Taking down 'Ataturk's legacy' - Turkey’s top court rules security cannot ask covered women to remove coat.

“Thank God Almighty,” said Mr. Erdogan in 1994, when he was the mayor of Istanbul. “I am a servant of Shariah.” 

Taking down 'Ataturk's legacy' - Turkey’s top court rules security cannot ask covered women to remove coat. (BGNews).


Turkey’s Constitutional Court has ruled that asking headscarved women to take off their topcoats while entering a public legal institution is a violation of religious freedom.

Esma Nur Özbey filed a lawsuit after she was denied access to Istanbul’s Bakırköy Courthouse in January 2013 when she refused security guards’ request she take off her topcoat while passing through the electromagnetic security checkpoint. Her attempt to sue the guards on the grounds they had insulted her was rejected by the courts.

Özbey then appealed to the Constitutional Court claiming her religious freedom had been violated. The Constitutional Court ruled unanimously on Monday that Özbey’s freedom of religion and conscience, secured in Article 24 of the constitution, had in fact been violated.

The court noted that wearing a topcoat and her refusal to remove it are practices required by Islam, “There is a direct link between the plaintiff’s religious beliefs and her refusal to take off her clothing. For this reason, there is a need to accept that the applicant’s freedom of religion and conscience was interfered with.”

The ruling also noted that both administrative and legal officials had failed to fully explain why and how security would be jeopardized if Özbey didn’t take off her coat.

The court ruled that the plaintiff receive TRY 3,000 (USD 1,076) in damages for emotional distress.

'Transparent' Turkish AK Party has destroyed 2 truckloads of documents since election.

'Transparent' Turkish AK Party has destroyed 2 truckloads of documents since election.(TZ).

The Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has destroyed two truckloads of official documents since it lost its overall majority in Parliament for the first time in 13 years in the June 7 general election, according to a report in the Taraf daily.

The report, published on Monday, claims that sources within the civil service told Taraf that, following June 7, the AK Party ordered civil servants to destroy official documents such as those pertaining to discretionary fund expenditures and documents profiling dissenters, which could implicate AK Party officials if a coalition is unable to be formed or if the AK Party falls from grace in a snap election.

The report also claims that official papers pertaining to expenditures by the Prime Ministry via the discretionary fund have been destroyed and that most of the destruction has been done in the Prime Ministry and its lower departments. In addition, the report said that mail pertaining to exceptional appointments to certain government posts by direct ministerial authorization have been destroyed to prevent any possible liability.

Taraf's report states that the go-ahead for the eradication of documents, which the AK Party has labeled a “clean-up,” came on June 8 -- one day after the AK Party lost its single-party majority but continued to command a presence within the ministries. Some of the destroyed documents are said to be concerned with the recruitment process to the civil service, in which acts of nepotism and favoritism by the AK Party were reported earlier this year.

There have been claims that, when it was in power, the AK Party appointed its own partisans to public offices to ensure that the party's brand of Islamist political ideology would become dominant within the government bureaucracy. Hmmm.....How many Billions went to terrorism from the PM's discretionary fund? Read the full story here.

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