The first time Merve Kavakci protested the banning of Muslim headwear from Turkish schools and federal offices, she was a freshman at the University of Ankara. Years later she was ousted from the Turkish National Assembly in 1999 for wearing the Islamic-style headscarf.

"The day I went in to take my oath of office, there were 500 ministers of parliament facing me, all chanting 'get out, get out, get out,' for 45 minutes. I was shocked," said Kavakci, who now teaches at George Washington University's Elliot School of International Affairs in Washington, D.C. She spoke April 6 in 165 McGraw Hall on women, Islam and the modern nation-state. Her talk was sponsored by the Cornell chapter of the Islamic Alliance for Justice.

Kavakci, who wore the headscarf both for religious reasons and as a challenge to the principles of the secular Turkish Republic, was ultimately denied her seat in the Turkish Parliament. In her scholarship, Kavakci focuses on the role of religion in modern Muslim states, and much of her talk dealt with her native Turkey.

"You often hear pundits in America today speaking of Turkey as a successful role model in the Middle East," she said. "It's secular, they say, which is something other states in the region should strive for. But secularism isn't the same everywhere. There's a virtual continuum you can make of it. On one side you have a society in which there's an optimal separation of church and state, and religious identities are allowed to coexist peacefully. On the other, however, is a kind of secular fundamentalism, where the state interferes with religious freedoms."

It's this latter form of secularism that Kavakci sees as a danger in Turkey today. After becoming a republic in 1923, Turkey underwent an intense period of westernization that has continued to the present.

"In certain respects, this has been a very positive force," she said. "For instance, equal rights for women, which came to Turkey long before many Western European countries. The problem, though, is that women's empowerment has now come into conflict with the state. Today, the very same process that originally gave Turkish women their rights is pushing them to the margins by prohibiting their religious choices."

She said that at a hospital recently in Ankara, for example, an elderly woman was denied kidney dialysis because her identity picture showed her wearing a headscarf. Another woman was prohibited from appearing as a defendant in a courtroom. "These stories are emblematic of the thousands of women and girls throughout Turkey who deal with this sort of thing on a daily basis," she said.

Kavakci's views were challenged by some Turkish members of the audience. "Where are you getting these numbers?" asked one young woman about Kavakci's claim that 70 percent of all women in Turkey today wear headscarves.

"I know there are several Turkish women in the room tonight," the woman continued. "Could they stand up please?" About a dozen women got to their feet. None was wearing a headscarf.

"I'm not pulling this out of thin air," Kavakci responded. In her defense, she named several sources, including the Helsinki Commission, Amnesty International and the Turkish Educational Endowment.

To conclude, Kavakci left her audience with an anecdote. "When I went in to take my oath of office that day, the prime minister [Bulent Ecevit] told me I needed to be put in my place. Now, no offense to anyone, but the prime minister, he had a high school education. I have a software engineering degree from the University of Texas. I did my graduate work at Harvard. And he's telling me I need to be put in my place?"

Graduate student Joseph Murtagh is a writer intern at the Cornell News Service.