Headscarved students demand access to Turk campuses

By Emma Ross-Thomas

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey has lifted a ban on students wearing Muslim headscarves but covered women are still marching on university gates demanding to be let in.

At Istanbul's Marmara University, a few hundred students in brightly colored silky headscarves, trade union members and a handful of schoolgirls protested against university rectors who refused to let covered students into class.

The rectors, part of the secular elite, have said they will not allow covered students into university until a more detailed law on clothing requirements is passed.

Some headscarfed protesters twice marched towards the entrance, where security guards blocked their path. They pledged to challenge the rectors in court.

"The (rectors) want to go against the government but as a result they're going against all the students," Zeynep Arslan, a 21-year-old final year business student, told Reuters at the protest on the Asian side of Turkey's largest city.

Parliament, dominated by the religious-leaning AK Party, passed a constitutional amendment earlier this month to allow university students to wear the controversial headscarf. President Abdullah Gul signed it into law last Friday.

The staunchly secular main opposition party CHP challenged the reform in court on Wednesday.

Before Gul approved the reform, the government had urged students not to start wearing the scarf on campus before all necessary laws had been amended.