An estimated 13,000 Turkish Cypriots demonstrated in northern Nicosia this week against the government’s attempts to make it permissible for children to wear hijabs and other religious garments in public schools in Northern Cyprus.
The regulation, introduced in March, later withdrawn, and then reintroduced again this week, states that hijabs—headscarves worn by Muslim girls and women—are permitted in schools, provided that school uniforms are “not covered up in any way.” Hijabs had previously been banned.
Northern Cyprus—a Turkish-occupied de facto independent state—has been run by nationalist president Ersin Tatar since 2020.
Selma Eylem, the leader of a teachers’ trade union, said “wearing a headscarf for children under the age of 18 years old is not a matter of freedom, but a tool of discrimination and oppression.”
Previous Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akıncı, who has opposed Turkey’s increasing influence in Northern Cyprus, joined Tuesday’s protests, saying he rejects “all kinds of political oppression.”
On Wednesday, a counterprotest attended by 300 people was organised in Nicosia by Transport Minister Erhan Arıklı to show “respect to the motherland,” Turkey.
