NA: Since June 2007 I am with AK-DER. It is the date when I moved back from Sweden to Turkey. (I went to Sweden to have university level education, which is impossible for a woman with headscarf to do in Turkey.) When I got my master degree in Sweden I decided to go back to my home country and struggle with the headscarf ban in the country. At the time I contacted to friends in AK-DER, and they invited me to work with them. This was what I would like to do! Since then, I am struggling with the issue in AK-DER.

NA: Yes. For a woman with headscarf it is not easy to live in Turkey. Because if she is not happy with being a housewife or sitting at home and doing house work, every sphere of life is a trouble for her. First she cannot have the university education. If she doesn't have a good level of her education, or she doesn't have a professional curriculum, it means she cannot work in a proper or prestigious place. Independent from her level of study, she cannot work for the state. She has limited choices in private sector because some of the private companies apply the headscarf ban to keep its image. The rest of private sector is aware of that she has to be employed in these limited places, so they offer less or half price then normal to those women. This is a common fact in Turkey. I also experienced the same problem. I worked for a private company but they paid me half since I am wearing a headscarf. In contrary, my mother covers her head and has almost no problem, because she is a housewife. (But once she wanted to attend a TV show 4 years ago and when she went to the studio with her friends they are told that they had to take off her scarves... the show was a talk show. My mother refused to do that and came back home. This was the first time she told me that she felt humiliated. I sent a notice to the TV channel and program coordinator to say that if they apply such ban I will write and publish an article and I will prepare a protest campaign about this. A week later they removed this application... However since then she doesn't watch that show).

NA: AK-DER does not have any researches based on interviews with people who are not wearing headscarf. However we as women with headscarf face some attitudes of the others in social or family life and we hear many prejudices on broadcasts. We collected some basic tendencies and discourses constructed around headscarf issue on the women. According to this research on the issue people around Europe have the idea that a woman with headscarf cannot be free, cannot give her own decision about life and cannot choose what she wants to do in her life. According to the same prejudice if a woman wears headscarf it is simply a symbol of her dependency on men. Wearing a headscarf simply cannot be her own choice. We can see the same discourse in the speeches of the defenders of bans on headscarf. Pro-ban people supports this idea but they do not realize that the idea promotes women are lack of free will. They cannot decide to what to wear or not. We are totally against the ideas which put women to a passive and secondary position. If it is acceptable that a woman is able to decide not to wear a headscarf, then it should be accepted that she can decide to wear it as well.

NA: I experience a direct discrimination on me by the state since I am wearing a headscarf. This is the most obvious experience of me on discrimination against religious expression and practice. When I was at the second year in the university, on a day I was told that I would not be allowed to enter the university premises with my scarf. It was a direct discrimination. Since the headscarf ban is applied in 1999, private sectors' companies put a barrier on women who are wearing headscarves. They are aware of the limitation on women by the ban and they either offered to pay half to women who are doing the same job with others or they did not offer any positions at all. I also worked for a while in a half-paid job. The exploitation of that kind is a result of the ban on the society.

NA: Turkish authorities ban headscarf by the reason of laicism. However, the interpretation of laicism of Turkey is problematic. On the one hand, States can be laciest. It means that a laciest state is blind to any differences of its citizens from any religious believes. On the other hand, individuals cannot be laic because they are either believers or non-believers of a religion or belief and they are acting in that way. Asking adult people for not using any religious symbols, not practicing any duties of their religions or demanding them to live as a non-believer are first against the right of a religious expression. A laciest state should be blind to any religious differences of its citizens in terms of giving services or taking services. Equal citizenship means that. For the ban in the universities' premises, I have nothing to say... Since the word, university, comes from universal and universities are established to bring all world views and thoughts together to discuss on the issues of human beings, such a ban in a university premise is just a shame and contradictory at the same time.

NA: At the second year in the university, I was forced to take off my scarf. Before the ban there was no problem about headscarf in the university. We were taking courses and exams with headscarves on. After the ban applied, I used a hat to cover my head and graduated from the university after two years. Wearing hat was also problematic. The ban was applied in the university campuses by the force of the state authorities against any kind of head covers including wigs by time. Although I had my bachelor degree, there was no other way anymore to go to school for me in Turkey as hundreds of women. Thousands of women were affected by the ban and some of them expelled from the universities and some from their works. Only limited number of students who were expelled from schools found the chance to go abroad because of the economical and social conditions of them. I was one of those lucky ones that I had a private scholarship and went to Sweden for my master studies.

NA: I went to Sweden to study. After experiencing a strict ban on Muslim women's scarves in Turkey, I had no problem in Sweden with my headscarf. Of course, it does not mean that Sweden is totally peaceful for Muslims visibility in the society. There are many problems of Muslim immigrants or citizens in social life. However there is no ban on headscarf there yet. Sometimes I faced some rude gestures on the streets by ordinary people. Some of my friends faced some discriminatory applications while applying for a job or during interviews. However, there is no official ban on hijab and if any discriminatory applications by employees happen, the applicant of the discrimination is punished. In addition, I was aware that the majority of the Swedish society thought that I was under pressure and I was told to cover my head by men from my family. The main differences to Turkey is the perception of the issue in the society because social perceptions and prejudices really hard to change in a short time.

NA: When women were expelled from their schools or jobs, the reason was not stated as headscarf of attire on reports. For students when they were stopped at the main entrance of the schools, they lost their rights to study because of the lack of attendance to classes or exams. For civil servants, they lost their jobs because of behaving against the applications of the employee. These two reasons were written on reports of women with headscarf. Later on women and girls stopped to even apply for schools or positions in the state offices because it became clear that they would not be accepted with their headscarves. Since women are not even applying for studying or working, and the misreporting does not allow researchers to find concrete number of victims, we cannot give any definite number of victims. However, according to Turkey's Economic and Social Studies Union (TESEV- is a national and reliable think-thank in Turkey), 62% of women in Turkey are covering their heads in many different reasons. This number of statistics can give an estimated number of victims of the ban. 62% of women in Turkey have the ban as an obstacle at the first step if they apply for a job or school.

NA: AK-DER's works are usually not welcomed by state authorities because we are reporting and criticizing their application on women. If I share an example of our experiences with you, you will see the picture of our relationships with the state authorities. AK-DER is a consultative member of Economic and Social Council of United Nations. We follow the meetings of Committee on the Eliminations of all forms of Discriminations against Women (CEDAW) and share our reports with them. NGOs are encouraged to share their comments or works within these committees and states should encourage NGOs in this sense. Last year, in 2008 we prepared a shadow report to the Committee on headscarf ban in Turkey and sent the report by the signs of more than 20 NGOs to UN. A journalist from one of the supporting NGOs published an article about the meeting of us with the NGOs to prepare the report. After two days a notice arrived to our office from the local authority of the state for NGOs. In the notice, we were asked to send our written documents and reports to them in a day time period of 24 hours, otherwise we will be punished. Since they do not have the right to ask our reports and give us 24 hour to bring them, the notice was obviously just because of the article on the newspaper. This is an example to our situation in front of the state authorities. Beside that in Turkey more than 70 % of the population finds the ban unnecessary in the universities. More than 60 % thinks that it should not be at the state offices, too. We do not have a negative public reaction to our struggle. However 5% of the society thinks that headscarf should be even banned in the shopping centers and hospitals for patients and patients with headscarves should not be allowed in.

NA: Since 1999 when the ban was applied in all state institutions, Turkey has headscarf issue on the agenda. Thousands of women were affected by the ban and we see the examples of the applications of the ban in a school, in a hospital or in a library day by day. As a recent example at the last week officers in the municipality of Denizli which is a city at the Western coast of Turkey refused the application of a couple to get married because of the woman's photo with headscarf on papers. There has been no legal inspection on that recent unlawful application yet. These applications are clearly unlawful and there is no federal law which is banning headscarf. In spite of all these, we are dealing with the examples of violations of women. It seems there cannot be any easy solutions to this problem. The problem directly affects gender map of Turkey. If the Turkish state authorities face the reality, the problem can be solved. I do not see the other way for a concrete solution.

NA: AK-DER is working on improving women's rights. We are lobbying in the parliament about women's problems and we usually get results of our efforts. However, the only exception of our lobbying success is headscarf ban. In Turkey the ban was applied by the 1997 coup d'état, and it is not easy to even speak about the subject. It is not a usual subtitle under Turkey's problems. That is why we have really hard times about lobbying on the issue.

NA: AK-DER is founded by students who were expelled from universities and state officers (teachers, doctors, lawyers) expelled from their jobs in the process. Most of the students around AK-DER were from medical schools since the ban first applied in the medical schools in Istanbul. Those future doctors went abroad to finish their education and became doctors. Now among our members there are many doctors and lawyers. We can say that women who are organized around AK-DER have at least a bachelor degree.

NA: The founding motivation of AK-DER is that grave ban; the organization aims the ban to be lifted. However the only aim of AK-DER is not lifting the ban. Although the ban was the motivation at the beginning of the organization, AK-DER has enough experience on women's rights. AK-DER's lawyers are lobbying on the codes on women's rights and status. AK-DER's aims as declared on the web site are supporting to improve especially women's generally human rights, fighting for to end all sort of discrimination, educating its members on women's rights, improving the degree of consciousness, solidarity and experience sharing among its members to provide legal, material and moral help to individuals whose rights are violated. AK-DER focuses on putting an end to every kind of discrimination taken place in Turkey; also aims to consolidate social consciousness concerning human rights violations, to create social conscience about discrimination and to fight against every sort of interferences and obstruction in exercising women's personal rights like right to education, work and career.

NA: AK-DER was founded at the time where women who were discriminated because of their attire did not have any human rights organization focused on their problems. Although the ban has not been lifted for years AK-DER reported all the applications. Not it is a consultative member in Economic and Social council of United Nations. By the reports of AK-DER, the ban has been recognized by international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights First, and United Nations. Beside that, AK-DER's lawyers are attending the commissions of the Head Office of Women's Status in Ankara and during the changes in the family code AK-DER's points were welcomed. We consider it as a good success since the changes in the codes in favor of women will affect all women.