ANKARA, Feb 9: Turkey’s parliament voted on Saturday to lift a ban on headscarves at universities, handing a major victory to the Islamist ruling party and defying secularist objections to the move.

The constitutional reform package tabled by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) received 411 ‘yes’ votes in the 550-seat house, parliament speaker Koksal Toptan said.

The new legislation, which was backed by the opposition Nationalist Action Party, needed 367 votes to pass.

As parliament was voting, tens of thousands of people, waving Turkish flags and pictures of modern Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, packed a square in downtown Ankara to voice their opposition.

Secularists – among them the army, the judiciary and academics – see the headscarf as a symbol of defiance against the strict separation of state and religion, a basic tenet of the mainly Muslim country.

“Turkey is secular and will remain secular,” shouted the protestors, among them many women, including some wearing headscarves,” Gokhan Gunaydin, from the organising committee, told the crowd to loud applause.

A police officer at the rally estimated that the crowd was less than 100,000 people while television channels put the number as high as 200,000.

The AKP says the headscarf ban – imposed after the 1980 military coup – is a violation of the freedom of conscience and the right to education.

The package amends the constitution to read that the state will treat everyone equally when it provides services such as university courses and that no one can be barred from education for reasons not clearly laid down by law, an allusion to young women who wear headscarves.

It now needs to be approved by President Abdullah Gul, a former AKP member who has yet to veto any law put forward by the government.—AFP