Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Turkish legislators voted to lift a ban on the Muslim headscarf at universities, a step that may increase tensions between the Islamist-rooted government and a military sworn to protect the secular republic.

The Grand National Assembly in Ankara approved amendments to the constitution allowing female students to wear the headscarf by a vote of 411 to 103, Speaker Koksal Toptan said in parliament today. The legislature approved the measure by the required two- thirds majority in an initial vote on Feb. 7.

``Everyone must respect the national will as it is manifested in parliament,'' Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters today at a security conference in Munich, according to the Anatolia news agency.

The military, which has ousted four governments since 1960, suspects that the government's plan to ease the curbs is part of a campaign to water down the country's secular principles and increase the role of Islam in society. The army last year opposed parliament's appointment of Abdullah Gul as president because his wife wears a headscarf and he has an Islamist background.

``Hardline secularists see this as the start of an open fight and sometimes wars begin with small things,'' said Ali Tekin, a professor of politics at Ankara's Bilkent University. ``People are becoming more afraid of a radical Islamic turn in the country.''

Erdogan says he has a mandate to challenge curbs on religion after his party won 47 percent of the vote in a general election last July, the biggest share since 1965.

Military Opposition

Erdogan called for that balloting after the military opposed his nomination of Gul to replace the secularist President Ahmet Necdet Sezer. The Nationalist Action Party, which won 14 percent at the election, supported the government in today's vote.

Erdogan, once jailed for reading a poem that a court said was anti-secular, says the headscarf ban at university violates freedom of conscience and education. The restrictions were imposed after a 1980 military coup.

The measure faces legal challenges in the judiciary, a bastion of the secular establishment. The main opposition Republican People's Party, founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who established the pro-Western state on the ashes of the theocratic Ottoman Empire, says it will apply to the Constitutional Court to have the legislation annulled on the grounds that it is a threat to secularism.

Court Warning

Hasan Gerceker, chief justice at the top appeals court, warned politicians against softening the ban on headscarves in a speech on Feb. 7. The court's prosecutors have the power to start closure cases against political parties. A predecessor of Erdogan's Justice and Development Party was outlawed in 1998 for breaking Turkey's secular code.

Almost 200,000 people attended a protest against the legislation in Ankara today organized by trade unions and business groups, NTV said. Lawmakers from the opposition Republicans joined the demonstration once they'd voted in parliament, the channel said.

The majority of the country supports the lifting of the ban, according to polls conducted during the past year by Turkish research companies such as Metropoll Stratejik & Sosyal Arastirma AS and KONDA Stratejik Arastirma Sirketi.

Ataturk, a former army general, banished religious rules and symbols from public life after he founded modern Turkey in 1923. The military regards itself as his heir and has vowed to protect his vision of a Western-oriented country.

Closure Case

Moves to soften the headscarf ban have prompted Turkish prosecutors to discuss petitioning the Constitutional Court to disband Justice for ``being a center of activities contrary to secularism,'' Sabah newspaper reported on Feb. 5. A court spokesman refused to confirm or deny the report.

Gul now needs to approve the measure or call a national referendum. Gul advocated an end to the headscarf ban when serving as foreign minister under Erdogan and said he opposed holding a referendum in comments on Feb. 4.

To contact the reporters on this story: Mark Bentley in Ankara at mbentley3@bloomberg.net;

Last Updated: February 9, 2008 11:22 EST