ened. A socialist party, Türkiye ÷ççi Partisi (Labor
Party of Turkey, LPT) was represented in the par-
liament for the first time and became the major
locus of revolutionary projects and political oppo-
sition. Behice Boran, the leader of the party, is an
important symbol of the socialist movement, with
a life that extended from the university to the par-
liament, surviving many trials and prison terms
because of her political career and beliefs until her
death in 1987 (Berktay 2002).
The socialist movement (Tunçay 1991) was not
confined to the leadership of the LPT; a number of
socialist parties, notably the Turkish Communist
Party (TCP) whose origin can be traced back to the
1920s, were present in the late Ottoman period;
and the TCP remained illegal until the elections of
- The 1970s were the years when the leftist
political organizations, parties, and youth move-
ments, also under the influence of 1968 student
activism in the West, determined the political
agenda until the 1980 military coup. Many women
supported these groups who saw the solution to the
Woman Question as lying within class struggle.
Women in leftist politics were usually excluded
from decision-making mechanisms, an experience
they shared with women in nationalist or Islamist
political frameworks (Berktay 1995). In 1975,
under the influence of the TCP a semi-independent
women’s association, ÷lerici Kadınlar Derne(i (Pro-
gressive women’s association) was set up with a
mass membership of 15,000. Still, their main target
was to recruit women to the socialist cause. It was
only after 1980 that women realized the signifi-
cance of autonomous women’s organizations in the
struggle against male dominance and patriarchy,
and that women’s liberation could not be reduced
to socialist revolution.
The post-1980 leaders of the feminist movement
were mostly disillusioned women who had learned
from their experience in left-wing political circles.
These women, academics and students among
them, preferred to define themselves as feminists
turkey 665and advocated an independent women’s movement
challenging the patriarchal structures in society.
Their major accomplishments were: feminist con-
sciousness-raising groups; a campaign against vio-
lence against women (Say No to Wife-Beating
Campaign); publication activities; campaigns to
amend the articles that discriminate against women
in the Civil Code and the Penal Code; the founding
of the women’s library in Istanbul and women’s
research centers in the universities; women’s shel-
ters; and the recent amendment of the Civil Code in
2002.
The 1980s also saw the politicization of the
Kurdish movement, which equally affected the
Kurdish women’s cause. Although caught between
national and feminist identities, Kurdish women
created publications and organizations that prob-
lematized issues such as polygamy, violence against
women, adult education, and honor killings, and
searched for possible solutions. In contrast, the
Islamist women’s movement focused on the
attempt to demonstrate that prevailing oppressive
Islamic practices concerning women had their ori-
gins not in the Qur±àn but in the “implementation”
dominated by patriarchal traditions.Bibliography
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Turkish left on women?, in Ç. Tekeli (ed.), Women in
modern Turkish society, London 1995, 250–62.
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