Religion, Law and Politics: the “Trickle-Down” Effects of ECtHR Judgments on Turkey’s Headscarf Battles

Abstract

Building on and extending Marc Galanter’s classic thesis on the “radiating effects” of courts, this paper proposes the concept of “trickle-down effects” in order to account for the complex ways in which court judgments may impact political processes, often taking place through the ideological manipulation of the judgments and leading to unintended and unforeseen consequences. The paper specifically examines the headscarf battles in Turkey and the pivotal role that the ECtHR judgments played in it. While the short-term legal impact was the confirmation of the ban on the use of headscarves, presumably supporting the principle of secularism, the long-term impact has been the exact opposite.