TURKEY:Turkey's most famous Islamic clothes designer is accused of exploiting religion, writes Nicholas Birchin Istanbul
TWO LIBERAL theologians have taken Turkey's most famous Islamic clothes designer to court for exploiting religion, in a case highlighting the unease some feel at the ostentation of the country's new conservative high society.
Dubbed "Allah's tailor" by the press, Mustafa Karaduman long ago earned the odium of Turkish secularists for his successful mass- marketing of the brightly coloured headscarves and ankle- length coats that have become a trademark of conservative urban women.
What triggered Ilhami Guler and Suleyman Bayraktar's case, though, was the name of the company he set up in the 1980s. "Tekbir" refers to the core statement of Muslim belief - "there is no God but God".
"Jesus was upset by the sight of the money-lenders in the Temple, and I'm upset by the thought of a new generation of Muslims for whom 'Tekbir' means expensive headscarves," Guler says.
He would have opened the case much earlier, he adds, but it was only recently that lawyer friends told him about a law forbidding the commercial use of names "imbued by society with a moral value".
"Requests to use Mevlana as a brand name are always turned down, for instance," Guler's lawyer Yakup Erikel points out, referring to Turkey's most famous Sufi saint.
A court decision requiring Tekbir to change its name could trigger a host of other cases against countless other Turkish companies with religious names - from Sharia Swimsuits via Medina Travel to Jihad Meat Balls.
Tekbir's Mustafa Karaduman has long been attacked by religious conservatives in Turkey, who argue that the fashion displays of headscarf-wearing models he pioneered in the 1990s are unIslamic.
However Guler says it was the widely reported mid-April release of Tekbir's 2008 summer collection that drove him to take action.
With white-robed dervishes whirling in the background, models - none of whom wear a veil in real life - strutted up and down to the sound of mournful Sufi pipes. At one point, they dropped to their knees and raised their hands, as though asking God for forgiveness.
Guler wasn't the only one appalled by the display. For Ahmet Hakan, a sharp-tongued former Muslim radical turned liberal who writes a popular column Turkey's most influential newspaper, it was symbolic of the hypocrisy of the new religious- minded high society that has risen with the former Islamist AKP government.
"Look at these pious souls puffed up with pride because they've got the cash to make even Turkey's most famous faces look as though they've found religion," he wrote.
In the conservative press, too, news of the court case has generally been greeted sympathetically. But not all religious Turks approve of Guler's action.
A headscarf-wearing PhD student in Istanbul, Hilal Kaplan thinks the mentality behind the Tekbir trial is uncomfortably close to the closure case a senior prosecutor opened against the AKP government this March for anti-secular activities.
"One is unhappy about the mixing of religion and trade, the other about the mixing of religion and politics," she says. "What we need is debate, not bans."
A prominent Muslim feminist and friend of Guler, Hidayet Tuksal sympathises with what he is doing, but she has no doubt his sensitivities put him in a minority.
"Twenty years ago, money and consumer culture were big issues for conservative Turks, but those days are long past," she says.
"In today's conservative neighbourhoods, mosques and shopping centres have an equally central place."
While Karaduman declined to comment about the case, his belief in Islamic fashion appears unshaken. Interviewed recently by a conservative Turkish news agency, he boasted that even the Iranian government had asked for his help in modernising Islamic clothing.
If there is a threat to Tekbir's domination of the conservative fashion market, it most likely comes not from Guler, but from Karaduman's public admission late in April that he had three wives.
Accepted under Islamic law, polygamy has officially been banned in Turkey for 80 years. Karaduman's confession sparked outrage, not least among educated conservative women.
"I used sometimes to shop in that gentleman's store," says Hidayet Tuksal. "I will never do so again." She doesn't think she's the only one taking a stand either.
"The Tekbir shop near my house used to be packed. Every time I've walked past it since April, it's been nearly empty."