Roe v. Wade overturned in the United States. Hijab protests in Iran. These are but some examples of the clashes and contestation over women’s rights that continue today. It was in such a climate, and in the context of the approaching centenary of the Republic, that the conference participants reviewed the fight for women’s rights in Turkey since its founding in 1923. They reflected on the state of feminist historiography, raising new research questions, and offering innovative approaches to understanding the contestation over women’s rights in Turkey and how they were and are remembered today. Besides the current political climate regarding women’s rights, the conference is especially pertinent, as the production of feminist knowledge is sidelined by state funding institutions. Three understudied research areas formed the underlying themes of the conference papers, namely, cross-border actors and influences, under-researched time periods, and cross-cultural analysis.

In the first panel, AKILE ZORLU DURUKAN (Ankara) and GÖKTEN DOĞANGÜN (Northern Cyprus) spoke about how feminists Nezihe Muhittin and Şükûfe Nihal intellectually conceptualised the place of women in the early Republican Turkish society. Such an approach addresses a gap in existing research, which has been primarily occupied with Muhittin and Nihal’s activism, rather than their intellectual frameworks. Durukan and Doğangün posited that, in the context of heightened national consciousness, Muhittin and Nihal had defined the ideal Turkish woman as one whom national development depended on. Muhittin and Nihal had considered women to be essential to the nation-building project not just because of their reproductive capabilities, but also because of their assigned social roles as wives and mothers in nuclear family units, which by the early Republican period, had become perceived as the core building foundation of the nation. Hence, women, as conceptualised by Muhittin and Nihal, were assigned the responsibility of safeguarding the nation through domestic work, childcare, and educating their children.

GÜLŞAH ŞENKOL (Istanbul) presented a comparative reading of feminist discourses in Eygpt and Turkey, tracing the patterns and distinct phases of Egyptian and Turkish feminists’ engagement with secular and religious reform approaches from the late 19th century to mid-1930s. According to her, Egypt and the Ottoman centre (later Turkey) posit as suitable case studies for a comparison of their dynamic feminist discourses, because of the consistent mutual interaction between their centres of cultural production, Cairo and Istanbul. Şenkol argued that in societies where policy was conventionally led by intellectuals and officials, such as the Ottoman centre and the Turkish Republic, feminism was shaped by concerns of the state, at the same time marginalising conservative feminism in the name of rapid progress. Whereas, in societies where modernisation projects and social advances were informed by Islamic understandings, for example Egypt, feminism was shaped by social, cultural, and religious norms, with a slower pace of development.

The next two papers focused on the women’s movement in Turkey during 1930s and 1980s, a period that is under-researched and often termed as the “barren period”. EZGI SARITAŞ (Ankara) and YELDA ŞAHIN AKILLI (Ankara) discussed the multifarious genealogies of feminism in Turkey during this period. Whereas from the 1950s the narrative of state-given women’s rights had been dominant in the collective memory of the women’s movement in Turkey, they contended that this narrative was displaced from its hegemonic position in the 1960s. This was because the 1961 Constitution and the emergence of student and labour movements had allowed for greater criticism of the state. Such a context afforded feminist activists the opportunity to challenge the narrative that women’s rights were given by the state and not hard fought-for. The 1960s hence was a momentous time, in which an earlier generation of women’s activists sought to pass on their experiences to a newer generation of activists, yet the latter’s stance on women’s issues had diverged from the former. Sarıtaş and Şahin Akıllı identified two conflicts between two generations of women’s activists that were crucial to the mid-century women’s movement: (anti-)veiling and (anti-)communism.

SERCAN ÇINAR (Vienna) presented on the formation of left feminism in Turkey between 1974 and 1985 from a transnational perspective. The approach of transnational history diverges from the current approaches in the historiography of Turkish feminism. Çınar reconstructed the history of the left-wing feminist organisation İlerici Kadınlar Derneği (Progressive Women’s Association, IKD), which was arguably the largest women’s organisation in Turkey’s history. He posited that the history of the IKD must be understood in the context of the rise of the global left feminism in the 1960s and 70s. The term “left feminism” denotes a feminist agency that was informed by communist ideals, thus broadening the boundaries of “feminism” that is conventionally regarded as having a liberal political goal of individual emancipation. Çınar presented the transnational links of left feminism in Turkey, by examining IKD’s engagements with international left-feminist women’s organisations, particularly the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF).

Using Iran and Turkey as case studies, SEVIL ÇAKIR-KILINÇOĞLU (Göttingen) argued for a re-evaluation of the relationship between the state and the women’s movement at the turn of the 20th century. Whereas women are predominantly portrayed as passive or submissive to the state in the historiography of both Turkey and Iran, Çakır-Kılınçoğlu proposed instead to recast the relationship between the two as one that was mutually beneficial and of “reciprocal gain”. In doing so, women’s agencies are rehabilitated, allowing for a nuanced understanding of the women’s movements in both countries. The actions of women’s rights activists, for example Muhiddin’s support for the Kemalist regime, can thus be understood as an attempt to fight for more rights through compliance. A comparative examination of the women’s movement in Iran and Turkey provides insights into the development of women’s movements in the Middle East.

GÜL ŞEN (Heidelberg) examined women’s political participation as part of the development of the civil society in Turkey, through the lens of gender agency. Şen posited that the civil society, as a space located between the state, society, and the economy, has become the site of political participation, particularly in relation to gender issues. Hence, she sought to recast activists of the women’s movement as actors with the capacity to enact change instead of passive figures embroiled in gender “struggle”. Of particular interest to her is the topic of female emancipation. Şen referenced a broad definition of “political participation” that considers the diverse actions undertaken by citizens that sought to influence decision-making in various levels of the political system. By going beyond the narrow definition of “political participation” as voting, Şen highlighted the influence of non-conventional forms of political participation on policymaking. As gender agency was shaped by the imperatives of the authoritarian state, Şen traced its development in various periods, differentiated by political and societal changes in Turkey and Europe.

ELIF EKIN AKŞIT (Ankara) proposed the use of quantitative tools to examine literary texts that are conventionally analysed using qualitative approaches. Using quantitative software, she examined multiple texts on Battal Ghazi published between the 16th and the early 20th century. Focusing on a version written by Murat Sertoğlu in the early 1970s, Akşit discussed the use of spatial demonstratives in the text, showing how religion, geography, and gender equality were understood at that time. Specifically, Akşit sought to demonstrate the significance of the references to Christian Greek women and Muslim men in the text to the formation of an Islamic identity in Anatolia in the early 20th century. Computer programmes allow for greater in-depth analysis of texts by mapping the relationship between keywords which, Akşit contended, is not possible with human eyes. These programmes can be applied to up to tens or hundreds of literary texts, once certain textual patterns are determined, allowing for a large-scale evaluation of trends that can inform us about the past.

The last two papers discussed contemporary gender equality struggles in Turkey. ASLI KARACA (Abu Dis) presented a discussion of the process of “normalisation of headscarf” in Turkey. She also sought to reconstruct the afterlife of the women’s Islamic movements (WIMs) following the resolution of one of its primary uniting cases. Following Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi’s (AKP) consolidation of power in its second term in office (2007–2011) and the “normalisation of headscarves” around 2008, significant divergences emerged within the WIMs. Karaca identified that, after the lifting of the ban on headscarves, the issues the WIMs engaged in diversified, and the style of their engagement with the government became increasingly disruptive. Two particular issues divided the WIMs since the AKP’s third term in power: women’s rights and state authoritarianism. According to Karaca, women who wore headscarves gained access to higher education and became increasingly active in the public sphere after the ban was lifted, contributing to the diversity of issues the WIMs engaged in. The paper is based on 27 interviews conducted with women representing 13 associations or platforms in Istanbul, Ankara, and Bursa between 2013 and 2016. It is supplemented by non-participant and participant observations of public events and protests that took place in Istanbul during the same period.

MERVE AKYEL (Vienna) investigated the entanglement between gender and violence by examining the portrayal of patriarchy in the artwork of women from or based in Turkey since the 1980s. She suggested that, as an “institutionalised ideological practice”, Turkish art simultaneously reflects the evolution of social structures in Turkey and frames how experiences of such structures are understood. In a culture of state-sanctioned violence, women’s rights have been increasingly threatened and eroded. Hence, from an artistic perspective, Akyel sought to rethink what have been commonly perceived as institutional conventions as gender-based violence that was enacted by the state. Akyel’s paper thus contributes to not just women’s studies in the context of Turkey but also to the study of Turkish women’s art.

Contributions by participants from various disciplinary backgrounds made for a rich inter-disciplinary discussion that illustrated the diversity of research that has been conducted on the women’s movement in Turkey. Indeed, what was particularly interesting were the multifarious approaches to document and understand the women’s movement. Many research areas relating to gender studies in Turkey have been missed out on in this conference, including those of sex work, public health, LGBTQ, and Kurdish women’s movements. Nevertheless, the papers presented here certainly promise more exciting and innovative research on feminist history to come.

Conference overview:

Panel I: Rethinking Early Republican Feminism in Turkey
Chair: Serena Tolino

Akile Zorlu Durukan (Ankara) and Gökten Doğangün (Northern Cyprus): The Intellectual Lenses of Nezihe Muhittin and Şükûfe Nihal: Key Concepts in Inventing and Discussing the Turkish Republican Woman

Gülşah Şenkol (Istanbul): Diverging Genealogies and Conflicting Trajectories of Feminism in Egypt and Turkey from the Late Ottoman Empire into the 1930s

Panel II: Rights, Representation and Modernity in the Postwar Decades
Chair: Selin Çağatay

Ezgi Sarıtaş (Ankara) and Yelda Şahin Akıllı (Ankara): Rethinking the “Barren” Decades of Women’s Movement in Turkey: Collective Memory and Intergenerational Conflicts

Sercan Çinar (Vienna): A Transnational History of Left Feminism in Turkey, 1974–1985

Sevil Çakır-Kılınçoğlu (Göttingen): Reconceptualizing Women’s Agency in Iran and Turkey at the Turn of the 20th Century

Panel III: Conceptual and Methodological Discussions on Women’s History
Chair: Elife Biçer-Deveci

Gül Sen (Heidelberg): Gender Agency: Civil Society as a Space of Female Political Participation

Elif Ekin Akşit (Ankara): Women’s History at the Crossroads: Quantification of Qualitative Data and Literary Analysis, Gender Equality and Space in Battal Ghazi Texts

Panel IV: New Perspectives on Current Debates: Activism, Violence, Religion
Chair: Ali Sonay

Aslı Karaca (Abu Dis): Dissent, Divisions, and Disruptive Repertoires of Contention within Women’s Islamic Movements in Turkey, 2008–2016

Merve Akyel (Vienna): Caring Kind: Exploring Gender-based Violence through Artworks by Women from or Based in Turkey from 1980s onwards