Turkey is about to give itself a new constitution. That is good because the current one was written by the army in 1982, after the last military coup. But the constitutional debate so far has been divisive. Attention has focused on the government’s suggestion to scrap the ban on girls wearing headscarves in universities. Depending on where you stand, this represents a move either towards greater religious freedom and equal opportunities, or towards the Islamisation of the Turkish state – and away from the secular order that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk established in 1923.

The narrow focus on the headscarf is unfortunate. The new con­stitution involves a much broader range of issues, including the role of women in politics and society, minority rights and the unity of the state, and the intricate system of checks and balances that makes Turkey’s traditionally fragile demo­cracy work. This is about who runs modern Turkey and how.