Call for Papers: A Century of Gender Equality Struggles in Turkey (original) (raw)
Related papers
Transformations of the gender regime in Turkey
Les cahiers de Cedref, 2018
This collective work is the outcome of a conference organised by the CEDREF (the organising committee was composed of Azadeh Kian and Buket Turkmen), which took place on the 22nd of March 2017 at the University Paris Diderot, with the financial support of the structuring action PluriGenre. The day was held in solidarity with our Turkish colleagues, all of them gender studies specialists, who signed the peace petition in Turkey and were discharged of their functions by the power in place. The mass firings that followed these brave position statements caused the exile of those who were able to leave the territory2. The authors of this collective work are part of these exiled academics. The present collection offers an occasion, through the prism of gender, to analyse and debate on the connections between political authoritarianism and the gender regime. Authoritative regimes’ first attempts are to erase all of the achievements of past feminist struggles as these advances challenge the patriarchal, conservationist and populist discourses of non-democratic regimes.
DIYÂR
Feminist historiography in Turkey has long dismissed the period between the 1930s and 1980s as the ‘barren period’ of the women’s movement. To understand the diverse and conflicted genealogies of Turkey’s feminism(s), we argue, it is necessary to critically engage with the notion of the ‘barren period.’ In the 1950s, ‘the discourse of indebtedness’ to Atatürk and the gender project of Kemalism became hegemonic through production of collective memory in which the women’s movement participated. Haunted by the radical struggles of Ottoman and early Republican feminists for equality, the mid-twentieth century women’s movement selectively remembered them in shaping this memory. Beginning in the second half of the 1960s, younger generations of women began to question women’s movement’s agendas and actions. This article focuses on two issues where the intergenerational conflict was particularly evident: (Anti-)veiling and (anti-)communism. These themes reveal that the discourse of indebted...
The women's movement in Turkey
2012
This paper examines the evolution of women"s movement throughout the history, from the late times of Ottoman Empire until today. It emphasizes on the various categories of feminist movements that have been formulated, such as Kemalists, Islamists, and radical feminists, liberal and Kurdish feminists. It aims to present the change that feminist movements brought in favour of women rights by bringing "private" topics like violence against women to the political agenda, and finding solutions for women"s problems. The impact of Europeanization process cannot be denied especially in the empowerment of civil society and the formation of NGOs concerning women issues pointing out deficiencies and asking for the improvement of women"s status in Turkey.
The anti-gender movement in Turkey: an analysis of its reciprocal aspects
Turkish Studies, 2023
(with B. Çelik, Y. B. Bekki, U. Tarcan) For full paper see: https://doi.org/10.1080/14683849.2022.2164189 For free e-prints please contact me. Abstract: The anti-gender movement has been publicly pursuing its quarrel against the social, academic, and political contexts of gender. Thus, it has also been constituting a basis of activism for fundamentalists, nationalists, and conservatives. In this article, we argue that recent instances show the movement has a reciprocal strategy, which articulates its structural, civil, and political aspects of counter-mobilization. After explaining the fundamentals of these aspects, we focus on the case of Turkey to embody our theoretical discussions. We also attempt to offer a transversal strategy for broad-based coalitions that can challenge the movement by categorizing its recent reflections.
The Formation of Feminist Identity: Feminism in the 1930'S Turkey and Britain
kefdergi.com
This article focuses on the improvement of Turkish women's rights pursuant to reforms made by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of Turkey, in constructing a modern Turkish nation, and discusses 1930's women's movements in Britain. Women's suffrage in Turkey emerged as a part of a modernization process, during which Atatürk instituted equal rights before most Western countries had done so. He improved women's status through his innovations thus building the most modern, democratic and secular Muslim state. Still, feminists of the 1980s question the Kemalist project of modernity in search of "liberation beyond emancipation". Women's rights in England emerged by women standing up for their rights, whereas those rights in Turkey emerged as a nationalistic policy by Atatürk.
The Women’s Movement under Ottoman and Republican Rule: A Historical Reappraisal
Since the 1980s, the second wave of the feminist movement in Turkey contributed a great deal to the launching of important academic research on women’s history, established activist associations, and continued to be vocal and visible in different aspects of women’s issues. While academic research focused on a critical review of the women’s movement during the late Ottoman era (the nineteenth century) and early Republican decades (1923–1950), activism focused primarily on a feminist critique of civil law, women’s visibility in the political arena, socially traumatic issues like domestic violence and honor crimes, and on peace regarding the Kurdish issue. This article tries to conceptualize the turning points of this historical journey, which led us in new directions in Turkish women’s history and its changing paradigms.
Feminism and Feminist History-Writing in Turkey: The Discovery of Ottoman Feminism
Aspasia: The International Year Book of Central, Eastern and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History, volume 1, Berghahn Journals, 2007, pp. 61-83., 2007
The formation of a feminist consciousness and memory in Turkey coincided with a historical period in which both social movements and academic studies proliferated. Towards the end of the 1980s, the increasing number of women’s organisations and publications began to impact upon both the feminist movement and academic research in the area of women’s studies. This, combined with the expansion of the civil societal realm, has resulted in many topics and issues related to women becoming part of the public discussion, thereby contributing to the development of a new feminist consciousness. This article discusses the impact of the work in the field of women’s history and the ensuing discovery of an Ottoman feminism on the formation of such a feminist consciousness and memory in Turkey. Serpil Çakır, “Feminism and Feminist History-Writing in Turkey: The Discovery of Ottoman Feminism”, ed. Francisca de Haan, Maria Bucur, Krassimira Daskalova, Aspasia: The International Year Book of Central, Eastern and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History, volume 1, Berghahn Journals, 2007, pp. 61-83.