Headscarf Dilemma Puzzles Bulgaria

Bulgaria has become caught up in the European row over Islamic dress, after a university said it considered recruiting big number of Turkish students who want to study while wearing veils.

The Medical Academy in Plovdiv said it was weighing a request to grant places to 110 women from Turkey who want to attend lectures on condition they can wear veils.

Under Turkey’s secular laws, civil servants, teachers and pupils are forbidden from covering their heads in public in accordance with Islamic religious tradition.

While the academy in Plovdiv can expect an extra 440,000 euro per year from these fee-paying students, the request has generated a local controversy about secularism - and about the country’s image on the eve of expected EU membership.

The head of the academy, Georgi Paskalev, said 80 per cent of the national academic council had voted against the move, leaving him in a quandary over how to proceed.

"I did not give a firm answer to these 110 girls from Turkey because I never had a case like this before and don’t know how to proceed," he told Balkan Insight.

Since more than 200 religious Turkish women recently opted to pursue university education in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the attitude to Islamic dress is relaxed, they now seem to be exploring opportunities in Bulgaria.

Previously, only a handful of cases concerning Islamic dress have hit Bulgaria, where a sizeable Muslim community - a legacy of centuries of Ottoman rule - is not known for militancy.

In 2003, Nurdzhan Georgieva from Plovdiv, who says she converted from Christianity to Islam in 1998, caused a local furore when she insisted on being photographed wearing her headscarf for her identity card.

When she was not allowed to, as local governmental regulations require pictures for ID cards to show the face, both ears and at least 1 cm of the hair, she complained to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. But she later withdrew her appeal.

One month ago, two schoolgirls from Smolian in Bulgaria’s southern Rodopi mountains demanded the right to wear headscarves at school.

The case went to parliament’s committee for protection against discrimination, which rejected their demand.

The case was generally downplayed when it became clear that the group behind the girls, the Association for Islamic Development and Culture, was an NGO founded by Muslims educated in Jordan. It was, therefore, judged unrepresentative of mainstream Muslim opinion.

While such cases remain untypical of Bulgaria’s Muslim community, a broader debate on veils now seems inevitable in the light of the recent dispute in Plovdiv.

Paskalev says it all started when two private commercial companies, contracted by the Medical Academy to recruit foreign students, approached him, wanting to enroll 50 and 60 Turkish female students each.

Their demand for the right to wear Islamic dress did not conflict with Bulgarian law, as state educational institutions have no regulations on the wearing of religious symbols.

Clothing regulations apply only to schools that have adopted specific uniforms as exclusive student wear.

Now, experts are calling for legislation to prevent ad-hoc, hasty decisions on such a sensitive matter.

"In a country where church and state are separated, it is improper to allow the wearing of religious clothes or symbols at schools and universities," said Georgi Manolov, professor at Plovdiv’s Economy and A dministration College.

Zhivka Bozhanova, administrator at Plovdiv’s Agricultural University, agreed. She said clearer legislation was now needed, as the issue was too complex to be left to non-experts.

Michail Ekimdzhiev, chairman of the Association for European Integration and Human Rights, a local NGO, took a similar line.

"On the one hand, the right of religious self-determination, stipulated in the constitution and in the European Convention on Human Rights, envisages the right to wear specific clothing and symbols," he said.

"But on the other hand, many European state universities forbid wearing religious symbols."

However, the situation is blurred by the need of cash-strapped colleges to attract foreign, fee-paying, students.

Dean Paskalev admitted the financial side of the proposed deal concerning the Turkish students was an important incentive.

At the same time, he worried that if he allows headscarves at the University this may damage the country’s image.

"We expect membership of the EU," he said, "and I know some EU countries do not tolerate religious symbols [at universities]."

Also, not all his colleagues support the potential ban. Some of them stand more on the side of human rights defenders.

"None of the higher schools has regulations of this kind [banning religious symbols] and if this [limitation] is imposed, there should be fairly good reason for it," said vice-head of Plovdiv University Zapryan Kozludzhov.

He told Balkan Insight there are already several women from Iraq in his university, who attend lectures veiled.

As Bulgaria has not introduced any formal ban on such clothing, some experts think the case highlights the need for the law to be amended, so as to state clearly what the policy is.

E ducation minister Daniel Vulchev told local media on Wednesday that his institution will seek legislature changes to ban any kind of religious symbols in schools and universities.

But if supported by other state institutions, his choice to follow French rather than UK policy on the matter , has good chance to antagonise the centuries-old Muslim community, which is far more moderate than Muslim immigrant communities in some western countries.