The one government says it’s moving forward to emphasize the secular nature of its society and to unify its multicultural population.
The other government says it intends to carry out further democratization of society and to acknowledge the cultural and religious rights of minority groups within its population.
While the claims by Premier Pauline Marois of the Parti Québécois in Canada and the Islamic-based government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey seem laudable on the surface, such lofty-sounding rhetoric should be viewed with a degree of caution.
Considering the possible realities influencing each government’s actions suggests some significant differences in what each may intend to accomplish.
Not surprisingly, the separatist government’s proposal to ban public servants from wearing religious head covers or displaying “ostentatious” religious symbols in government institutions unleashed a major controversy throughout Canada.
Many have denounced the proposed charter as discriminatory and intended to advance the Parti Québécois’s separatist objectives.
To the embarrassment of Quebec separatists, Lebanese-Canadian Maria Mourani, a Bloc Québécois member of Parliament, publicly criticized the charter as discriminatory, causing her expulsion from caucus.
Some described the charter as simply the latest manifestation of the ethnocentric chauvinism of Quebec separatists, who have never really regarded the province’s minority groups, whether English-speaking or not, as truly Québécois de souche (having the right French-based ancestry), seeing them as ethnic outsiders who have been key factors blocking Quebec sovereignty.
Still others regard the charter as the PQ’s attempt to capitalize on increasing animosity directed toward ethnic and religious minority groups by many Quebecers. A recent poll indicated 69 per cent of Quebecers have negative views toward Muslims.
Ironically, thousands of kilometres away, the Islamic-based government of Erdogan in Turkey made the headlines by ending a long-established ban on Turkish women wearing head covers in universities and government institutions.
That head-cover ban was implemented to stress the country’s secular system and marginalization of religious groups in society.
All that changed with the 2002 election of Erdogan’s Muslim-based Justice and Development Party, AKP, and Erdogan subsequently winning an outright majority in the last election.
One key manifestation of the AKP’s newly acquired political clout has been the lifting of the head-cover ban; only judges, prosecutors and military personnel are still banned from wearing head covers.
Thus, while Marois is proposing a ban on religious-based head covers, the Turkish government has begun lifting the same kind of ban.
But unlike Marois, Erdogan is also carrying out other far-reaching democratization reforms, which are going to provide greater recognition of the distinctive cultural, religious and linguistic rights of Turkey’s minorities, particularly for the country’s Kurdish population.
These reforms are intended to help end the guerrilla war launched by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in 1984, resulting in more than 40,000 deaths.
Some Christian properties once belonging to Greek and Armenian churches may also be returned.
Nevertheless, Turkish critics claim the reforms don’t go far enough in some cases, especially for Turkey’s Alevis, a perceived heretical Muslim sect that believes in the divinity of Ali, the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin.
Again unlike the Charter of Values, Erdogan’s reforms will provide greater acknowledgment of the distinctive roles of the various ethnic and religious minorities who make up Turkey’s 82 million people.
Put succinctly, while the Quebec government claims its Charter of Values is going to unify Quebec society by banning religious symbols in public institutions, Turkey is finally moving to acknowledge such differences as inherent to its own society.
Harry Sterling, a former diplomat, is an Ottawa-based commentator. He served in Turkey.
