Speaking of Women? Exploring Violence against Women through Political Discourses: A Case Study of Headscarf Debates in Turkey (original) (raw)
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E-Cadernos CES, 2012
This paper explores the production of violence against women through political discourses in Turkey. Since the foundation of the Republic (1923), women’s bodies have been on the agenda as the markers of secular Turkish modernity. With the rise of political Islam as of the 1970s, the image of the headscarved woman has challenged the construction of “modern Republican woman” and the association of women’s bodies with secularism. Especially after the 1980s with the introduction of bans, “the headscarf issue” has intensified and become the embodiment of the clash between political Islam and the official secularist ideology. By drawing on the sexualizing aspects of the headscarf and its significance in the construction of female honour, I will demonstrate how women’s bodies are turned into readily available topics for consumption in politics. I argue that headscarf debates have factored into patriarchal discourses, which inflict violence on women on both discursive and material levels. By analysing a few cases on media reflections and art projects on the “headscarf debate”, I aim to show how women’s bodies become vulnerable to violence through political discourses.
This thesis investigated the reactions to the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) recent lift of the ban against the Islamic headscarf in the Turkish Parliament. The reactions by the oppositional party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), were analysed through Norman Fairclough’s understanding of critical discourse analysis, which aims to illuminate unequal power relations created or recreated by the production of discursive practises, which is believed to ultimately affect social practises. The method of critical discourse analysis was accompanied by the feminist critique of orientalism, intended to assess how headscarved women are stereotyped and homogenised through orientalist ideas. The analysis resulted in an understanding of the complex power relations between the ruling party and the main oppositional party, as well as the effect of using orientalist ideas in discourse, possibility contributing to an increasingly extensive polarisation and, thus, the risk of increased conflicts between the secular groups and the more religiously observant groups in the Turkish society.
The Headscarf Issue, Women and the Public Sphere in Turkey
This study aims to investigate the right-based implications of the question of headscarf for the exercise of citizenship status in Turkey. In particular, I will reconsider the relationship between the discussions on the headscarf and the public sphere, by examining the identity claims of Islamic female students to new rights. This study argues that the question of the headscarf is part of the 'citizenship debate', seen as an issue of human right to articulate different cultural identities and forms.
Veiling as self disciplining: Muslim Women, Islamic discourses and headscarf ban in Turkey
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The confrontation between Kemalists and Islamists over the headscarf is well known, but what is less frequently discussed is the shift in dialogue that has happened over the past decade. The previous generation seemed pitted against each other in a virtual war over the increasing presence of headscarf-wearing women in public spaces. The old guard of Kemalists -particularly secular feminists -has generally viewed headscarf-wearing women in one of two ways. Either they are victims of patriarchal males seeking to reinforce religious and cultural ideals about female subordination to male power and authority, or they are subversive elements seeking to destroy the fruits women have earned over decades of struggle for women's enfranchisement.
Margins and forgotten places: the Turkish national rhetoric on women from Atatürk to Erdoğan
MARGINS AND FORGOTTEN PLACES, 2023
This chapter presents the historical evolution of Turkish women after the foundation of the Turkish Republic in the political debate. With the help of secondary sources and historical scholarship on the topic, the essay presents women’s participation in public life in such a polarised country. The intention is not to reduce the entire debate on the utilisation of the headscarf, but also to explain how many ongoing issues are rooted in the foundations of the republic. The main argument of the paper is that even if women have long been at the centre of the political debate, they tend to represent the mere object of the dispute in a hyper-masculinised political context.