A brief glance at any Turkish newspaper printed in the last six or seven years shows that one of Turkey’s most pressing internal problems is the split between the country’s so-called “secularists” and so-called “Islamists.”

To grossly oversimplify the situation: the “secularists” dogmatically follow the ideals of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. They believe that religious symbols should be banned from the public sphere, and they believe that the AK Party of Tayyip Erdogan secretly wants to turn Turkey into an Islamic state. They think the headscarf — known in Turkey as the turban – oppresses women.

The so-called Islamists are led by the Erdogan and the AK Party. In reality, they do not advocate an Islamic state. They do believe that headscarved women should be allowed to attend public universities and enter government buildings. In short, they call for an American-style of secularism.

The Turkish style of secularism, called laiklik, is based on French laicite. Laiklik demands the exclusion of religious symbols from the public sphere. Unfortunately, laiklik has become a means of excluding religious Turks from educational and professional opportunities. It is also a vehicle through which anti-religious feeling is channeled. Ataturkists declare that they are doing society a favor by marginalizing covered women. They say the turban is part of a backward tradition that hurts Turkey’s image as a secular republic. They feel that it is the place of the state to intervene in these women’s fashion choices in order to “free” them.

We are now seeing an amazing parallel between the French headscarf controversy and the Turkish one. The headscarf is banned from public schools in France (although small crosses are allowed). In addition, a French court recently denied citizenship to a Moroccan woman who wears a burqa. The court said she was not “French enough” because the burqa is a marker of inequality between the sexes. A self-described Muslim “feminist” from France, who happens to be a government minister, agreed. She said of the the burqa:

It is not a religious insignia but the insignia of a totalitarian political project that advocates inequality between the sexes and which is totally devoid of democracy.

Of course, it did not occur to this government minister — or to the millions of Turks who rally against the right of women to practice their religion as they wish — that it is undemocratic to impose a secular dress code on a person who chooses of their own free will to dress in a way that corresponds with their religious beliefs (as they see them).

Indeed, no one criticizes Urban Affairs Minister Fadela Amra for her choice of hairstyle and makeup, even though she, as a woman, must spend inordinate amounts of time attending to her appearance. She spends so much time doing her hair and putting on makeup because Western societies expect women to be more visually appealing than men. Any Western feminist will tell you that this is a manifestation of patriarchy and a sure example of gender inequality. Wouldn’t it be fitting for France to revoke the citizenship of Urban Affairs Minister Amra? After all, gender studies literature demonstrates a strong connection between gender inequality and domestic violence and rape.

Why is it that Urban Affairs Minister Amra able to live in a way that reinforces gender inequality, but the Moroccan woman wearing the burqa is not?

In both France and Turkey, large segments of the ruling elite have an aversion to religion in general, and Islam in particular. Furthermore, both France and Turkey have strong statist traditions. In both countries, the state has a habit of dictating to people how they should live their lives. As anti-religious or anti-Muslim elites dominate the state apparatuses of both Turkey and France, the rights of millions of Muslim women are trampled in both countries.

It is impossible to say where Turkey would be today were it not for Ataturk’s rigid imposition of laicite on the Turkish Republic. Maybe Turkey would have turned into an Iran or an Afghanistan. Or maybe it would have developed a healthy accommodation of religion by politics that could serve as a model to the rest of the Muslim world. That’s one for the political scientists to figure out.