Protests follow attack on Turkish high court

The shooting occurred Wednesday when a Turkish lawyer opened fire in the country's top administrative court in Ankara, wounding four judges and killing a fifth. The lawyer was arrested.

The Guardian reports that the gunman, yelling "I am a soldier of Allah," used a handgun in the attack, which came during an administrative meeting.

The assailant, a lawyer accredited with the Istanbul bar association, later told police he carried out the attack because the court had stopped a woman becoming a head teacher on the grounds that she wore a headscarf.

TurkishPress.com, an independent Turkish news site, reports that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a press conference Thursday that the attack could not be justified in any way, although he refused to speculate on the headscarf issue.

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Asked what he thinks on the attack on the Council of State after a decision made on a nursery teacher who was wearing a headscarf, Erdogan remarked that, no matter which side this attack came from, it must be strongly condemned. '"It is too early to state why the attack took place," indicated Erdogan ...

In response to a question by a Finnish journalist on whether his former comments on the decision of the Council of State on headscarf had an impact on today's attack, Erdogan replied that the case is being studied by Turkish police. "Associating today's attack with any side would not be right. We can not accept any incident designed to hurt stability in Turkey. Today's attack must be strongly condemned and cursed," told Erdogan.

Human Rights Watch, while noting that they believe the original ruling "clearly infringes on the woman's right to religious freedom," strongly condemned the attack, saying "violent attacks against civilian authorities are a grave violation of rights, not a defence of them." The Associated Press reports that on Thursday more than 15,000 people, including judges and lawyers, marched in the streets of Ankara to protest the shooting.

Turkey's military, which staged three coups between 1960 and 1980, is deeply uncomfortable with the government's position on the head scarf issue and what it sees as a creeping Islamization of society. "This is the Sept. 11 of the Turkish Republic," wrote Ertugrul Ozkok, chief columnist of Turkey's leading newspaper Hurriyet on Thursday. "One of the main pillars of the regime, justice, was being hit. This is an attack against all of us."

Several pro-secular newspapers also condemned the attack, while pro-Islamic media speculated that it would provoke a crackdown on the Islamic movement.

The Washington Post reports that soon after the shooting, Turkey's president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer (a former judge), went to the court building and declared that "This attack is aimed at the unchangeable secular and democratic characters of the republic." When Mr. Erdogan arrived however, he was snubbed by court officials. Erdogan, who in the past has advocated political Islam, recently denounced the high court ruling on the scarf issue.

The shooting came with tensions already rising between Erdogan's populist Justice and Development Party and the secular establishment, which is anchored in the judiciary, the powerful military and the presidency of Sezer, whose term expires next year. Erdogan's party controls parliament, which will elect Sezer's successor, and Erdogan might seek the office first held by Turkey's secular founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Erdogan "is trying to open his way to the presidency," said Mehmet Farac, an expert on radical Islam at Cumhuriyet, a staunchly pro-secular daily. "However, the society is reacting to him taking the seat that belonged to Ataturk. The Islamic section reacts against this reaction. There may be new attacks."

Cumhuriyet has been bombed three times in recent weeks after running advertisements that accused Erdogan of undermining the republic.

The New York Times later reported that the gunman, Alparslan Arslan, identified himself as an ultranationalist and said he was not a member of any group. He was incensed by the debate about the issue in the media. The court's decision about the headscarf was a controversial one. In February of this year, the high court ruled that a school teacher could be denied a promotion to head mistress because she wore a headscarf while walking to and from the school, although she took it off in the classroom. Many critics saw this as an intrusion in her private life.

The Times of London reports that the shooting took place in the section of the top court that deals with educational issues, which are often sources of great tension between Turkey's Islamists and its hard-line secularists. Religious conservatives had been deeply angered by the headscarf ruling, and also by Erdogan because he has been unable to deliver on many of the issues that matter deeply to them. The attack may also play a role in Turkey's attempts to join the European Union.

The issue of headscarves has long been a difficult one in Turkey. Civil servants, students and staff at universities and schools, medical staff, and members of parliament cannot wear headscarfs because it is seen a breach of constitutional secularism. Although the ban has been in place since the '60s, it had only been since the late '90s that the deeply secular Turkish military has been pushing the government to enforce the ban. Emime Erdogan, the prime minister's wife, wears a headscarf, and recently the wife of Foreign Minister Abdul Gul was barred from enrolling at a government-run university because she also wears a headscarf.

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• Feedback appreciated. E-mail Tom Regan .