Kasaba R. The Cambridge History of Turkey: Volume 4, Turkey in the Modern World

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ahmet y

ukleyen

(1888–1959), a religious scholar in the late Ottoman period. The S

uleymanlı are

one of the largest Islamic communitiesin Turkey, with 4 million followers.

The

community has a hierarchical and highly centralised social organisation that

ensures internal discipline. Tunahan’s followers believe him to be the thirty-

third and last piece of the Golden Chain (Altın Silsile), the spiritual chain of suﬁ

masters in the Naks¸ibendi order. When the government changed the alpha-

bet from Arabic to Latin in the early Republican period, Tunahan launched a

mission of teaching Qur’anic recitation in Arabic. He recruited new disciples

and trained them as preachers to spread Sunni orthodoxy in opposition to

the severe secularisation project of the early Republic. He also established an

underground religious education system that remained uncontrolled by the

Directorate of Religious Affairs.

The S

uleymanlı retain elements of suﬁ tradition such as collective zikir

and ritual initiation, but their main impact on society is through the Qur’an

courses that are their central activity. The graduates of S

uleymanlı religious

seminaries work both for the Directorate of Religious Affairs as well as in

independent (and thus unsanctioned) community Qur’anic seminaries. The

state has pursued an ambivalent approach to the S

uleymanlı, persecuting and

favouring them at different times. Tunahan was jailed three times but released

without any charge. With the introduction of multi-party politics in 1949,

the S

uleymanlı institutionalised as the Association of Qur’anic Seminaries,

which the state recognised. The S

uleymanlı in turn preached a pro-state and

nationalist position in the 1950s and 1960s. They lost some of their Qur’anic

seminaries to the Directorate of Religious Affairs after the 1971 coup, when

all private Qur’anic seminaries were nationalised. The state supported the

uleymanlı after the 1980 coup because the order served the ofﬁcial policy

of promoting a ‘Turkish–Islamic synthesis’ to counter the leftist movement.

By 1966, the number of S

uleymanlı Qur’anic seminaries had reached 3,000.

Tunahan did not appoint a spiritual leader to take his place after his death, so in

1971 his son-in-law Kemal Kac¸ar took over leadership of the organisation. After

Kac¸ar’s death in 2002, Tunahan’s grandson Ahmet Arif Denizolgun became

the leader, after some rivalry with his brother.

The Nur (or Nurcu) Movement is the leading Islamic movement in Turkey,

comprising about a dozen communities with followers estimated to number

between 2 and 6 million. Nurcu networks in politics, media and education

3 Hakan M. Yavuz, Islamic Political Identity in Turkey (New York: Oxford University Press,

2003), p. 145.

4 Mustafa Aydın, ‘S

uleymancılık’, in Modern Turkiye’de Siyasi D

us¸

unce:

Islamcılık, vol. VI

(Istanbul:

Iletis¸im Yayınları, 2004).

384

Suﬁsm and Islamic groups in contemporary Turkey

empower the community in public life. The Nur movement is based on Said

Nursi’s (1876–1960) Qur’anic exegesis called Risale-i Nur (Epistles of Light).

Nursi was never a member of a suﬁ order, although he was inﬂuenced by the

Naks¸ibendi order. He focused on strengthening faith through reasoning and

contemplation to ﬁght materialism and positivism. His point of philosophical

originality was the argument that nature is the manifestation of the various

names of God. Thus, there can be no contradiction between religion and

science because the former is based on Qur’an, the Word of God, and the

latter is the study of nature, God’s creation. He argued that even the smallest

particle is a perfect design, which makes it a sign and proof of the masterwork

of God. Nursi founded the Nur community, in which the central form of

religious activity is reading and reproducing the ideas in Risale-i Nur.

After Nursi’s death in 1960, his followers divided into subgroups and have

developed various forms of Islamic activism in politics, publishing, education

and media. Some Nur communities focus only on publishing or reading Risale-

i Nur. Others, such as those organised around Yeni Asya newspaper, have

supported centre-right parties such as the Democratic Party and True Path

Party.

After the 1980s, the followers of the charismatic preacher Fethullah G

ulen

(b. 1938) became the leading group among Nur communities. The G

ulen Com-

munity focuses on educational activism by founding summer camps, student

dorms, high schools and universities. There are more than 500 high schools,

with more than 100,000 students in 91 countries around the world, associ-

ated with the G

ulen Community.

One-ﬁfth of these schools are in the Newly

Independent States of Central Asia. This educational institutionalisation is

accompanied by a growing media network, which includes STV, a satellite

broadcasting television station; Zaman, a daily newspaper; and weekly and

monthly publications. In the 1990s, G

ulen began to emphasise tolerance and

interreligious dialogue, meeting with leaders of Christian and Jewish commu-

nities, including Pope John Paul II in the Vatican in 1998. Although he preaches

a moderate, patriotic and liberal Islamic message, the Turkish state considers

his growing national and international inﬂuence a threat to secularism, and

has pursued legal charges against him. He lives in de facto political asylum

in the United States, where he originally travelled due to health problems in

1999.

Milli G

us¸ (National Vision) forms the ideological basis for the political

Islamist movement founded by Necmettin Erbakan, who pursued an Islamist

5 Hakan Y

uksel, ‘G

ulen’in e

gitim

ımparatorlu

gu’, Yeni Akt

uel 13 (2005).

385

ahmet y

ukleyen

agenda through a number of political parties, beginning with the National

Order Party in 1970 and the National Salvation Party (NSP) in 1972. The NSP

and subsequent Islamist parties led by Erbakan (Welfare Party and Virtue

Party) were able to get the support of the majority of Islamic circles including

the

Iskenderpas¸a branch of the Naks¸ibendi order and politically active Nur

communities, and continued the Milli G

us¸ political Islamist line. A split

developed within the Milli G

us¸ movement between ﬁrst-generation leaders

loyal toErbakan, whomoved to the newly founded Felicity Party,and a younger

generation, with leaders such as Recep Tayyip Erdo

gan and Abdullah G

ul,

who founded the Justice and Development Party (JDP). The JDP claims to

have abandoned the mission of Milli G

us¸ and has become a conservative

democratic party.

Alevis comprise the largest non-Sunni sect in Turkey and are estimated to

make up around 15 per cent of the Turkish population. They follow a syn-

cretistic belief combining elements of Shiite Islam, Bektas¸i suﬁsm and Turk-

ish shamanism. They are known for religious ceremonies that take place in

meeting houses (cemevi), accompanied by music, called semah. They empha-

sise gender equality in their rituals as well as their beliefs. Alevi beliefs vary

because they are transmitted orally through lineages of holy men (dede). Alevis

recognise only Ali, the son-in-law of Prophet Muhammad, as the legitimate

caliph. They do not adhere to orthodox Islamic practices such as prayer, fasting

and pilgrimage. Alevis accept the humanistic and mystical message of the suﬁ

master Hacı Bektas¸ Veli, who lived in thirteenth-century Anatolia, as the basis

of their religious message. Sunni Ottoman rulers suppressed Alevi revolts, and

persecuted them in the sixteenth century during the power struggle between

the Sunni Ottoman Empire and the Shiite Safavids of Persia. In the 1920s, the

Alevis supported the establishment of a secular Turkish Republic in order to

acquire religious freedom. In the 1960s and 1970s, many Alevis became active

in left-wing politics. The 1980s saw a revival of Alevi identity, but with a variety

of deﬁnitions. Some Alevis consider their faith to be a Turkish branch of Shiite

Islam; others see it as a form of folk Islam, or a suﬁ order. The Bektas¸i order

and Alevi community are closely related, in terms of both beliefs and practices.

However, one is initiated into a Bektas¸i order, while being an Alevi is a status

acquired by birth. In contemporary Turkey, Alevi communities are generally

regarded as parts of an integrated Alevi–Bektas¸i culture.

Despite the retreat of suﬁ tradition to the private sphere with the estab-

lishment of Republican Turkey and its secularisation policies, suﬁ orders and

Islamic communities have made a strong comeback in Turkish civil life. The

state both favours and persecutes these orders and communities, depending

386

Suﬁsm and Islamic groups in contemporary Turkey

on the political circumstances at hand. The Directorate of Religious Affairs

is designed to counterbalance their inﬂuence in the public arena. However,

the strongest ally of secular state is the Alevi community, which is not repre-

sented by the Directorate, but debates to include them continue. In this way,

Republican Turkey maintains and cautiously controls the Ottoman heritage

of religious diversity.

387

Contestation and collaboration: women’s

struggles for empowerment in Turkey

yes¸

im arat

Women’s struggles for empowerment in Turkey have been intimately linked

to the state-initiated modernisation process. In their struggle to expand their

opportunities, women have contested and collaborated with one another

as well as the modernising state. Women’s strategies for ameliorating their

predicament evolved in their conﬂictual relationships both with the state and

among themselves. Confrontation alternated with cooperation. Women suc-

ceeded in changing laws and perceptions through this dynamic process of

conﬂict and collaboration in a context of globalisation. During this process,

they helped transform the relationship of the legendary ‘strong Turkish state’

to civil society, and pushed the state to cooperate with its constituents.

In this chapter I shall trace the evolution of women’s struggles for empow-

erment with a focus on their relationship to the state. I shall ﬁrst present an

overview of the historical development of the women’s movement in Turkey

since the Young Turk era, and then will highlight prominent issues, groups and

organisations through which women mobilised in the 1980s. My focus will be

on the emergence of an organised and oppositional feminist movement since

the 1980s and will include the mobilisation of Islamist and Kurdish women’s

groups in recent decades. The discussion will aim to examine how women’s

demands coincided or conﬂicted with and ultimately precipitated the Turkish

state’s claim to modernity. If modernity requires respect for human rights and

democratisation, women have pressured the state to ensure that these values

are upheld, and this chapter hopes to throw light on this process.

Precursors of the Republic

Women’s opposition to the state as active political subjects in pursuit of their

rights goes back to pre-Republican times. Particularly during the last decade of

I would like to thank the Women’s Library and Information Centre in Istanbul for allowing

me to use photographs from their archives.

388

Women’s struggles for empowerment in Turkey

the Ottoman Empire, female advocates, including women from various ethnic

groups and religions, played a visible role in public life, demanding new rights

and exercising those that they had. They expanded the public space that had

opened during the Young Turk era and promoted modernist values, including

respect for the individual, that the Republic of Turkey later endorsed.

The issues women articulated in this period played a role in shaping the

Republic and continue to resonate in contemporary times. The recovery of

this past in new detail and the emphasis of its signiﬁcance from a feminist per-

spective were important steps in the construction of contemporary feminist

consciousness. Feminists of the 1980s reworked their relationship to the state as

political subjects, while exploring the experiences of Muslim women who had

initiated a similar challenge in a prior era. The process continues as contem-

porary researchers explore the histories of feminists from different religious

nationalities. Armenian feminists of the early twentieth century recentlybegan

receiving due attention. The ﬁrst generation of feminists protested through

journals and cultivated their solidarity through associations, and feminists of

later generations followed suit. Demet (Istanbul, 1908), Mehasin (Istanbul, 1908–

9), Kadın (Salonica, 1908–9), Kadın (Istanbul, 1911–12), Kadınlık (Istanbul, 1913)

and Kadınlar D

unyası (Istanbul, 1913–21 with an interval during the 1914–18

war years) were among the prominent publications that channelled Muslim

women’s issues and demands in the early twentieth century. Kadınlar D

unyası

was the publication of a feminist association, Osmanlı M

udafaa-i Hukuk-ı Nis-

van (Ottoman Association for the Protection of the Rights of Women) and the

most striking among these women’s journals, both because of its longevity

and its feminist content.

Through their journals and publications, Muslim women demanded legal

reforms that would alleviate the prevailing institutions of Islamic marriage,

opportunities for education and economic power. They criticised the status of

women in their society, much as the feminists of later generations would do.

Feminism was a concept they grappled with. Writing in Kadınlar D

unyası in

1921, Nimet Cemil welcomed the word ‘feminism’. She argued:

There are many important things in every country even though their exact

names or the translations do not exist in the national language (like telegraph

or automobile or ship). Therefore we do not need terms like ‘nisailik’ or

‘nisaiyyun’ [both refering to womanhood in Ottoman]. We prefer to use the

word feminism. Let a new word get into our vocabulary, what harm would it

bring. The existence and necessity of feminism is undeniable.

1 Cited in Kadın Eserleri K

uphanesi ve Bilgi Merkezi Vakfı 2000 Ajandası (Istanbul: n. p., 2000)

p. 36, from Kadınlar D

unyası, 19 February (1921).

389

yes¸

im arat

These women were feminists to the extent that they believed in the need to

expand opportunities for women, and worked to propagate this consciousness.

Women’s associations helped cultivate these demands, just as they do today.

Some were founded to deliver social services, others organised to help women

seek employment in the public realm, others aimed to educate women, still

others were afﬁliated with the political parties of the time. Like feminists of

later generations, the women of M

udafaa-i Hukuk-ı Nisvan had connections to

feminists abroad, who supported the organisation by contributing articles to

Kadınlar D

unyasıand writing about Ottoman women in their ownpublications.

The novelist Halide Edip Adıvar founded a women’s organisation named

Teali-i Nisvan (Advancement of Women), which aimed to improve women’s

status by providing them access to lectures, conferences and concerts, and by

teaching them English. The women’s rights advocate Nezihe Muhittin was

one of the founders of Esirgeme Derne

gi (Association for Protection), which

primarily aimed to help poor women and orphaned girls by teaching them

basic skills in sewing and embroidery. The Osmanlı M

udafaa-i Hukuk-ı Nisvan

mentioned above was founded in 1913 and was notable both in its aims and

activities because of its feminism and its feminist publication Kadınlar D

unyası.

udafaa-i Hukuk-ı Nisvan primarily aimed to integrate women into social,

economic and public life. The programme of the organisation was intended

to improve conditions of marriage for women, modernise women’s dress,

encourage women’s employment outside the home and promote the educa-

tion of women.

In line with the programme, some of the members of the

organisation opened workplaces to employ women, for example as dressmak-

ers. Another member opened a school for women. The organisation lobbied

for women’s employment in public institutions and succeeded in getting two

women hired by the Istanbul telephone company, where one worked as a

company inspector.

In an attempt to modernise the country, in 1917 the Young Turks passed a

progressive Family Code that introduced provisions to improve the conditions

of the marriage contract for women. This law was a secularising initiative and

curbed the extent of religious jurisdiction over women’s lives. It allowed the

state to oversee marriage and divorce. Even though the Ottoman state was

ultimately based on religion, it had a secular authority as well, which would

was legally discouraged; a woman could make it a condition of her marriage

contract that her husband could not take other wives.

2 Serpil C¸akır,Osmanlı kadın hareketi (Istanbul: Metis Yayınları, 1994), p. 59.

390

Women’s struggles for empowerment in Turkey

During the War of Independence (1919–23), Turkish women collaborated

with the nascent nationalist cadres. When Izmir was occupied by the Greeks

in May 1919, prominent women of the day, such as Halide Edip Adıvar and

unevver Saime, addressed the crowds in Istanbul that gathered in mass

protests against the occupation. In these public gatherings, women began

share the spotlight with men. They delivered fervent speeches and spoke in the

name of women, inspiring feelings of nationalism. With these public speeches,

they carved a new role for themselves as comrades in arms to the men, and

made themselves men’s equals in rejecting foreign occupation. They proved

their ability to shape public opinion, showing that neither their oratorical skill

nor their determination to defend the country was any less formidable than

that of their male counterparts. It was in this context that the novelist Halide

Edip Adıvar actively took part in the War of Independence on the side of the

nationalists in deﬁance of the Ottoman state, attaining the rank of corporal,

and later sergeant.

Yet women’s collaboration did not mean a lack of critical attention to the

problem of patriarchal leadership. Halide Edip was not only the sole woman

in the upper circle of the leaders of the War of Independence, but also a rare

public ﬁgure willing to oppose Mustafa Kemal after the war, and criticise him

via her memoirs. In the volume of her memoir named The Turkish Ordeal,

which covers her experiences in the War of Independence, she wrote her

own story of the war as a testimony in opposition to the story that Mustafa

Kemal propagated as ofﬁcial history. She had the temerity to portray him as an

authoritarian ﬁgure with narcissistic tendencies.

Though this view was not

shared by most women of her generation, Halide Edip’s memoirs served as a

tribute to women’s agency and resistance to subjection. She was not a typical

woman of her day, but instead a role model willing to oppose the state, as a

dissident engaged in the debate about how her country should be ruled.

The Republican reforms (1923–80)

With the declaration of the new Republic in 1923, a new phase of women’s

struggles began. The state undertook reforms that promoted its modernising

goals and at the same time radically extended women’s opportunities. The

reforms responded to many of the demands women had made during the

Young Turk era, and initiated a period of women’s active collaboration with

the state. Kemal and the Republican founding fathers envisioned a secular,

3 Halide Edip Adıvar, The Turkish Ordeal (New York: The Century Co., 1928), pp. 297–8.

391

yes¸

im arat

and eventually a democratic, Turkish nation-state. In 1926, they dismantled

the Islamic legal code and introduced a civil code that was adapted from the

Swiss civil code. The introduction of a secular code organising family life in a

predominantly Muslim country was revolutionary. Despite some patriarchal

biases, the new code recognised equal rights in marriage, divorce and inheri-

tance, which meant that it abolished polygamy, unilateral divorce and unequal

inheritance rights for women.

When the civil code was accepted in the parliament, Justice Minister Mah-

mut Esat explained in detail the state’s reasons for seeking it. His argument was

radical and daring: ‘Laws that derive their principles from religions...consti-

tute one of the major factors and reasons impeding progress...Asamatter of

fact, the stipulations of the religious Ottoman code are doubtlessly irreconcil-

able with contemporary civilization. But it is also obvious that the Ottoman

code and similar other religious regulations are not reconcilable with Turkish

national life.’

In the Muslim context of the day, the leaders of the Turkish

Republic aspired to attain the heights of ‘contemporary civilisation’, namely

Western-style modernity. They believed that religion would make this goal

unrealisable, and so they restricted its domain.

In this milieu, the Turkish nationalism espoused by the state was not nec-

essarily harmonious with the dictates of a universal religion. This tension was

another reason to discard religious law. The nationalist ideologue of Repub-

lican Turkey, Ziya G

okalp, constructed history with a most women-friendly

viewof the pre-Islamic Turks of Central Asia. He helped create a myth claiming

that ancient Turkic society had been feminist by tradition. Turkish women, he

wrote, had been considered equal to husbands, and had engaged in all aspects

of public life along with men. They had ruled fortresses, carried on business

transactions, and rode horses on their own. It followed that to be truly national

or Turkish modern Turks had to grant equal rights to women. If this meant

restricting Islam’s arena, then secular law would replace Islamic law. Secular-

ism and nationalism necessitated this move. The state’s project of ‘reaching the

level of contemporary civilisation’ happily coincided with women’s demands

for gender equality.

In 1930, the Kemalist leaders granted women the right to partake in munic-

ipal elections. In 1934, they gained the right to elect and be elected to the

national assembly. The Republican elite had nationalist reasons for grant-

ing suffrage. The prime minister,

Ismet

u, introduced the amendment

4 Quoted in Andrew Davison, Secularism and Revivalism in Turkey (New Haven: Yale Uni-

versity Press, 1998), pp. 197–9.

392

Women’s struggles for empowerment in Turkey

that would recognise suffrage with the following words: ‘Whenever Turkish

woman could assume her rightful place and esteem in history, show her inﬂu-

ence on the future of the nation, work hand in hand with men in complicated

and hard national tasks, only then could the great Turkish nation, with its

strength and civilization [be] spread to the world.’

He elaborated that as men

who had closely witnessed all the needs of the nation, Turkey’s leaders believed

they had proﬁted from Turkish women’s engagement in national affairs and

would continue to do so. He argued that women’s suffrage would empower

the nation and that it was in line with Turkish tradition. Once again nation-

alist considerations overlapped with women’s needs. The prioritisation of the

nation-state’s communal needs deﬁned women’s predicament in public life,

and hampered them from seeking rights in their own name.

The Kemalist leaders granted rights to women in a context where the

institutionalisation of a secular nation-state was predicated upon a concept of

homogeneous national community. This conception was accepted as a dictate

of survival. The state viewed demands for group rights – whether from Kurds

or Greeks or women – as a threat to the unity of the Republic, and sought to

pre-empt them in a nationalist melting pot. The opinion maker M

umtaz Faik

greeted female suffrage with a response emblematic of the unitary nationalist

vision prevailing at the time:

In Turkey, there is no place for feminist or anti-feminist ideas that only dif-

ferentiate men and women physically without taking into consideration dif-

ferences in intelligence, discretion, and capabilities any more. Turkey has not

acted with these ideas (i.e. feminist) when it accepted this law (suffrage). We

do not recognize a distinction of feminism. We want to have the whole nation

beneﬁt from and we will beneﬁt from the capabilities, abilities, intelligence

and discretion of all citizens whether they be women or men. In Turkey, the

18 million-strong Turkish nation is moving with only one thought and that is

Turkishness.

Thus suffrage was granted to serve the Turkish nation-state, not the interests

of women. When those interests ceased to overlap, those of the nation-state

would prevail.

The extension of suffrage to women was also instrumental in the construc-

tion of Mustafa Kemal’s leadership cult. When the International Women’s

Association decided to have its Twelfth International Women’s Congress in

5 Zabıt Ceridesi (Parliamentary Records), term IV, December 1934,p.82.

6 Quoted in Ays¸en Doyran, ‘Kadınlar milletvekili sec¸ilirken’, Toplumsal Tarih (March 1997),

p. 31.

393