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Feminizem-In-Islam-ANG.Pdf Ana Frank FEMINISM AND ISLAM Turkish Women between the Orient and the West AnA FrAnk FEMINISM AND ISLAM Turkish Women between The orienT And The WesT TrAnslation: JeAn mccollisTer design: irenA Wölle PrinT: stane Peklaj PrinT run: 300 coPies, FirsT ediTion revieWed by: Aleš ČrniČ, Phd, universiTy oF lJubljanA moJcA rAmšAk, Phd, universiTy oF lJubljanA cover illusTration: osmAn hAmdi bey, girl AdJusTing vAse (1881), FrAgmenT © mirovni inšTiTuT And AnA FrAnk, 2014 The Publishing oF This book was mAde Possible by: oPen socieTy Foundations book series PoliTike ediTor: Aldo milohnić Publisher: PeAce insTiTuTe insTiTuTe For conTemPorAry sociAl And PoliTicAl sTudies meTelkovA 6 si-1000 lJubljanA e: [email protected] WWW.mirovni-insTiTuT.si conTenTs 7 INTRODUCTORY DILEMMAS IN REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMEN 8 Theoretical approaches and concepts 10 The logic behind Orientalist discourse 12 Orientalist representations of women 15 SOCIAL CHANGES WITH THE COLLAPSE OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 15 Ottoman and Turkish Orientalists 20 The origins of Turkish feminism and Ottoman feminists 26 Ottoman reformers and the emancipation of women 29 TURKEY – THE CREATION OF A NATION-STATE 31 The Kemalist reforms and the understanding of modernization and secularism 39 Orientalized Kemalism and the project of the “new woman” 42 Symbolic battles for the representation of woman’s appearance 46 Kemalist feminists 51 PLURALISM, LIBERALISM, AND DEMOCRACY 52 Feminist pluralism in the late 20th and the 21st century 59 Islamic feminists 65 THE POLITICS OF DRESS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN COVERING IN TURKEY 69 Turkish interpretations of laicism and the continuity of Orientalist discourses 71 Political Islamism and a critique of Turkish secularism 74 Interpretations of covering in Turkey 81 Discourses of Islamists on women and covering 84 Views of Muslim women on covering 91 THE CONTRIBUTION OF ISLAMIC FEMINIST CONSCIOUSNESS 93 CONCLUDING THOUGHTS 95 BIBLIOGRAPHY 102 INDEX INTRODUCTORY DILEMMAS IN REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMEN This book analyzes different representations of Ottoman and Turkish women along the axis dividing the categories of the West and the Orient, and inves- tigates how the discourse of creating differences between the Orient and the West (the Orientalist discourse) has characterized women as objects and bear- ers of the main national constitutive ideologies in Turkey: Islam, secularism/ Kemalism, and nationalism. These ideologies are embedded in a binary division between the Orient and the West as two completely opposing (and homoge- neous) worlds. In the book I also present different interpretations of religion in the context of these ideologies, which use religion or secularism as underlying assumptions for defining women and their roles. In discussing the representa- tions of women within the Islamic-secular division, which create a specific un- derstanding of Islam, secularism, women in Islam, and religious practices, the book focuses on religious covering. Since these representations have provoked responses among women, I also present feminist responses to this so-called woman question. Different groups of women face the dominant representa- tions of themselves through feminist activism. Due to the particularities and diversity of women’s movements, I give special attention in the book to wom- en’s Islamic feminism and activism. The book thus attempts to critically address homogenized interpretations of (Turkish) Muslim women. I present the main streams of thought after the end of the Ottoman Empire throughout different historical periods. I begin with the Ottoman reformists and traditionalists, who – under the influence of European Orientalism – first tackled the representations of women and the treatment of the “woman ques- tion”. I continue the analysis with the emergence of the modern republic of Turkey and the ideology of Kemalism, which saw women as having a special role as bearers of secular and nationalist ideas. Kemalism also drew on Orien- talist assumptions and thus created the so-called Kemalist woman, who was the antipode of the Ottoman/Islamic woman. Kemalism was the principal na- tional ideology up until the end of the 1980s, when sociopolitical life in Turkey became pluralized, many women’s movements emerged, and many marginal- ized groups, which had long been excluded from the Kemalist secular-nation- alist project, gained power. These were primarily Kurdish and Islamist groups who were struggling for an active role in society; women from these groups 7 A n A F r A n k were struggling for different representations of women since in the Islamic and Kurdish imaginary women were deployed as the essence of either the Kurdish national movement or the Islamic view of society and women. The 1980s saw the emergence of diverse feminist movements struggling against the dominant representations of women, in opposition to (as well as in support of) mostly patriarchal representations of women. Kemalist women or Kemalist feminists continued propagating Kemalist ideology and thus did not represent a major shift, while other feminist groups problematized discrimina- tion against and domination over women, which was still prevalent in society. I thus also discuss Kurdish and especially Islamist feminists, and in this context the so-called turban feminists, who are typical of Turkish feminism – which they have marked with their fight for the right to wear head coverings. Not only were these rights restricted, covered Muslim women were prevented from attending educational institutions and practicing their professions. However, Muslim women were victims not only of a Kemalist interpretation of secular- ism but also of conservative Islamists, who appropriated the right to define the role of women in Islam. Theoretical approaches and concepts My theoretical basis derives from the social constructivist approach, which as- sumes that the meanings of concepts and social phenomena are not fixed but rather are constructed by social and political discourses which are dependent on the social context1 and actors. Every society and the different actors within that society understand, interpret, redefine, and negotiate meanings and norms re- garding the role and rights of women and gender relations in a specific way. This does not mean that these meanings and norms are always the same, i.e. fixed and hence typical of a particular “society, culture, or religion”, but rather that it is necessary to parse the conditions of the construction of these meanings and norms, which are influenced by external and internal factors. In every so- ciety there exist different groups of actors and different power relations among them; these groups interpret the role of women in society differently and di- verge in their understandings and representations of women. In Turkey the dispute over differing representations is usually (inadequately) explained solely as a dispute between Islamists and secularists, whose world views and views of women and women’s roles are assumed to be mutually exclusive. This either/or 1 I define context as the historically, spatially and culturally, politically and socially specific -en vironment or structure; this contains a set of processes, institutions, cultrual practices and traditions, ideologies and discourses which determine and define the individual, their think- ing and behavior, and influence their reflection of events. 8 F e m i n i s m A n d i s l A m view neglects the complex reality of relations, the ways different actors/groups interact, and not least the similarities and differences among these actors in their understanding of the role of women. It is therefore necessary to analyze the historical conditions in which the relationships among different sociopoliti- cal views and actors arose, as well as to analyze the discourses accompanying these specific constructions of reality. In this book I use the terms discourse and discourse analysis. The social con- structivist conception of discourse, which is based on the work of Foucault (Foucault 2001, cf. Kendall and Wickham 1999), understands discourse as a structural system of knowledge, ideas, and practices that influence the think- ing and actions of social actors. Discourse is thus an analytical concept which denotes the way in which concepts, ideas, behavior, institutions, language and practices are constructed with respect to certain assumptions about the nature of phenomena and things in a political and social environment. These assump- tions, interpretations and representations which the discourses (re)produce are reinforced depending on the power of the discourses or rather the power of the social actors who (re)produce the discourses in question. The analysis of discourse focuses on the ways and processes through which the object of research is attributed certain meanings within a certain social context (Potter and Wetherell and Burr in Bacchi 2009: 22, 26). Through analysis of discourse I therefore analyze specific institutionally and culturally supported interpreta- tive assumptions (discourses) which (re)produce a particular understanding of events or objects of observation and ascribe a specific meaning to phenomena and objects. In this book I present different feminist movements. Although I understand feminism as a concept which was created in the “West”, at the same time I want to emphasize that the idea of feminism (feminist consciousness, the struggle for women’s rights) can be present in different societies and cultures and also in different times, and that there
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