The GW Hatchet recently profiled Turkish politician Merve Kavakci, who was prevented from taking her Parliamentary oath and stripped of her citizenship because she wore hijab:
At first glance, professor Merve Kavakci doesn't appear to have much in common with the Pilgrims. She is a Turkish Muslim, not an English Puritan. And instead of landing at Plymouth Rock in the Mayflower, she landed at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in a jumbo jet.
But like the Pilgrims we celebrate this week, Kavakci, who has a doctoral degree in political science, came to the United States seeking religious freedom.
In 1980 the Turkish government imposed a ban on the headscarves worn by many Muslim women. Kavakci's mother - a professor who wears the headscarf like 69 percent of Turkish women - was left with a difficult decision. It was her headscarf or the job.
"I saw my mother having to choose between her religious convictions and her career," said Kavakci, who teaches in the Elliott School.
Read the rest of her story
here.
