Sixteen Turkish academics resigned from their posts today in protest of the way in which Turkey’s president, Abdullah Gul, handled the appointments this week of rectors at 21 universities, according to the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet.

The selection process for Turkish university heads involves several stages, with professors voting for candidates who are then presented to the Higher Education Board, which submits finalists to the president. Mr. Gul appointed 12 candidates who had come in first in the voting at their universities, but he named second- and third-place candidates for the remaining nine posts. The nine candidates he rejected had all opposed moves earlier this year by Mr. Gul’s Justice and Development Party, which has its roots in political Islam, to lift the head-scarf ban at Turkish universities.

Among the rejected candidates was Mustafa Akaydin, of Akdeniz University, “who as the head of an inter-university board opposed efforts by the government earlier this year to lift the head-scarf ban,” Hürriyet reported. The first reaction came at Istanbul Technical University, where 12 professors, including a dean, resigned in protest, the newspaper said. More such reactions are expected, it addd.

The government’s push to ease the head-scarf ban was blocked in June by Turkey’s constitutional court, which ruled that doing so would violate the nation’s secular principles.

Last week, in the wake of a landmark constitutional-court ruling that allowed Turkey’s governing party to remain in existence but warned it against compromising Turkey’s secular identity, a senior government figure had indicated that the government was no longer making the head-scarf issue a priority. Mr. Gul’s actions, and the response from the professors who resigned today, indicate that the matter is far from settled. —Aisha Labi