Yet there are also secular tyrannies that accomplish the same. During Mao's infamous Cultural Revolution, Communist China imposed a strict dress code. As Chinese scholar Tina Mai Chen explains in his paper titled “Dressing for the Party: Model Workers, Clothing, and Socialist Modernity in Mao's China,” the regime “provided normative standards of dress and appearance” and forced citizens to abide to them.

Kemalists and the Taliban

The Turkish Republic, since the beginning of its “single party regime” in 1925, has carried out its own little cultural revolution. Citizens were forced to change their clothes and headgear in order to fit into the image of the “ideal Turk” as defined by the official ideology. Things were much harsher in the late 20s and 30s as some people were executed simply because they criticized these impositions. The regime became less tyrannical in the post-1945 period thanks to the political need to ally with the free world against Soviet threat. But its illiberal nature lived on and is still kicking today.

To see what I mean, simply take a look at what the "headscarvophobes" are saying. They openly argue that covered girls and women don't fit into “the image of Atatürk's Turkey.” This is another way of saying that the aesthetical standards of the state are more important then the choices of the citizens. It is not the individuals that count – it is the state and its unyielding ideology.

This self-defined Kemalist mindset is not too different from that of the Taliban, who, likewise, thought that women had to abide to a compulsory dress code in order to fit into their ideal Afghanistan. Of course the Kemalists and the Taliban have completely opposite definitions of what the ideal women should look like. But their sacrificing of the individual's rights for a collectivist utopia is almost identical. (The Kemalists, to be fair, are not as heavy handed as the Taliban. Whenever they stage military coups they kill or torture some people, and their “deep state” occasionally takes down “traitors,”yet most of the time they don't give physical harm.)

Libido dominandi in all

The bottom line of the big political conflict in Turkey is really the division between the worshippers of the state and the proponents of the citizen's freedom. The right to wear headscarves is just one battlefield. If you don't believe me, just look at what the headscarf banners think and do on other issues. You will see that they are the enemies of freedom in almost any debate that Turkey has.

Take the Kurdish question, for example. The suppression of Kurdish language and culture in order to “Turkify” them by force is a policy which started in the late 20s, by the same people who were busy with suppressing practicing Muslims. Indeed, the aim behind these two policies was the same: To create a “modern,” homogenous and well-disciplined nation from the remnants of a multicultural empire. Today, still, those who vigorously oppose freedom of headscarf wearers and Kurdish speakers are almost identical: The bureaucratic oligarchy and its supporters in politics or the media.

Or take a look at the rights of Christians in Turkey. Can the Ecumenical Patriarchate call itself what it is, or does it have to eschew the title “ecumenical” in order to satisfy the Turkish Republic's libido dominandi? (This term, which means “lust for power,” was used by St. Augustine in his magnum opus “City of God” to describe the ambition of the Caesars, i.e., temporal authorities, to usurp what is God's.) The same circles, the establishment and its apparatchiks, zealously oppose freedom in this matter, too, while those who defend the right to wear headscarves will be at worst relatively lenient. (See what Prime Minister Erdoğan and Foreign Minister Babacan have recently said on the controversy over “ecumenism” during their meeting with the Greek prime minister. They were much more reasonable when compared to Ankara's Kemalist hawks.)

On many other issues, ranging from allowing foreigners to buy land in Turkey to taking some pragmatic steps toward achieving a solution on Cyprus, the usual suspects prove their resistance to change. It is always the same sinister guys in Ankara and their loyal servants in society, who oppose reforms and try to keep Turkey as a closed society under an autocratic state. On the other hand, there are those who defend the freedom of religion, thought and identity.

The Yearning for Freedom

To be sure, the whole scenery is not clear-cut between these two opposites. Some circles share and cherish the state's authoritarianism in some issues, but take a different stance in others. The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), for example, might share Ankara's "Kurdophobia" but not its Islamophobia. Or there are some “liberal” intellectuals who support EU-driven political reforms, but are highly suspicious of religious freedom. (This time it is Ankara's Islamophobia which got them — and perhaps the Theophobia of France.) On the other hand, there are Islamists who detest the state's suppression of Islam, but have internalized its illiberalism and even made it worse by adding to it an ideological anti-Westernism. (Necmeddin Erbakan's Saadet Party would be the perfect example.)

But these awkward and unprincipled syntheses do not change the fact that the real war in Turkey is between an autocratic state and the aspirations of a diverse society. The war has been long and it will continue for sometime, but the outcome seems promising. Even the mighty Soviet Union wasn't able to resist the yearning for freedom. Neither will be the Soviet-minded autocrats in Ankara.