ET: ANKARA: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s crackdown on mixed-sex student dorms has been condemned by critics as a fresh attempt to force strict religious and conservative values on the staunchly secular country.
Just days after four female lawmakers from his party broke a decades-old taboo by wearing headscarves in parliament, the conservative prime minister fired a fresh salvo at secularism in the majority-Muslim nation.
“We will not allow girls and boys to live together in state-owned student residences,” Erdogan told lawmakers from his party this week.
“The values I hold on to do not allow such a thing,” he said.
“Anything can happen when it is mixed. We have received complaints from families who asked us to intervene and it is our duty to intervene.”
Swatting aside a barrage of criticism, Erdogan ordered the governors of the country’s 81 provinces to monitor student residences and speak out against immoral behaviour.
Three-quarters of state-run student residences already separate the sexes, and the remaining mixed dorms are to be done away with by early 2014, an official source told AFP.
Huseyin Avni Cos, governor of the southern province of Adana, promised to heed Erdogan’s call.
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