Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan fired a broadside at the nation’s official secular status and introduced a plan to lift the ban on Islamic headscarves on civil servants.  Male colleagues allowed to sport beards, a sign of Muslim piety.

Secularists, particularly those in the military, see the headscarf as a symbol of defiance against the strict separation of state and religion, a basic tenet of modern Turkey as established by founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.  The move will be very popular amongst the rural Islamist conservatives who make up the Prime Minister’s support base.

Erdogan is either risking or counting on re-opening the wounds caused by the massive anti-government protests in June and July, the biggest public revulsion of his decade-plus of increasingly autocratic rule.  Critics say Erdogan seeks to court a more polarized Turkish society.

Turkey holds local elections in March, a presidential election next August, and parliamentary polls in 2015.