Turkey: President's wife bows to tradition

ON TURKEY'S anniversary celebrations, all eyes were on the head of the president's wife.

In a gesture that strikes at the heart of a divisive debate over secularism and piety, Hayrunnisa Gul wore an Islamic headscarf at a reception on Friday marking the founding of modern Turkey by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk - whose secular principles are revered by the nation's traditional establishment with almost religious fervour. Across town, at around the same time, the military - which sees itself as the guardian of Ataturk's legacy - held its own Republic Day fete in a scheduling conflict symbolic of the divide between the elected, Islamic-leaning government and opponents who fear secular ideals are in peril.

The maroon attire of president Abdullah Gul's wife as she greeted guests at the pink-walled presidential palace may have struck outsiders as trivial, and it was not the first time she had done so. But for people on both sides of the philosophical split, the sight of an Islamic headscarf at the palace where Ataturk once lived, and which is seen as a symbol of the secular bedrock of Turkey's constitution, was a highly emotive sign of changing times.

The reception also amounted to a coming-out party for the president's wife, who normally wears a headscarf and has kept a low profile since her husband got the job in 2007, despite a warning from the military that his election would endanger secularism.