reforms that aimed at reinvigorating the declining
Ottoman Empire. Women’s issues emerged as the
foremost battlefield for debates between moderniz-
ers and conservatives of the era, the former identi-
fying women as the loci of Ottoman backwardness,
and the latter condemning any major reforms in
this arena as foreign encroachments on the cultural
essence of Ottoman society. Initially it was a group
of male reformers who began criticizing practices
such as arranged marriages and polygamy, and
emphasized the importance of women’s education
as a prerequisite for progress. Scattered women’s
voices soon joined the debate, a development fos-
tered by the emergence of a women’s press toward
the end of the century. In general the women’s dis-
course was similarly one of progress and education,
rarely challenging the identity of women as wives
and mothers. While Islam maintained its promi-
nence as a point of reference for many reformists,
misguided traditions were often blamed for Mus-
lim women’s oppression.
The Second Constitutional Period, ushered in
with the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, was a turn-
ing point in the treatment of the Woman Question.
The terms of the debate were modified with the
emergence of a Turkist movement that idealized
pre-Islamic Turkish history for its record of
women’s rights, thereby creating a new reference of
authenticity and thus relegating traditions oppres-
sive to women to some undesirable, foreign influ-
ence. This was also the time when the women’s press
and women’s organizations flourished in numbers
and diversity, and feminizm(feminism) became a
central signifier in debates surrounding women’s
issues. The modest improvements in women’s edu-
cational opportunities that began in the nineteenth
century, moreover, continued at a faster pace dur-
ing this era, with women gaining access to higher
education for the first time in the 1910s.
During the War of Independence following the
First World War, many women voluntarily involved
themselves in the nationalist struggle, and some
filled the posts emptied by men going off to war.
Nationalist activities of women not only legit-
imized their public presence, but also provided
them with a new image, that of asexual sister-in-
arms and patriotic citizen. This image was best per-
sonified, as well as created in writing, by Halide
Edip Adıvar, one of the well-known novelists of the
early republican era, who was distinguished both
by her defense of women’s rights and by her patri-
otism. Many radical reforms regarding women fol-
lowed the declaration of the Turkish Republic in
1923, making Turkey a pioneer in woman’s rights,596 political-social movements: feminist
especially among Muslim countries. Between 1924
and 1926, women were granted equal rights with
men in the field of education, a new Civil Code
based on the Swiss model was passed, replacing
Muslim family law, and religious restrictions on
women’s dress were lifted. Finally, by 1934, women
were fully enfranchised. These reforms facilitated
the emergence of a substantial group of middle-
class female professionals, represented in impres-
sive numbers within a few decades in fields such as
academia, law, and medicine, who in turn became
the leading symbols of the secular and democratic
nature of the republic. Ironically, however, soon
after the achievement of full political rights, the
single most important women’s organization of the
time, Türk Kadınlar Birli(i (Turkish women’s union)
disbanded, deeming itself no longer necessary.
From the 1930s until the 1980s, there was a vir-
tually dormant period in Turkey in terms of an
autonomous women’s movement, a situation com-
monly linked to the prevalence of the nationalist/
modernizing discourse among educated middle-
class women, and to the domination of left-wing
ideologies in oppositional circles. The former typi-
cally assumed incomplete modernization as the
root cause of women’s continued subordination
despite the achievement of formal legal equality,
while the latter treated women’s oppression as
only secondary compared to class oppression and,
similar to the former, idealized the image of a desex-
ualized comrade-woman. The new women’s move-
ment of the 1980s, influenced by the second-wave
feminist ideas coming from the West, challenged
the adequacy of formal legal equality achieved as a
result of republican reforms, which many criticized
as “state feminism,” while at the same time assert-
ing its independence, or at least distinctiveness,
from other social causes. The new feminists insisted
on the political nature of the personal sphere, and
emphasized the importance of reclaiming female
sexuality. Emerging against the backdrop of the
depoliticized atmosphere following the 1980 coup,
the new feminist movement germinated in small,
informal groups that came together for conscious-
ness-raising sessions and panels in a few metropol-
itan centers, and carried out ideological debates in
certain non-mainstream periodicals. Toward the
end of the decade, starting with the 1987 march
against domestic violence and continuing with the
1989 campaign against sexual harassment in the
streets, the new feminist message eventually suc-
ceeded in reaching beyond the bounds of small
intellectual circles, and attracted the attention of a
larger public.