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I was waiting for the results of the elections (3rd Nov.2002) to write my second report about Turkey. As you may have already heard, the Turkish voters, angry over the country's slide into its worst economic crisis in decades, gave an early lead to a party with Islamic roots in the elections called AKP. I -being an observer from outside of the country this time- am concerned about its effects on the women's rights. Inspired by this popular subject, religion and women, I would like to mention a seminar organized by Directorate for Religious Affairs in May 2002.
At the end of this seminar, Turkish authorities have decided that women will be allowed to participate more actively in the country's public religious life, arguing they should be granted responsibilities equal to those of men before Islam. The move appears to be an attempt on the part of religious authorities in the predominantly Muslim but strictly secular country to catch up with transformations that have been stirring in society for many years. My guess is that this move could also serve as a test for Turkey's social cohesiveness.
The decision was made at a four-day seminar in May in Istanbul attended by religious clerics and university scholars. The Directorate for Religious Affairs, the state-controlled body that monitors Muslim communities in this secular country, made it public on 19 May. I would like to introduce Prof. Nilufer Gole who is a Turkish scholar who teaches sociology at the Paris-based School for Higher Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS). She is the author of many books on women and religion in Middle Eastern societies, including The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling.
Gole says that, if the decision to open mosque doors to women may be seen as revolutionary, it also meets a social demand: "This reform follows practices that have already been taking place and that have sometimes stirred public outcry, such as women reading prayers at funerals. Such practices are seen as illicit. They are banned under Islam, rather under Islamic rites. [This reform movement] began with women demanding the right to read funeral prayers on the front row, alongside men. This public debate on how to reform Islam has been going on for two or three years now."
Turkey has been a secular state since the proclamation of the republic in October 1923 and the subsequent abolition of the caliphate by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Fearing a backlash by supporters of the Shariah, or Islamic law, Ataturk chose to give secularism a strong anticlerical character, banning religion from public life. His objective was not to abolish religion but rather to free his fellow countrymen from what he considered Islam's sometimes oppressive and backward-looking influence.
Gole believes the way Islamic circles respond to the proposed religious liberalization will show whether the convergence she anticipates between the different types of Turkish women could help consolidate society. Otherwise, she argues, the consequences might be dramatic for the country: "Today we witness a tendency, among secular women, to respond to the rise of political Islam by showing that they can go to mosques and behave in a 'secular' way. To some extent, the religious space is having its sacred character taken away. On the other hand, Islamic women have started appropriating secular spaces such as parliament or universities, also sparking public outcry. So we will see whether the religious reform will bring those two milieus closer or whether, on the contrary, it will create a gap between them and spark a new social conflict."
In the late 1920s, Ataturk announced the abolition of veils and head scarves as he was proceeding with plans to emancipate Turkish women from the semi-slavery he argued they had been kept under by centuries of Ottoman rule. Yet no legal action was taken to enforce women's dress codes until the early 1980s when, to counter the rise of political Islam, the government imposed a ban on head scarves in universities and other public institutions.
Prof. Nilufer Gole says she is anxious to see how Islamic women will react to the liberalization of the religious code. After the elections the country went through on 3rd of November, the arguments seem to be more focused around religion and secularity issues again. Inevitably, the women are an integral part of it since they always stand for the representatives of the nation/religion in different forms throughout the history. (not only in Turkey but in general) I hope my next review will present some more concrete and positive results about this new discourse and women's rights in Turkey.
-compiled by Ozlem Ezer