The recent law in Turkey is about having a choice as a citizen. This change to the Turkish constitution enshrines the equal right and access of all Turkish citizens to public services and offices. It rectifies the 1989 ruling of the Turkish constitutional court, and the long debate that ensued, on practice of state-mandated secularism as a prerequisite for all Turkish females who seek higher education or work in government offices. A tax collector or a bank clerk could not wear a scarf!

About ten years ago, a Turkish women, Mrs. Merve Kavakci, was elected to the Turkish parliament. She appeared at the opening ceremony wearing a headscarf. Turkish secularists, who then formed a majority in the Parliament, passed a specific act to expel her from the Parliament and subsequently stripped her Turkish citizenship on grounds that she had insulted the principles of the State. The State won the boxing match against the people in the house of the people, the unicameral parliament. Alas, Turks insist that they can balance a liberal democracy, Islamic traditions, fair governance and a responsive state without trampling on another's dignity! Can "reform" be truly enacted, in the longest emerging market and the perpetual EU candidate, and not touch upon complexities and twisted knots in the social fabric?

And how refreshing! Turkish taxpayers, in a highly taxed country, are now "allowed" to choose and act for themselves in their own country! Thus a presumed principle is now hyped as a directional leap for Turks and a cyclone of debate. Is a leap towards a pluralist society and respect of a fellow citizen really fearsome? And what to do with old concepts of "social engineering" in a country that has a intricate track record -- 61 government cabinets, 21 IMF agreements, and several civil wars, coups and constitutions in its 84 years of existence. Is it really possible to deny higher education to citizens, where more than a million people graduate from high school every year?

I write with insight on this issue from a country where many insist on being "more catholic than the Pope", as the Persian saying goes. Women and their dress is also an obsessive topic of endless debate in my country. Iranian women were forced to remove their traditional veil about 60-70 years ago in some sort of modernization exercise, and for the last 28 years they have been required to wear a scarf in public. Likewise, there is no shortage of regional debates that are circular and endless, be it about Saudi traditions and women driving or having national ID cards, Mrs. Condoleezza Rice not being able to use the hotel gym last January, or more profound matters such as universal suffrage or the formation of political parties.

There are other anomalies that make it far from a simple blue and red chart -- an Iraqi friend was stunned to see female Iranian police commandoes wearing Islamic dress, or to learn that many ultra-Orthodox Jewish women in New York wear wigs instead of scarves. And there are other crossover traditions in various cultures: religious Jewish and Muslim women do not shake hands with men; an ancient edict grounds the national airline, El Al, on the Sabbath despite the fact that Tel Aviv airport is open to foreign airlines. It is all part of the rich fabric of traditions and customs in the Middle East, laced with high-energy debate. There are many sides and three answers might arise after asking the opinion of two people.

So it is best to focus on debate itself, rather than ruining it all with very absurd simplifications. This Turkish debate about headscarves is no different than American debates about homosexuals, prayer in schools or the teaching of evolution and creation. There is never a definitive right or wrong side and it is best left to the locals to sort it out in their society. Outsiders ought not to take sides.