While i welcome Ms Applebaums interest in my home country; i much like other posters here,found her article to be rather weak.

If one is critisizing developments by American standards of free speech and expression, there is no justification for a head scarf ban in Turkey.

The opposition of secular Turks like myself ( meaning I favour a strictly secular government and associate culturally with European and US values) to the headscarf ban is not because it is a "political symbol".

It is because it proves to us that the AKP is not the reconcilatory, progressive and pragmatic party that we thought it was when we voted for Erdogan in Jul 07.

This is hard to explain in a few sentences but i will try: They have lost their aura of reconciliation by pushing through a divisive change to the constitution under pressure from the grass roots religious sects that support them.

Their progressiveness is questionable for having abandoned the EU accession project in favour of a cause which wil do little to further womens integration into the economy and politics;

And their pragmatism has hardened into block headed brinkmanship as PM Erdogan shouts at and scolds every independent voice from opposition parties to the press.

I hope to engage other readers in discussion of these points.

cheers