'Democratisation' in Turkey

[Devrim]

Turkish government will lift its much-debated ban on wearing headscarves in public offices, permit education in mother tongues in private schools and commence a debate on the country’s much-criticized electoral system with a long-anticipated democratization package announced today.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/government-takes-steps-on-headscarf-kurds-electoral-system.aspx?pageID=517&nID=55393&NewsCatID=338

This is quite interesting for those who follow the news in that region.

Devrim

[Red Commissar]

How many people attend private schools in Turkey?

To what extent is the electoral system is going to change under this proposal? I see they want to lower the threshold to 5%, but "narrow" the constituents to five per district. What was the system before?

I suppose the only thing I'm confused about is the proposal to lower the bar to presumably allow more parties to gain state support for running in elections. What would the government gain from this? Dividing the opposition groups? Helping like-minded minor parties get a leg up? Co-opt some smaller opposition groups?

Use of other languages in elections in Turkey would mean the Kurdish-oriented groups (BDP I guess) would use Kurdish more publicly in their activities, I can't really imagine that would be too well received by more Turkish nationalist-minded groups.

I don't really feel strongly one way or another regarding headscarves bans.

[Devrim]

The main theme of these reforms is to finish with the headscarf ban, and make an overture towards the Kurdish nationalists. The BDP is basically saying that they haven't gone far enough.The reduction in the electoral threshold will benifit the BDP allowing them to stand as the BDP (without going into too much detail about the election system, at the moment they have to run as independents, and then form a BDP group in parliament as they can't reach this threshold). Again the BDP will be the main beneficiary from the state support to political parties.

One of the things that the BDP have been criticizing is exactly the point you raise about private schools, and while they may be quite common in the biggest cities, there are pretty rare in Kurdistan.

DEvrim