Judge delays trial due to lawyer wearing headscarf

ANKARA

A court in Ankara delayed a divorce trial yesterday because one of the lawyers was wearing a headscarf.

Lawyer Zübeyde Kamalak, wife of Felicity Party (SP) leader Mustafa Kamalak, attended her client’s divorce trial in an Ankara court yesterday while wearing a headscarf, and judge İlhan Kadıoğlu directed that the choice of attire be noted in the court’s minutes. The court delayed the trial on the grounds that “lawyers cannot enter trials with a [headscarf].”

Kamalak, however, told the court that the Council of State’s 8th Board had stopped enforcing a ban on headscarves for lawyers. Meanwhile, Labor Minister Faruk Çelik told a meeting yesterday he believed that the regulations from the state of emergency will be removed in dress codes and be replaced by “governance based on the people and the nation.”