The protection of laicism in turkey and the turkish constitutional court: The example of the prohibition on the u se of the islamic veil in higher education

Abstract

The main allegation concerned acts which were deemed to be in violation of the principle of laicism, protected by the Turkish Constitution. The issue of the use of the Islamic veil in higher education would naturally transform within legal dialectics into a conflict between individual rights and freedoms and the state as the regulator of their enjoyment. The heavy presence of the principle, both in word and spirit, makes of it one of the basic foundations of the republican state order and enables Turkey to exercise to a large extent western liberal democracy. The source of the principle of laicism in Turkish constitutional law can be found in the doctrine of lalcisme adopted from French constitutional tradition. These mechanisms structured to guard the principle are concretized within the Constitution under three different layers of normative control: The Non-Protection Regime, The Restriction of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms Regime and the Irrevocable Provisions Regime. © 2019 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.