Abstract
THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT FROM THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE TO THE TURKISH REPUBLIC: SOCIETAL, PHILOSOPHICAL AND POLITICAL DIMENSIONS
As a concept and goal, modernisation in Turkey is usually considered the purview of the early years of the Turkish Republic. However, the process of modernisation dates back to the Westernisation movement in the Ottoman Empire. Though the establishment of the Republic is a fundamental turning point, it also entailed continuity in certain areas. The period of reforms that began with the Tanzimat matured during the Second Constitutional Era, and the latter was the time when the philosophies created by prominent thinkers of the early Republic began to take shape. This was also the point when women began to be regarded as independent subjects in society, a key indication of modernisation. Girls were granted access to education during the Tanzimat, and the Dar’ül-Muallimat school, which trained female teachers to work at girls’ schools, opened in 1870, thus giving women a place in the workforce. Therefore it could be said that during the latter years of the Ottoman Empire, women began to be seen as subjects rather than passive objects, and this transformation was in no small part thanks to the views of female thinkers who realised the potential of their own minds and organised accordingly. Additionally, male intellectuals of the modernisation period whose views questioned the role of women in public life and their works exploring those themes also contributed significantly to improving women’s rights. The Republic era is a period when women’s rights began to be enshrined in law and women started to enjoy a better social standing, however, the highly controlling political environment designed by the political class in order to establish a new political structure also determined the approach to women and women’s rights. Often called “state-sanctioned feminism,” this was a contradictory aspect of modernism and the women’s rights movement. This study explores the modernisation process in the Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish Republic through the lens of women’s rights while highlighting the contradictory nature of some of these approaches.
Keywords
Ottoman Empire, Turkish Republic, Modernisation, Women.
