Being Seen Mary Lou O’Neil To cite this version: Mary Lou O’Neil. Being Seen. European Journal of Women’s Studies, SAGE Publications (UK and US), 2008, 15 (2), pp.101-115. 10.1177/1350506807088069. hal-00571316 HAL Id: hal-00571316 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00571316 Submitted on 1 Mar 2011 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Open Forum Being Seen Headscarves and the Contestation of Public Space in Turkey Mary Lou O’Neil KADIR HAS UNIVERSITY Despite appearances that the issue of the Islamic headscarf in Turkey is a relatively recent one, it has been a contentious issue since the founding of the Republic if not even before. As Turkey sought to establish itself as a modern, western-looking republic in the early part of the 20th century, it used Islam and one of its most potent symbols, the headscarf for women, to signify what it no longer was. The headscarf came to be seen as a sign of backwardness and the oppressive nature of Islam and Ottoman society towards women (Delaney, 1994: 159; Secor, 2002: 5). As such, women were exhorted to uncover and take up their new and rightful place in the pub- lic sphere. As Yeg˘enog˘lu explains: ‘the unveiling of women became a con- venient instrument for signifying many issues at once, i.e. the construction of modern Turkish identity as opposed to backward Ottoman identity, the civilization and modernization of Turkey and the limitation of Islam to matters of belief and worship’ (Yeg˘enog˘lu, 1998: 132). This new Republican woman, educated, socially active, a trained wife and mother and yet fem- inine in her western dress, would demonstrate Turkey’s social progress. With the resurgence of Islam in Turkey in the last 20 years, women’s issues and the symbol of the headscarf have once again returned to the forefront of public discussion. The revival of Islam also challenges the historic construction of moder- nity in Turkey. Modernity in Turkey has often been equated with west- ernization as the Kemalist elite viewed ‘the top down imposition and the European Journal of Women’s Studies Copyright © 2008 SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore), 1350-5068 Vol. 15(2): 101–115; http://ejw.sagepub.com DOI: 10.1177/1350506807088069 102 European Journal of Women’s Studies 15(2) possible dissemination of Western secular reason and scientific rational- ity’ as necessary for the establishment of a modern state (Keyman, 2007: 220). Secularism was also viewed as key and is a central component of the concept of Turkish modernity (Keyman, 2007: 217). However, in Turkey, secularism does not merely consist of a separation of religion from public affairs but centres on the control by the state of virtually all religious activ- ity. This type of secularism also seeks to remove all signs of religion from public and private life in an attempt to render religion unimportant in the lives of citizens. Since the 1980s, globalization, economic liberalization, the passage of European Union harmonization legislation and the return to prominence of Islam have transformed Turkey in innumerable ways. Perhaps none more jarring than the changes brought about by the renascence of Islam. Islam now poses a serious challenge to the long-standing Turkish con- ception of modernity based on a state-centred strict form of secularism. In fact, Keyman asserts that it is ‘one of the defining and constitutive ele- ments of the changing nature and formation of Turkish modernity since the 1980s’ (Keyman, 2007: 223). Turkey is, once again, remaking itself and we can see ‘the emergence of alternative modernities’ comprised of dif- ferent agents and ‘identity claims’ (Keyman and Koyuncu, 2005: 109). The young women in this study represent an aspect of the questioning of and attempts to redefine modernity that are currently taking place in Turkey. Much has been written about the headscarf in recent years both inside and outside Turkey (Ahmed, 1992; El Guindi, 2003; Gemalmaz, 2005; Özdalga, 1998; Saktanber, 2002; Secor, 2002; Yeg˘enog˘lu, 1998). What has become clear is that wearing the headscarf in public places is an enor- mously important and polarizing debate within Turkey and much of the rest of the world. In Turkey at least, it seems there exists little room for dialogue, one is either for the wearing of the headscarf or against it. Particularly contentious is the issue of public space and the presence of covered women in the public sphere. It seems that as long as one is will- ing to keep one’s religion to oneself then one is welcome to it, headscarf and all. However, if one is insistent on being seen, then the secular estab- lishment and its protagonists will vigorously defend what they see as their space. I employ the terms public space and the public sphere roughly inter- changeably to convey the layered sense of meaning present in both. First, public space consists quite literally of places such as schools, par- liament, courts, etc. – spaces defined as public under Turkish law and therefore covered by the ban on the headscarf. These actual places also constitute part of the public sphere which is a space where social rela- tions are produced and limits are demarcated as to who can belong and what is permissible (Göle, 2002: 185–6). The public sphere is contained O’Neil: Open Forum 103 within the broader social imaginary that Taylor describes as ‘the ways in which people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expecta- tions that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations’ (Taylor, 2002: 106). Importantly, the social imaginary is also the shared set of understandings that allow for common customs and a ‘shared sense of legitimacy’ (Taylor, 2002: 106). In Turkey, the current social imaginary defines the public sphere as one that should be devoid of religious symbols, particularly those asso- ciated with Islam. For defenders of secularism, few public spaces are considered more sacred than schools. Schools are viewed as the frontline in a battle for the hearts and minds of future citizens. Indeed, schools play an enormous part in the production and reproduction of the existing social imaginary, an imaginary that many wish to maintain as strictly secular. Therefore, special reverence is paid to secularism in the schools, at the same time that schools are viewed as an important bulwark against encroaching religiosity. Currently, there exists a ban on the wearing of the headscarf in pub- lic buildings, e.g. schools, courts, parliament. With the institution of the ban in 1925, schools, universities in particular, have become a serious site of contention. On the one hand, are those who defend the ban and seek to keep schools free from those who wear the headscarf. On the other hand, are young women who wear the headscarf and remain on the outside trying to get in. Somewhere in the middle are the young women who remove their headscarves in order to attend university. Little has been written about these young women, their decision to remove their headscarves and their subsequent experiences at the uni- versity. This article uses material gathered from interviews with six such women in order to better understand their position and to open a space for dialogue. PROCEDURE This article stems from conversations I had with six young women who have chosen to remove their headscarves in order to attend classes at the university. All six women attend private universities in Istanbul and are studying in various departments. This is not a representative sample; nor have I tried to construct any kind of typical headscarved university stu- dent. Louise Spence, in a different context, has described such interviews as ‘not evidence [but] opportunities for discursive analysis and interpre- tation’ (Spence, 2005: 52). I perceived our discussions as an ‘intersubjec- tive dialogue’ of which we were all a part, thus refusing any split between 104 European Journal of Women’s Studies 15(2) subject and object (Spence, 2005). My intention here is not to provide an explanation but a reading. Nor is my intention to take sides or try to determine who is right or wrong. Rather this article is an attempt to root out the layers of meaning present in this debate and to convey what these young women have to say about their experiences. It is important to acknowledge the ways in which we researchers are also a part of the process of producing a possible reading. The questions asked often struc- ture the answers, while the power and accessibility of the researcher can also deeply affect the outcomes provided. In my case in particular, there were a number of factors to potentially influence our discussions. First and foremost I am not a Turk, nor a Muslim, although I am a long- time resident of Turkey, a Turkish citizen and married to a Turk. I am a university lecturer, which is a position of power especially given that all of the young women were students at the time the discussions took place. Moreover, the students also made the power differential clear in that they addressed me by the title Hocam (teacher), and always with the formal ‘you’ in Turkish.