far," wrote Taha Akyol, a columnist for the Milliyet newspaper. "It is humiliating discrimination that hurts people's feelings."
The pro-AKP daily Yeni Safak quoted Nimet Cubukcu, a female AKP lawmaker who does not wear a headscarf, as saying: "Celebrations of our national day are everybody's celebrations. Such discrimination shows disrespect toward the nation which elected the MPs."
Many commentators said the incident showed secularists like Sezer were not progressive but reactionary and undemocratic in a country where a majority of women do wear headscarves.
"Sezer sees women as second class citizens," wrote Mehmet Ocaktan in Yeni Safak.
Others suggested that conservative-minded bureaucrats working in Sezer's office were to blame and that the invitations were sent out without the president's prior knowledge.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who once spent time in jail for Islamist sedition, said he would not take his headscarf-wearing wife to the reception.