Contemporary women's movement in Turkey: production of different knowledges

Abstract

This thesis attempts to understand how experiences of women from diverse backgrounds and politicization processes shape the articulations of their positions on gender issues and constitute differences and similarities with other positions in the context of women‟s movement. For this aim, women activists in Turkey have been asked their decisions about the issues of family, sexual violence and headscarf that have been mainly problematized and politicized by different women movements all across the world. In order to get the opinions of the interviewees on family they were asked about the Prime Minister Erdoğan‟s call to give birth at least three children to Turkish women in a meeting that is arranged to celebrate World Women‟s Day. Secondly in order to obtain the viewpoints of women with regards to sexual violence the sexual harassment of a girl by a publicly known Islamist journalist Hüseyin Üzmez and the rape cases attempted against children and women by a state opera artist Şahin Öğüt were opened to discussion. Lastly as a deep seated problem having been instrumentalized by various political forces in Turkey quite a long time headscarf issue was discussed over the proclamation published by AK-DER, known as an Islamist woman organization, under the title “February 28 Should Not Last 1000 Years” by making a call for the removal of headscarf bans. Concerning these issue areas situated at the intersection of diverse political struggles specific experiences and knowledges of women coming from Islamist, Kurdish, Kemalist and feminist backgrounds are found out influential in articulating their positions as a result of the interviews. This supports the argument that there is not a separate, abstract and clearly demarcated identity as „woman‟ but it is spontaneously experienced along with other social attributes such as religion, ethnicity and ideology by women. Rejection of the possibility of such an isolated woman identity encouraged the author to criticize the exclusionary stance assumed by some feminists from time to time on the grounds of their own constructions of womanhood and feminism. Giving an idea about how differences are experienced within the women‟s movement in Turkey, the thesis finalizes its argument by making a call to embrace different production of knowledges by women and view them legitimate which would enhance the possibilities to do politics together between women in the context of women‟s movement.