ISTANBUL, Oct 29: Nearly all the lawmakers in Turkey’s ruling party boycotted the official national day reception on Wednesday after the president refused to invite their wives, many of whom wear Islamic-style headscarves.

The row highlights tensions between the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which traces its roots to a banned religious movement, and a secular establishment that sees the headscarf as the stamp of fundamentalism and a political challenge to the Nato member’s separation of state and religion.

President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who hosted the reception to mark Republic Day, last week sent out invitations to lawmakers in the AKP without including their wives. Parliamentarians in the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) were invited with their spouses.

Senior members of the judiciary and bureaucracy whose wives are known to cover their hair were also asked to attend alone.

A majority of women cover their hair as a sign of piety in Turkey, a European Union candidate, but the headscarf is banned at Turkish universities and other public institutions.

“This was not a personal invitation but the state’s,” Mr Sezer was quoted by the private NTV news channel as telling reporters at the reception.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said he and the rest of the cabinet would attend the reception in an apparent bid to avert a crisis with Sezer and the powerful military, the self-proclaimed guardian of Turkish secularism.—Reuters