ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the debates related to the prohibitive regulations adopted in France, Germany and Turkey. It describes the state-religion regimes, the political opportunity structures such as the citizenship and migration regime, aspects of the political culture and anti-discrimination machineries including social movements. The most severe prohibition of the headscarf in public institutions is in effect in Turkey. At the beginning of 2008, almost a state crisis was caused by the attempt to lift the headscarf ban concerning university students. In Turkey, although the majority of citizens are Muslim, the headscarf was banned because modern Turkey followed the historical model of France proclaiming a strict form of secularism. Religion and its formerly powerful institutions should be excluded from the public sphere. In France and Germany, the anti-discrimination machineries have only short histories of existence and have not – until now – established any principle critical objections against the legal headscarf prohibitions.
