Turkish Women Divided by Politics

RFJP339555

Techset Composition Ltd, Salisbury, U.K.

9/9/2008

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Turkish Women Divided by Politics 10

SECULARIST ACTIVISM VERSUS PIOUS NON-RESISTANCE

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BERNA TURAM Hampshire College, USA

Abstract ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In the early phase of its rule in Turkey (2002–4), the pro-Islamic government of the AKP (Justice and Development party) and various branches of the state collaborated in a series of political and economic reforms. The democratization process has gradually moderated and integrated Islamic actors into the secular Turkish Republic. However, it has also had polarizing effects on social groups. Among many, the polarization of two groups of women, ‘pious’ and ‘secularist’, deserves particular attention. Instead of bringing Turkish women together, gender reforms, particularly the issue of the headscarf ban in universities, have divided women and created disarray and confrontation in society. This article reveals and compares the two dramatically different patterns of political engagement by pious and secularist women in leadership positions in contemporary Turkey. On the one hand, it explains the apprehension of secularist women about the increasing visibility in public spaces of pious women who veil. On the other hand, it examines how pious women, who see the tumult their religious observance in the public space is creating, are increasingly turning to a non-confrontational mode of non-response. What is the prognosis for the future of a democratic Turkey? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keywords Turkey, secularism, Islamic politics, Kemalist women, pious women, headscarf, political polarization, activism, collective versus individual action, democracy

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INTRODUCTION

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Programs of political reform aimed at the consolidation of democracy in state institutions are often associated with broader and deeper levels of democratization in everyday life and in the attitudes of ordinary citizens (see, especially, Linz and Stepan 1996). According to Linz and Stepan, the consolidation of

International Feminist Journal of Politics, 10:4 December 2008, 475– 494 ISSN 1461-6742 print/ISSN 1468-4470 online # 2008 Taylor & Francis http:==www.informaworld.com DOI: 10.1080/14616740802393882

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liberal democracy entails that ‘democracy becomes the only game in town’ (1996: 5). Yet, what we observe in Turkey since the spring of 2007 has been quite the opposite. In the early years of its rule (2002 – 4), the pro-Islamic government of the AKP (Justice and Development party) undertook a series of political and economic reforms. These reforms, which at the time of writing have slowed down, initially helped to integrate Islamic actors into the secular Turkish Republic. However, they have also polarized social groups. Among many, the polarization of two groups of women, ‘pious’ and ‘secularist’, deserves particular attention. Gender reforms, particularly the AKP’s lifting of the ban in universities on the headscarves worn by pious women and its reinstatement by the high court, not only divided these women but also created disarray and confrontation in society at large. This article reveals and compares the development of the two dramatically different patterns of political engagement by pious and secularist women in leadership positions. First, I illustrate the increasingly confrontational activism of radical secularists, whose collective action against political Islam mainly undermines pious women in headscarves rather than Islamic politics per se. In sharp contrast, I analyze the development of individualized forms of the ‘politics of non-defiance’ and the avoidance of conflict by pious women. I underline ‘individualized versus collective’ here, because pious women’s refusal of collective action alienates many non-pious, secularist women and complicates communication between women from different religious and political orientations. This study originated in participant observation and ethnographic interviews with pious and secularist women in both public and private, everyday sites in the spring of 2007. The research began in the politically shaky milieu right before the parliamentary and presidential elections in 2007 and continued for over a year. While this article reveals the most recent transformation and radicalization of secularist women’s agendas, it also builds upon my ten years of fieldwork on Islamic actors and their politics (Turam 2007). My previous work analyzed the development by pious women of a ‘politics of non-resistance’ since the semi-military intervention in 1997, which banned the Islamic Refah (Welfare) Party from power. In this article, I extend the analysis by narrowing my focus down to the patterns of women’s non-resistance under the AKP, which displays a radical break from the previous, more vocal form of Islamist feminism under the Refah Party.

THE SAMPLE 85

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The sample on which this article is based consists of secularist and pious women who were assigned to or who have assumed leadership positions. It includes well known secularist organizers of anti-Islamic protests, on the one hand, and female members of parliament along with wives of Ministers from the AKP government as well as the wife of the President, on the other

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hand. We must note that the AKP’s female members of parliament (MPs) differ from the wives of the male MPs as they neither wear a headscarf nor have faith-based lives. Nevertheless, the female MPs’ political attitudes have been in line with and reinforce the pious women’s politics of non-defiance, and for that reason I include them here as part of the ‘pious’ grouping. This sample gave me the chance for the in-depth analysis of women in pivotal leadership positions. However, it has limitations in terms of representativeness, because it offers just one snapshot (among many possible others) of a broader transformation regarding the radicalization of secularists and deradicalization of Islamists in Turkey (Turam 2007, 2008; O¨zyu¨rek 2006; Tugal forthcoming). Q3 Let me first clarify my use of terminology about these two groups of women. These groups are not analytical categories that were created for the sake of social research. The opposition is between self-evident groups of selfdefined female actors, referred to often as Islami (Islamic) and laikçi (laicist) in Turkey. The pious women in this study are not only religiously observant (dindar) social actors, but they also have made faith the core value of their lives, politics and worldview. Although they do not have an agenda to transform or overthrow the secular state, they prioritize faith in all spheres of life including the public realm. Accordingly, instead of confronting the secular state through Islamist feminism or political Islam, pious women often avoid conflict and display loyalty to the nation and its state. None of my respondents were part of any organized women’s resistance or collective action. Contrary to the Islamist feminists’ slogans in the Refah Party, these pious women deny the view of headscarf as a political weapon or a symbol of resistance or mobilization. Rather, they share the political behavior of male pious actors and look forward to political reform that will amend the state’s authoritarian attitudes to the pious. In the meantime, their increasing proximity to and influence in high level political decision-making locates them in strategic positions. The ages of the pious women in my sample tend to range between early twenties and late forties. This contrasts sharply with the secularist group, whose members first and foremost define themselves as laicist Kemalists, the followers of the founding father of the secular Turkish Republic, Kemal Atatu¨rk. The most vocal Kemalist female leaders are mostly in their sixties and older.1 Regardless of whether a Kemalist woman has a religious faith or not, she bases her life, politics, activism and worldview on laicism, a particularly rigid form of secularism in which religion is not only privatized but controlled by the state. Put differently, the controversy is not over whether an individual is religiously observant, but the wider politics of religion and its relation to the state. In opposition to Kemalist women, some secular feminists in Turkey are in favor of more tolerant versions of secularism, calling for a genuine separation between religion and politics and more religious freedom. These more moderate secularists do not cooperate with hardcore Kemalists in confronting pious women and/or fighting against the headscarf. In contrast, albeit on rare occasions and on a small scale, they do cooperate with pious women. One

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Berna Turam/Turkish Women Divided by Politics

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example can be seen, as pious member Neslihan Akbulut told me in June 2008, in the new women’s group ‘Birbirimize Sahip Çıkıyoruz’ (‘We Protect and Support Each Other’). Kemalist women are distinctive not only in their brand of secularism, but also in their form of feminism, which can be referred to as ‘state feminism’ (White 2003). This means that they believe in the secular state as the main safeguard of women’s rights and equality. They also believe that Turkish women owe their ‘equal’ position in society to Atatu¨rk. Other secular feminists may disagree. For example, Yesim Arat argues that the feminist daughters of Kemalist women tend to articulate their interests as separate from the state and the nation (1996: 107, 2000: 122). Unsurprisingly, Kemalist women are very uncomfortable with public manifestations of Islam, first and foremost the headscarf worn by pious women, and have been very active in civil society organizations and women’s associations, their militancy increasing in tandem with the rising popularity of political Islam. Most importantly, and distinct from other secular actors, Kemalist women remain pioneer advocates of the military’s dominant role in ‘protecting’ the secular Republic. Why have the Kemalist women become the most radical opponents of pious actors and especially the headscarf, at a time when the state and Islamic forces began to cooperate on political reform? In sharp contrast to this, why and in which ways have pious women refused to mobilize opposition against Kemalist laicist policies during the rule of the pro-Islamic AKP party? The literature is rich on the politics surrounding gender, the headscarf and Islam, and as to whether and under which conditions Islamism emancipates and empowers women (Go¨le 1996; White 2002; Arat 2005). However, despite its centrality and scope, the polarization among women caused by this politics is understudied. A good indicator of the importance of the topic is the fact that the presentation of earlier drafts of this article in academic contexts provoked similar kinds of splits and negative sentiments both from and within the audience. Before discussing the two different patterns of political engagement and leadership among Kemalist and pious women, I will briefly introduce the sociopolitical and historical context of transition politics and the challenges facing the consolidation of democracy, in the context of which the divide between these two groups of women has opened up. Then, I will introduce some of the major female protagonists on both sides. My main argument is straightforward. As the socio-economic and educational gap between these groups of women decreased in the wake of democratization over the past decade, their different patterns of political engagement and leadership have come to divide them even further.

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TURKISH WOMEN AT THE CROSSROAD OF LAICISM AND DEMOCRACY

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Turkish laicism, one of the founding principles of the Republic, placed religion under state control and relegated it from the public to the private sphere

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(Toprak 1995; Keyman 2007). In the early Turkish Republic, Atatu¨rk encouraged women to abandon their veil and replace it with Western clothing. Unlike the Shah of Iran, however, he did not officially ban the headscarf. He also introduced radical reforms in every sphere of social and political life, including the ‘insertion’ of women into the political arena. Turkish women gained the right to vote and to be elected for office in 1934, much earlier than many Western women. Significant though this was, it was largely a supplementary part of the nation-building process, rather than a genuinely feminist act by the founding fathers (Arat 1989; Tekeli 1995; Kandiyoti 1991). Importantly, these reforms benefited mainly elite women from privileged family backgrounds and with high levels of education. Turkish society has had for a long time a privileged group of women in high positions of power and status – i.e., professors, deans, doctors, lawyers and so on. Their visibility in certain professions has helped the formation of a false image of genuine gender equality in society at large. But pious women in headscarves have remained largely absent from these positions, both before and after the headscarf ban. Since the 1980s, the state has increasingly tolerated and supported the free market and civil society. This has created an environment in which Islamist groups have mushroomed, as well as Islamist and feminist movements. From the late 1990s, at each point when Islam became more visible and powerful in the public, political realm, the state repressed it as a threat to the secular order. For example, the Refah Party was banned in 1997 despite the fact that it came to power by free and fair elections. The guardianship of laicism has inflicted a heavy cost on the consolidation of a liberal democracy in Turkey. However, despite the upper hand of the military and the constitutional court in banning Islamic ruling parties and symbols, six decades of a stable, free and fair multiparty electoral system have facilitated the integration of Islamic actors into the secular institutional milieu (see, especially, Toprak 2005). Unfortunately, pious women have increasingly become the scapegoats of this contentious politics, as their headscarf has turned into the ‘political symbol’ of Islamism. One of the earliest incidents surfaced in the United Nations women’s conference in Beijing in 1995. Only four pious, headscarfwearing Turkish women participated in the conference, from the Go¨kkusagı Kadın Platformu (Rainbow Women’s Platform), an organization of Islamist women. One of these women explained to me that all but two of the secularist women in the Turkish delegation excluded them, making them feel uncomfortable and unwelcome throughout the conference. Then, in 1998, the most important development in the scapegoating of the headscarf occurred, when the state banned it from universities and public offices. In this context, many ‘covered’ (kapalı) women were expelled from their studies. Clearly, pious male students who share similar views have not encountered similar problems. The AKP came to power a few years after the ban. In its first years of rule (2002 – 4), the AKP’s success was facilitated by its agreement with several

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branches of the state, including even the military, on reform, democratization and membership of the European Union (Turam 2007; Heper 2006). One of the biggest steps towards state transformation was the reduction of the military’s dominance in politics, in the form of the restructuring of the Milli Gu¨venlik Konseyi or MGK (National Security Council). Most importantly, the AKP government accomplished considerable institutional progress in the area of women’s rights and equality. Changes in the penal code gave more protection to women against violence (Toprak 2006). ‘The new penal code treats women’s sexuality for the first time not as a family honor issue but as an issue of individual rights’ (Alpay 2007). Moreover, women acquired further rights with Q1 regard to marriage, divorce and property. Akin to the founding fathers’ attitude to gender politics, however, gender reform for the AKP was an auxiliary part of their broader political program. Put differently, the party passed bills for gender reform without having a genuinely pro-women agenda. To the contrary, the AKP put an end to a rather vocal Islamist women’s movement that started under the rule of the Refah Party (see Arat 2005). It should also be noted that the AKP, very much like the founding fathers, selectively incorporated women into the political realm who were highly educated yet neither feminist nor active in women’s groups. At the end of April 2007, the Presidential elections interrupted a smooth-flowing reform process that was leading towards the consolidation of democracy. The presidency controversy occasioned a gender controversy. When the Prime Minister from the AKP, Tayyip Erdogan, announced his presidential candidate, Abdullah Gu¨l, there was vocal opposition. Due to his political moderation, skills in conflict-avoidance and his commitment to democratic reforms, Gu¨l had established a very positive image even among some opponents of the AKP. Yet there remained for him a major barrier on the road to presidency: his wife was wearing a headscarf and hence was seen as ‘unfit’ to represent modern Turkey internationally. Many opponents of the AKP admitted in my interviews, as one put it, that ‘if the candidate’s wife did not wear a headscarf, [they] would have little or no problem in accepting Gu¨l or any other devout President’. In contrast, the hardcore Kemalists objected to the idea of an Islam-oriented President under any circumstances. Subsequently, the military interfered with the political sphere again, and gave a warning to the AKP about the primacy of laicism in Turkey. The collusion between the military and the Constitutional Court resulted in the postponement of both the parliamentary and presidential elections. Despite this collusion, or perhaps because of it, the AKP won the elections in July 2007 by raising their vote from 33 per cent to 47 per cent, and Abdullah Gu¨l was elected as President soon afterwards. On 9 February 2008, the AKP government, with the support of the ultranationalist MHP (National Movement Party) and an 80 per cent vote in their favour in parliament, lifted the headscarf ban from the universities. The laicist CHP (Republican People’s Party) objected, and asked the Constitutional Court to annul the decision. Instead of being viewed as part of the process of

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democratization and as a triumph for the right to education of pious girls, the lifting of the ban deepened the political disarray that already existed and fostered hostility between pious and Kemalist women. Moreover, the lifting of the ban was not enforced systematically, but rather problematized, contested and objected against for several months among several layers of the Kemalist establishment, the judiciary and the top administration (the presidents) of the universities in particular. After months of polarizing discussions, on 5 June 2008, the court annulled the AKP decision and reinstated the ban on the wearing of headscarves in universities. The headscarf issue was only one of a range of ongoing contestations between AKP supporters and Kemalists. The latter attacked the early age of marriage, a quite common practice in pious circles, as well as polygamy, which is rare and less visible. Kemalist women stated their concerns in my interviews, one arguing, for example, that ‘Islamists undermine girls’ educational possibilities by marrying them so early’. The President’s marriage with his wife when she was fifteen opened burning discussions among Kemalists, who accused Islam of creating its own ‘Lolitas’. In one of the issues of a comic magazine, LeMan, the wife of the president was represented with rabbit ears, resembling a Playboy bunny. When LeMan was sued over this cover page, the AKP was accused in liberal circles of intolerance and having no sense of humor. These disputes rendered pious women the most contested subjects of political reform and transition. Interestingly, what was missing was a collective voice or organized resistance from pious women themselves. Kemalist respondents in my study interpreted this absence as an indicator of women’s powerless victim status under ‘Islamic patriarchy’. However, contrary to the claims of Kemalist women, women’s power and sovereignty are not concepts unique to the secular Turkish Republic. Leslie Peirce (1993), for example, has examined alternative sources of sovereignty, prestige and power for women in the Islamic Empire. At this time, well-placed women not only competed to be mother of the Sultan’s heir, but also had a very substantial influence in decision-making in the Imperial Palace. These women developed alternative ways to acquire or, rather, manipulate power relations without organizing collectively. Peirce does not provide an exhaustive account of all patterns of women’s empowerment in the Empire, but this is still a very telling analysis about the historical roots of women’s ‘individualized’ – as opposed to collective – patterns of political engagement. Women’s power in the Palace was not attained through struggle and confrontation, but through physical proximity and bloodline relation to the source of political rule. This by no means precluded other patterns of political action by women. Turkish feminists have traced the women’s movement back to the nineteenth century in the Ottoman Empire (see, for example, Çakir 1994). However, although women’s collective struggles existed for centuries, they took a durable and effective form only from the 1980s. In modern Turkey, it is wrong to expect a movement from pious women that will prove to their Kemalist counterparts that they are not passive victims.2

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Yet, the refusal to mobilize prevents the pious from articulating their needs and negotiating their rights and freedoms. In the absence of (or rather withdrawal from) collective action, only a few young pious women stand up for their individual right to wear a headscarf, becoming singled out for negative attention. Highly organized Kemalist women do not take these individual instances of resistance seriously. As a Kemalist lawyer in her early 60s stated right after the lifting of the headscarf ban: If we did not ban [the] headscarf so radically . . . if these young girls were left free to wear it . . . they would fight for freedom of nakedness. What we see is a childish reaction to prohibitions but not ‘conscious faith’ as they put it . . . The rebellious girls should be understood in the context of the nature of adolescent identity.

Clearly, the considerable age difference between these two groups of women further complicates the formation of more equal dynamics of communication and interaction between them. This age gap raises the question of whether the pious women may benefit from a united voice that articulates their shared needs, interests and agendas.

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THE RADICAL SECULARISM OF KEMALIST WOMEN

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The presidency conflict was followed by a prompt secularist backlash in the spring of 2007. Organized mainly by Kemalist women, street protests in the largest three cities of Turkey, Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir, were joined by millions of people. As a Kemalist woman leader stated in her interview (one of several carried out with Kemalist feminists, May – June 2007): The first ladies of Middle Eastern countries such as Syria [do] not wear a headscarf, how can the Turkish first lady at the doorstep of the EU display such an image of bigotry and backwardness? This is the twenty-first century not the dark ages.3

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Women constituted not only the leadership of the protests but also a considerable majority of the protestors. But many observers overlooked protestor heterogeneity in terms of orientation and background (Turam 2008). For example, while the Kemalist female leaders were from the elite, the rank and file of the protestors included women of low socio-economic status. And in contrast to the laicist female leadership, who directly attacked the AKP and political Islam, the motives of the protestors varied widely. In my interviews, many stated that they felt it was a matter of civic responsibility to raise their voice in a country with a rather weak history of civic disobedience. Some stated that the AKP needed to be reminded that there was a strong secular opposition to political Islam. Others wanted to prevent Islam from consolidating powers between the three branches of the state – the government,

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the parliament and the presidency. In contrast to the diverse agendas of the crowds, the majority of my respondents from the Kemalist leadership expressed fear of becoming like Iran, and of the suppression of women by Islamic patriarchs. A Kemalist writer and public figure explained, ‘If we allow the girls to cover their heads, one day we would be forced to cover our heads as well’. Similarly, one of the leading figures of the protests argued: If Sharia [Islamic law] comes, we, the Turkish women, will suffer most from it. Islamist women do not understand this. Similar to Iranian women who participated in the revolution, they seem to invite the devil that will harm them most. Considering their short-sightedness in this matter, it becomes the sheer responsibility of Kemalist feminists to protect the future of Turkish women.

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The organizers were laicist feminists, the female leaders of civil society organizations. It just happened to be spontaneously so. But among the participants, there were women with headscarves, too. We have no problem with Muslim women. Are we not all Muslim anyway? It is the political meaning and symbol attached to [the] ‘turban’ [the form of headscarf which represents identification of the wearer with Islamism and which covers the hair entirely] to which we object. In that sense, yes, we, the Kemalist women, do have the responsibility in fighting this menace.

Kemalist women are genuinely scared of and deeply threatened by the implications of political Islam for women’s freedom. Yet, this fear renders them hostile to pious women much more than to pious men. It also prevents them from developing creative feminist strategies that could be more inclusive of pious women and undermines potential collaboration on issues that could benefit all Turkish women, not just those of a secular persuasion. Furthermore, instead of supporting and relying on democratic institutions, Kemalist women rely on laicism as a prerequisite of democracy and women’s equality and rights. Take, for example, Professor Dr. Tu¨rkan Saylan, from the Epidemiology Department in the Medical School of Çapa University, who is an active Kemalist feminist and the president of Çagdas Yasamı Destekleme Dernegi (Association in Support of Contemporary Living). As Dr. Saylan stated to me before the elections: The Presidency is a very important status for all of us. In the view of the people, [it] is a place where Mustafa Kemal Atatu¨rk has represented us in the world. The person who represents us . . . is expected to be . . . with unblemished respectability [and to have] a way of conduct signifying contemporary Turkey together with his wife and family just like Atatu¨rk . . . Whatever happens, the majority of the people in Turkey will not tolerate and accept an extension of the Conservative Front with a ‘turban’-wearing wife.

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I asked Dr. Saylan what she thought about pious women who say that the headscarf is their choice and part of their identity. Did democracy not require that we respect individual choice and difference? Similar to all Kemalist women I interviewed, Dr. Saylan was convinced that these women were either brainwashed or forced by Islamist men to wear the headscarf and accepted it obediently.4 Dr. Necla Arat from the Department of Philosophy at Instanbul University, another prominent Kemalist opponent of Islamism, added that the headscarf is anyway only the tip of the iceberg and that is why it needs to be combated by the state:

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It was not only a matter of a headscarf. With the scarf, many other things have started to take place at the universities. For example, the students don’t want examinations or classes on Fridays. There are many mosques around Istanbul University where students, instead of going to mosques, wanted to do their praying in corridors. And, they published some magazines saying that they are coming to the university to fight for an Islamic state. So day by day, these demands increased and of course, afterwards, some limitations took place.

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The recent political milieu has turned Kemalist women like these into hardcore defenders of the military’s predominant role in politics. In my interviews, many stated explicitly that they do not need democracy if it was going to be ‘used by Islamists’, but they needed a strong military to fight fundamentalism. Kemalist women explained to me their deep frustration that their life-long struggle to emancipate Turkish women was being defeated. ‘It is hard’, said one, ‘to watch this happen in our old ages. Everything solid that we accomplished feels like [it is] evaporating into the air’. Finally, the response of Kemalist women to the process of state transformation needs considering. In some ways, their fear can be seen as a reaction to this transition process as much as to political Islam itself. In the early new millennium, the Turkish state shifted from a stance of authoritarian laicism to a more tolerant understanding of the separation of religion and politics (see especially Kuru 2006). As the state is a multi-faceted institution, its various branches displayed different and often contradictory attitudes towards Islamic actors, rather than uniform control or repression of them (Turam 2004, 2007). This transition deeply alarmed, frustrated, threatened and often radicalized Kemalist women who had previously entrusted their powerful position in Turkish society to the state’s laicism. Yet, many state officials in various branches of the state, such as the judiciary, have remained committed to laicist ideology. In this vein, Kemalist women started to assume the role previously undertaken by the authoritarian state in monitoring and controlling the impact of Islam on everyday life. This is an organic extension of their historically symbiotic association with the state. In this context, it should be noted that the Kemalist women are frustrated not only with the forces of Islam in Turkey, but also with the West, especially the European Union (EU). Historically, Kemalists followed Atatu¨rk’s unquestionable

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faith in Western civilization as the guarantor of women’s equality from the Islamist threat. Recently, however, both the EU and the United States have supported the AKP’s political reforms, particularly the attempts to reduce the military’s role in politics. Western observers and researchers also noted the gender reforms as part of democratization during the AKP’s rule, as mentioned in a report by the European Stability Initiative (2007). Challenging the convictions of Kemalist women, the report denied that political Islam undermines women’s position in society. Assessing the report, Sahin Alpay, a columnist for the newspaper Zaman and a college professor, argued, ‘Foreign researchers and observers are sometimes more successful than local ones in diagnosing Turkey’s realities in an objective and sound manner’ (Alpay 2007). Q1 As a result of the West apparently turning its back on them, however, the Kemalists have announced a break from the EU path and expressed disillusionment with its requirements from and impositions on Turkish society. It is for this reason that Dr. Saylan wrote a four-page open letter to the EU criticizing its approach to Turkey’s membership and defending the role of the Turkish military: The Turkish public regards the army as those who come to their rescue at the time of earthquakes, floods and disasters, who prepares the poor and rural children for intermediate and higher education. Maybe no other country’s army is as much embraced by its public. Yes, it is not possible for either the EU or the US, the specialists for finding and using paid soldiers, to comprehend the bond of love and respect between the public and the army . . . [I]ndirectly supporting the AKP is also a major factor in [the] Turkish republic distancing themselves from the EU . . . It should be known by [the] EU very well that just like an NGO [non-governmental organization], it is a natural right of the army whose major mission is to protect the secular republic to make a warning about the efforts evoking Sharia.5

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The conflict between constitutional powers and popular sovereignty peaked following the lifting of the headscarf ban by the AKP government on 9 February 2008. In response, on 14 March 2008, a lawsuit was filed with the Constitutional Court attempting to ban the AKP.6 In the midst of this disarray, I interviewed Ayse, a pious intellectual woman in her late thirties who is admired as a public figure among pious women. Ayse was active in women’s organizations during the Refah Party’s rule in 1996 – 7, and remains an important moderate voice, defending societal compromise. She covered her head at the age of sixteen by her own decision, but took her headscarf off when she went to high school. As she did her college degree before the headscarf ban, she resumed wearing her headscarf at that point. After the ban, she had her own television program, in which she brought people from different political

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groups together hoping for constructive debate and mutual understanding. She told me:

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If our headscarf has become the trigger of so much hostility and divide in society, I think we, the pious women, should just take a step back in order to stop this negative energy. I am not arguing for defeatism, but I feel responsible as a covered woman to diffuse this never-ending tension, as it has only caused futile confrontation and nothing productive . . . I don’t believe a cause can be won through so much pain, hatred and hostility . . . at least not according to my faith.

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Pious women under the AKP no longer mobilize collectively to defend their rights. The fact that some organized a decade ago shows that they are capable of doing so and were once willing. The current politics of non-defiance is a product of social and political conditions, which place these women in the center of clash that many of them do not seek and, indeed, wish to avoid. Most pious women are also nationalists. But unlike the Kemalist women, their national sentiments do not amount to a symbiotic relationship with the Republic. Instead, they look to its democratization, which is likely to result in more freedom and better accommodation for them. They differ from Kemalist women in their support for political reform and EU membership, and their objection to the military dominance of politics. Prior to my interview with Ayse, at an informal private party before the elections in 2007, I met Hayru¨nnisa Gu¨l, the wife of the President, along with Zeynep Babacan, the wife of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. It should be noted that Hayru¨nnisa Gu¨l’s duties include hosting members of parliament and high-ranking officials of the military. Ironically, however, neither she nor any other headscarf-wearing wife of the MPs from the AKP can participate in official invitations at parliament and elsewhere. The reason for this gender segregation is not the presumed patriarchal nature of Islam or radical agendas of the pro-Islamic government. To the contrary, it is the secular state’s headscarf ban, an enforcement that keeps women in headscarves out of public offices and official political sites in Turkey. At the party, I asked Babacan, who has a bachelor’s degree from a university in Ankara, why she decided to wear a headscarf. She said it was her own decision: ‘My parents did not want me to cover my head because of the difficulties and disadvantages I was going to encounter’. When I enquired why pious women do not become more vocal about their rights to wear a headscarf and to enter the parliament accompanying their husbands. She said: ‘How can we participate when even our outfit is a source of social disturbance?’ Pious women like Babacan prefer to relate to the state as individual citizens, not as ‘confrontational’ or ‘radical’ Islamist women. Their personal choice of non-resistance appears to legitimize them as ‘good’ individual citizens visa`-vis the state. This, in turn, helps them to acquire more recognition and power in a society where the pious are regarded with deep suspicion.

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Before Mr Gu¨l took a prominent role in the government, Hayru¨nnisa Gu¨l had filed a lawsuit with the Human Rights Court in order to seek her right to wear a headscarf as the wife of a political leader. However, once she thought her case would undermine her husband’s new prominence, she ended the lawsuit. In my talk with her, she emphasized, ‘the last thing we, the wives of the MPs, wish is to create more controversy when these issues have been so sensitive’. When I asked her about the fact that her headscarf has been widely regarded as a major obstacle to her husband’s position as a prospective President, she insisted that the issue was used as an excuse to avoid having a pious President and that is why she refused to continue her fight against the ban. She believed that the whole headscarf debate was the manifestation of a much deeper conflict in society. When I told her about the Kemalist critique of the passivity and obedience of pious women, she replied in some surprise: I am neither passive nor obedient. If that is the criteria in their head, I worked outside home most of my life. I do not live according to traditional gender roles at home either. I am in charge of more decision-making at home. I do our taxes, take care of most of our finances, make major decisions about our children’s schooling etc. But I do not understand why I am made accountable for these aspects of my life. I often refuse this.

When I brought up the Kemalist women’s criticism of her marriage at a very early age, she told me that she never doubted her choice of marriage and was proud of it. Later at the same event, I asked Abdullah Gu¨l why, if the AKP was so committed to reform and democracy, the defense of pious women was left to those outside the AKP, specifically non-religious liberal democrats? Although Gu¨l responded to every question about reforms, democracy and the EU with sophistication, there was no answer to the gender question. My interviews with pious women shed more light. When probed about the reasons for the absence of collective resistance amongst them, some asked ‘for what?’ while others agreed with the sentiments expressed in one interview as follows: ‘We don’t need it. Resistance is overrated by the West and Western feminists’. Although most pious women admitted that the headscarf ban was, as one put it, ‘an offense to their identity, individual freedom and personal choice’, they also explained that they feel obliged to avoid conflict. For now, this seems to be their way of supporting the politics and reform program of the AKP. However, the fact that the wives of both the Prime Minister and the President, and of other high-ranking officials, are pious women in headscarves for the first time has changed the positioning of pious women in relation to political power. The female family members of the MPs from AKP joined the new political elite without actually competing or struggling with the Kemalist women or laicist policies of the state. These women must thus be viewed in a different light from female parliamenteers and other politicians who work for

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the AKP (see especially So¨zen 2006), as the latter do not wear a headscarf or have faith-based lives (see, for example, Temelkuran 2008). A leading secular feminist Professor Nu¨khet Sirman has critically referred to the women who are active in the AKP as ‘Baskan’ın Kadınları’ (‘the women of the Prime Minister’). According to Sirman, although the AKP had nominated approximately sixty women to the parliament, most of the women in the AKP represented Prime Minister Erdogan’s orientation rather than women’s interests (Yuksek Siyaset 2007). She added: Many women from the women’s movement expressed an interest in being a candidate for the party. None were invited. This is mainly because these women would be accountable primarily to the women’s movement and would directly answer to the other women instead of the Prime Minister. We should also note that the female candidates of the AKP were listed as the last choices in each listing. (Yuksek Siyaset 2007)

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The AKP government puts effort into incorporating women into the public, political sphere without actually intending to empower them more generally. Indeed, in contrast to the Refah Party, the AKP put an end to the Islamist women’s movement. The former State Minister for Women and Family, Gu¨ldal Aksit, whom I interviewed in 2005, dissociated herself from feminism and any collective action by women. Since then, women from the AKP to whom I have talked have displayed a similar disconnection from women’s collective action. Consider, for example, Suna Memecan, a new recruit to the AKP and a graduate of the highly prestigious Robert Kolej American high school in Istanbul as well as of Bosphorus University, who has lived with her husband in New York for ten years. As Memecan explained to me in an interview in May 2007, they moved to the US as an adventure in order to experience a different culture with more respect for individual differences. When asked if she minds seeing the wife of the President in a headscarf, she said: ‘I do not mind different individual choices, whether it is about clothing or ideas, as long as these choices do not interfere with my individual freedom. I witnessed this kind of life, when I was in the US’. Memecan’s lifestyle is not faith-based, but her political orientation is conservative (compared by her to the Republicans in the US). Like Gu¨ldal Aksit, she is comfortable with traditional female roles at home and in society. She also denies any need for the feminist defence of pious women’s rights. When I asked about her gender politics, Memecan answered, ‘just because I am a woman, I do not have to have political agendas for women’. The individualized forms of non-resistance and conflict-avoidance in both private and public spheres facilitate the accommodation of Islamist women as pious women and thereby their gradual integration into the system. In this specific case, the refusal of collective action leads to fruitful ends for the pious. Yet, it is not at all clear that the fruitful consequences of pious

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non-defiance benefit Turkish women in general. First, the refusal of collective action is a major barrier for the prospective interaction and collaboration of pious women with those from other religious orientations, non-religious secularist or atheist women. Put differently, collective action could serve as a platform to bring these women together and invite them to think about both their shared concerns and different interests. Second, pious women’s non-defiance is also often confused with the stereotypes associated with conservative women who hide behind a big man and support his goals and actions. By refusing to contest, negotiate and/or collaborate with other women, pious women reinforce the image of women as passive or submissive actors. It remains unclear, however, to what extent some Kemalist women would be capable of accommodating the defiance of pious women, considering, for example, that they supported the constitutional court’s re-enforcement of the headscarf ban. Finally, the non-defiance of pious women is not only confined to their attitudes towards the secular state and Kemalists but also manifested in their relations with pious men in daily life. A good example is their hands-off attitude to the infrequent cases of polygamy, an unlawful act in Turkey. During my ten years of fieldwork, I have met several pious women worrying deeply about the polygamous relationships imposed on their female friends or neighbors. Instead of collectively protesting these events, however, they often mask it as a shameful incident, do not mention it publicly and try not to get involved. By avoiding collective resistance, these women unintentionally collude with pious men in the persistence of polygamy as an illegal practice. The women who are forced to share the same husband are left alone to deal with the issue as a personal problem. The semi-concealed nature of the practice as well as the non-defiant attitudes of pious women do not leave space for cooperation with moderate secular women in fighting against polygamy.

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INCREASED SOCIAL MOBILITY BUT CONTINUED POLITICAL DIVISION

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As already argued, most of the Kemalist leaders have a privileged socioeconomic status due to their education, career and/or family background. These privileges are likely to play a bigger role than their commitment to laicism in their status as ‘empowered’ women. They tend to associate women in headscarves with lower socio-economic status and with a lack of education. A very common solution offered by Kemalist women to cure Islamism is to educate pious women in secular schools. It is ironic, then, that when the opportunity arose for such education after the lifting of the headscarf ban in the universities, Kemalist women in leadership positions objected more vehemently than any other social actor. After hearing the strong opinions of Kemalist women about pious women, I asked them how many such women they knew personally. With the exception of university professors who teach pious female students, most mentioned the

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wife of the concierge or their domestic help, frequently referred to as the ‘cleaning lady’. They also made no distinction between the ‘traditional’ small headscarf that Muslim women wear customarily in the villages, which often do not cover the hair entirely, and the ‘turban’, which represents identification with Islamic politics. In contrast, the latter is indicative for pious women themselves of multiple transformations – from rural to urban, from uneducated to educated, as well as from lower to higher socio-economic status. Kemalist women’s views are dismissive of these recent transformations in Turkey. In the period since 1980, Turkey has witnessed the rise of an educated Islamic bourgeois. In order to be able to continue their college education, many pious female students started to wear wigs as a substitute for headscarves in the late 1990s. Others went abroad to colleges in the West, including to Ivy League universities in the US. The accumulation of money in Islamic foundations, associations, businessmen and companies has helped pious students find financial support to study abroad. During my interviews with Turkish students at MIT in Boston in the Fall of 2006, for example, I found that a considerable number of students on full scholarship were of a pious orientation. Several pious women, at MIT and elsewhere, stated in their interviews that they were more likely to be chastised on the streets in Turkey since they started to drive expensive cars, carry laptops, listen to MP3 players or wear couture designer clothing. Similarly, a college professor who wishes to cover her head seems much more unacceptable and threatening to Kemalists than an uneducated housewife or a maid. According to Kemalist women, a pious intellectual or career woman is a contradiction in terms. Such prejudices were originally created by the state’s relegation of religion to the private realm and the related association of pious women with that realm and particularly with domestic life. As shared public spaces have expanded, and the economic and educational gaps between Kemalist and pious women decreased, the discomforts and discontents have become heightened. As one Kemalist women observed to me: ‘We started to feel like strangers in our country. The women in headscarves permeated in every neighborhood, every cafe´ and restaurant’. As pious women have gained proximity to political power through the victory of the AKP, Kemalist women have felt increasingly threatened. Kemalist and pious women are not used to sharing the private sphere with one another. They do not mingle in smaller groups, where they could possibly communicate, discuss, argue and disagree face-to-face. Indeed, the most ardent self-proclaimed feminists on the Kemalist side mix the least with the pious women. They do not work in the same workplace, as the headscarf is banned in offices. They did not study together and still do not socialize together, because they do not see each other as friends. They do not organize together, as their social and political agendas contradict. As a result, the distance and distrust between them has gradually grown. A feminist academic admitted to me that she had not met one Turkish pious woman in her life

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until she came to study in the United States, where she became friends with a covered PhD student in her department. ‘Only then’, she said, ‘I could really overcome the stereotypes about covered women. To my surprise, she [the student] was an independent as well as intellectual woman’. Given that pious and secularist women rarely mingle in the private realm, I was privileged to be present with both a Kemalist woman, Ebru, and a pious woman, Aslı, in a private family environment. The reason they shared this environment was due to the fact that Aslı, from the same secular family, decided to live a faith-based life and donned the headscarf many years ago. This decision severed her ties to others in the family, especially the Kemalist women. But due to the central importance of family ties in Turkish society, her decision was not sufficient to cut her off entirely. That day, Ebru addressed her complaints about pious women, their passivity and obedience, directly to me, ignoring Aslı as if she was not there:

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They are so voiceless. How can these women accept a secondary position as a shadow behind their men? More importantly, why would I accept these women to represent me as a Turkish woman in the parliament or as the wife of the President? 740

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At some point, Aslı turned to Ebru and said: ‘Do I interfere with your choice not to wear a headscarf? Why do you attack my choice?’ Ebru became angry and left the room, with the retort, ‘Your choice? Religion does not leave space for individual choice. You wore it because it is ordained by Allah’. While the meeting points that could bring pious and Kemalist women together are lacking, individual initiatives to communicate and understand each other are also scant, weak or inefficient. Most importantly, when moderate women who do not identify with either the Kemalist or pious groups try to initiate some bridges between the two sides, they often do not find support from either. Rather, as democratization integrates pious women into the public sphere, each of the two groups increasingly see the other as a hindrance to their freedom. Thus, as the social and spatial distance which previously characterized the social relationship between Kemalist and pious women is supplanted in the new millennium by increasing proximity, disengagement and indifference are being replaced by animosity.

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This article points to the challenges that both Kemalist and pious women have faced during the era of transition towards a consolidated democracy in Turkey. As political reforms have succeeded in integrating previously marginalized Islamic actors, pious women have increasingly found themselves at the center of conflict. In order to avoid or defuse this situation, they have refused to respond with collective action and resistance. This article also

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demonstrates the converse effect on Kemalist women. The increasing success of Islamic politics and the accompanying visibility of pious women have radicalized Kemalist women’s activism, encouraging a militant secularist backlash. As the distinct pattern of political engagement for each group of women remains largely unknown to or disregarded by the other group, the conflict between them is widely believed to be based on ideological differences between Islamism and secularism. This is a misleading explanation. While women from various ideological backgrounds have cooperated individually and/or in women’s movements and organizations in Turkey, the divide between pious and Kemalist women continues to deepen. Moreover, the evidence presented in this article suggests that the conflict between the different patterns of political engagement of pious and Kemalist women is being reinforced as other socio-economic differences between them are leveled out. Although the case illustrates a significant deadlock in the feminist ideal of ‘sisterhood’, it does not, in my view, preclude the possibility of mutual recognition and even cooperation between pious and Kemalist women in the future. Clearly, any future progress in this area depends on the ability of these two groups to come to terms with their different patterns of political behavior and also to recognize and appreciate any shared attitudes. The latter seems to be more difficult, but is likely to play a larger role in facilitating their cohabitation in the public sphere. Although still rare, there have been a few initiatives among moderate women on both sides who have declared: ‘We do not want a public sphere where we cannot walk together’.7 Clearly, a deep polarization between pious and secularist women that renders cooperation impossible should be considered a major challenge to democracy. It may even carry the risk of undermining the previous accomplishments of the women’s movement in Turkey, especially if Kemalist and pious women each continue seeing the other as a threat to their own freedom and power.

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Berna Turam Associate Professor of Sociology and Middle East Studies Social Science Faculty Hampshire College 839 West Street Amherst, MA 01002, USA E-mail: [email protected]

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Please note that exceptions apply in both groups. I am indebted to Juliane Hammer for this important insight.

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3 In the following months, e-mails with images of the very ‘modern-looking first lady’ of the United Arab Emirates, who was wearing tight jeans, high boots and of course no headscarf, were circulated with jealousy among Turkish secular circles. 4 Dr Saylan also added that the headscarf was a threat to the health of these women. Speaking with the voice of medical authority, she claimed that the headscarf causes dermatological problems, as it blocks air from the hair. 5 Excerpt from an open letter written by Dr Saylan to the EU, 30 April 2007. She shared a copy of the letter with the author in June 2007. 6 This situation continues to change. During the final stages of the preparation of this article, on 31 July 2008, the Constitutional Court decided not to close down and ban the AKP. 7 This phrase is from my interviews (June 2008) with two women from the group ‘Birbirimize Sahip Çikiyoruz’ (‘We Protect and Support Each Other’).

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I thank Juliane Hammer, Binnaz Toprak, Buket Turkmen, Nilufer Isvan and the anonymous reviewers for their precious comments and suggestions. I am also thankful to the (competitive) Special Faculty Development Fund of Hampshire College for funding the fieldwork for two successive years.

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