THE POLITICS OF GENDER AND THE MAKING OF KEMALIST FEMINIST ACTIVISM IN CONTEMPORARY TURKEY (1946–2011) By Selin Çağatay Submitted to Central European University Department of Gender Studies In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisor: Prof. Susan Zimmermann CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2017 Copyright Notice This dissertation contains no materials accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions. The dissertation contains no materials previously written and/or published by another person, except where appropriate acknowledgment is made in the form of bibliographical reference. CEU eTD Collection i Abstract The aim of this dissertation is to contribute to the understanding of the relationship between women's activism and the politics of gender by investigating Kemalist feminism in Turkey as a case study. The dissertation offers a political history of Kemalist feminism that enables an insight into the intertwined relationship between women's activism and the politics of gender. It focuses on the class, national/ethnic, and cultural/religious dynamics of and their implications for Kemalist feminist politics. In so doing, it situates Kemalist feminist activism within the politics of gender in Turkey; that is, it analyzes the relationship between Kemalist feminist activism and other actors in gender politics, such as the state, transnational governance, political parties, civil society organizations, and feminist, Islamist, and Kurdish women's activisms. The analysis of Kemalist feminist activism provided in this dissertation draws on a methodological-conceptual framework that can be summarized as follows. Activism provides the ground for women to become actors of the politics of gender. At the same time, the relations of power and systems of inequality that dominate the field of formal politics also infiltrate the field of civil society and women's activism thereof. Thus, women's activism is always-already marked by class, national/ethnic, and cultural/religious struggles; these struggles thereby become the constitutive dynamics of women's gender politics. Therefore, to account for the ways in which women's activism influences, reproduces, and/or challenges the politics of gender in a specific historical context, it is necessary to analyze the strategies women employ both to seek women's gender interests and to maintain a political framework CEU eTD Collection for defining these interests that is simultaneously class-based, national/ethnic, and cultural/religious. A further objective of this dissertation is to explore the historical transformation of Kemalist women's politics into Kemalist feminism. By bringing to light the forms of activism ii adopted by Kemalist women, and the demands they raised—individually and collectively—to further women's rights in Turkey, the study suggests a rewriting of the history of women's activism with a focus on continuities, alongside ruptures, between different, namely the single-party (1923–1946), multi-party (1946–1980), and post-1980, periods. The dissertation is based on research on the print and online material provided by Kemalist women's and feminist activism and on interviews conducted with Kemalist feminists. The print and online material includes documents, interviews, reports, leaflets, booklets, articles, journals, books, edited volumes, biographical, and autobiographical works that were written or prepared by Kemalist women including Kemalist feminists, or written or prepared by other feminists (activists and scholars, in Turkey and abroad) about Kemalist women and feminists. In addition, semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 26 Kemalist feminists during 2011 in the cities of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. CEU eTD Collection iii Acknowledgements First and foremost, I express my deepest gratitude for my supervisor Susan Zimmermann for her guidance, mentorship and support. I learned so much from her, not just academically but also as a person. I am grateful to the members of my dissertation committee, namely Nadje Al-Ali (SOAS University of London), Elissa Helms (Central European University) and Serpil Sancar (Ankara University), for their valuable feedback on my work. I sincerely thank Diana Mulinari (Lund University) and Francisca de Haan (Central European University) for generously sharing their expertise and intellectual camaraderie, and for looking out for me in more ways than one. My sincere thanks also goes to Birgit Sauer (Vienna University) for her useful insights into my research. I am indebted to Gökşen Ayvaz for transcribing much of the interviews I conducted for my research, and to Ewa Mączyńska, Fırat Duruşan, Deniz Ali Kaptan, Natalia Buier, Petra Bakos and Ayşe Dursun for proofreading and/or commenting on different chapters of the dissertation. I express my deepest appreciation to Ewa Mączyńska, Deniz Ali Kaptan, Hazal Özvarış, Cemre Baytok, Ece Kocabıçak, Cem Kayalıgil Karababa and Katerine Scott for offering me their comradeship, wisdom and intelligence, and to my family for their unconditional support, through the Ph.D. journey. I dedicate this dissertation to women who are militantly devoted to their feminist cause in Turkey, especially those of the now dissolved Socialist Feminist Collective; they were the CEU eTD Collection greatest source of inspiration behind my research. iv Table of Contents Copyright Notice ....................................................................................................................... i Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. iv List of Abbreviations ............................................................................................................. viii 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Kemalist women's activism and Kemalist feminists in feminist scholarship: Why are they absent? ............... 5 1.2. Working definitions, research description, chapter outline ........................................................................... 22 1.2.1. Kemalism, Kemalist women's activism, and Kemalist feminism ...................................................... 22 1.2.2. Research description ........................................................................................................................ 31 1.2.3. Chapter outline ................................................................................................................................ 36 2. Women's activism and gender politics: A methodological-conceptual framework for analyzing Kemalist feminism ................................................................................................ 41 2.1. A de-centered and intersectional approach to women’s activism ................................................................. 43 2.2. Women's activism as women's politics .......................................................................................................... 51 2.3. Feminisms ....................................................................................................................................................... 59 2.4. Gender politics in the state-civil society-transnational governance triangle ................................................. 65 2.5. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................... 72 3. Kemalism's gender project and the formation of Kemalist women's activism (1923– 1935) ......................................................................................................................................... 74 3.1. Kemalism's three pillars and the terms of women's public inclusion: Laicism, nationalism, and modernism/westernism ........................................................................................................................................ 78 3.2. Three discursive features of Kemalist citizenship: Turkishness, classless society and the modern family ..... 85 CEU eTD Collection 3.3. Women's political mobilization: Kemalism vs. early-republican feminism .................................................... 91 3.4. Kemalist definition of women's interests: Assimilating feminism into Kemalism .......................................... 96 3.5. Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................... 102 v 4. Kemalist women's activism in the multi-party period (1946–1980) ............................ 108 4.1. Democrat Party and the changing status of the "woman question" (1950–1960) ...................................... 111 4.2. The rise of the left and the differentiation of women's interests (1960s and 1970s) ................................... 119 4.3. International connections and the UN International Women's Year (1950s–1975) .................................... 130 4.4. The emergence of women's studies in Turkey (1975–1982) ........................................................................ 138 4.5. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................