Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been working on constitution reforms the last weeks - including amendments that would get rid of the 1998 head scarf ban in public places - rejected criticisms and concerns that Turkey might get under more Islamic pressure. Erdogan implicitly said that the fear that AK Party might have a hidden agenda was ungrounded.

He gave as counter arguments that AK Party's record of the last five years has proven that there is no reason to fear, that he finds the issue of a new constitution unjustly reduced to the headscarf issue and that they were only at the beginning stage of the new draft, which, once finalised would of course be discussed with all political parties and sent to universities, media institutions and NGO's.

Source: Today's Zaman - 20/09/07 --> Read the article

* Yunus News has previously published two analytical articles on the complex topic of the Islamisation of Turkey.
--> Divide and conquer: Gül's candidacy (by Jody Sabral)
--> No Reason to think Turkey will become Islamist (by Sezin Morkaya)

* Erdogan said the changes on the constitution are reduced to the head scarf issue, yet Yunus has previously an analysis showing that the headscarf issue in itself is reduced by all sides to serve their own political means.
--> The headscarf in Turkey: from religious symbol to political tool (by Jonas Slaats)

* The fears of secularists in Turkey are partly based on the fact that AK Party in their five year record so far did show certain tendencies that were not approved off by a great number of people. Nothing substantial has been done, but certain 'small things' that never reach the international news, have roused suspicion. For example: an AK Party mayor of a suburb in Istanbul for example had proposed to remove alcohol in his district, AK Party organised a Koran reading context for kids on Independence Day, which has been interpreted by secularists as a deliberate counterpart to the yearly festivities on that day which gather kids from all over Turkey and the world to present their culture with song and dance.