Women and Civil Society in Turkey

Women's Movements in a Muslim Society

Ömer Çaha

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781472410078
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134771356
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

Focusing on three important interrelated issues, Women and Civil Society in Turkey challenges the classical definition, developed in the West, of civil society as an equivalent of the public sphere in which women are excluded. First it shows how feminist movements have developed a new definition of civil society to include women. Second it draws attention to the role of women in the modernization of Turkey with special reference to the debate on the possibility of an indigenous feminist movement. Finally, it underlines the contribution of feminist, Islamic and Kurdish women's movements in the transition from an ideologically constructed, uniform public sphere to a multi-public domain. Giving attention to the influence of diverse women's movements over Turkish political values this book sheds light into the issue of how a feminine civil society has been constructed as part of a plural public space in Turkey. Ömer Çaha argues that this new public realm is the product of values and institutions which have been developed by diverse women's groups who have succeeded in eliminating the traditional barricades between public and domestic spheres and in steering women into public life without sacrificing their own values.

1 Civil Society in Modern Political Thought and Feminist Reaction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315546940-1

The separation of civil society from the state was an intellectual effort of the political philosophers writing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Until the end of the eighteenth century European political thinkers used the term “civil society” to describe a type of political institution which placed its members under the influence of its laws and thereby ensured a peaceful order and good government. This term formed a part of an old European tradition. This tradition can be traced from modern natural law to the classical political philosophy, above all, to Aristotle, for whom civil society (koinonia politike) refers to the polis, which contains and dominates all elements of society. In this old European tradition, civil society and the state were interchangeable terms. To be a member of a civil society was to be a citizen, a member of the state and thus obliged to act in accordance with its laws and regulations (Keane 1988: 36). But, the term civil society gained a new meaning in the hands of the political philosophers during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This chapter looks at how civil society was formulated by the philosophers of the time and how a place was assigned to women in it. It also analyzes the feminist reaction to the meaning of civil society as the domain of men and the attempt by feminists to develop a new definition of civil society which includes women as well.

Women and Civil Society in Social Contract Theories

Civil society was identified by social contract theorists in the sense of “public sphere,” which works on the basis of rules different from private domestic life. They divided the whole of social life into civil society and domestic private life. The family or domestic life for Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau was based on natural ties of sentiment and blood line while the public life was governed by universal, impersonal, and the conventional criteria of achievements, rights, equality, and property (Pateman 1988). The most striking assumption about Hobbes’ theory is that the growth of individualism requires a centralized authority, one in which individuals must sacrifice their sovereignty when entering society in order to enjoy the benefits of peace and security. However, for Locke, who saw individualism as grounded in labor, sovereignty resided in the individual and his property from which even the government derived its authority. Rousseau urged a further different hypothesis: once individuals accept an agreement they lose their individuality and should be obliged to obey the rules of the common will. As Genovese (1991: 176–7) aptly remarks they all together assumed that the individual was male and thereby they then discussed the relationship of the female to that male.

Thomas Hobbes’ theory is generally based on the necessity of the organization of a society and the establishment of the commonwealth so that peace and civilization can be attained. In the state of nature there is a war among individuals who seek self-preservation and attainment. Naturally, man exists in this state of war and has passion and reason. It is man’s passions which bring about the state of war. But at the same time fear of death, the desire of commodious living and the hope of obtaining a life by industry are reasonable things which incline man to seek peace (Hobbes 1968: 189–90). Man seeks self-preservation and security, but he is unable to attain this goal in the natural condition of war. The laws of nature are unable to achieve the desired end by themselves alone unless there is a coercive power capable of enforcing their observance by sanctions (Ibid.). This means that a plurality of individuals should confer all their power and strength upon one man or upon one assembly of man that may reduce all their wills into one will. The transition of rights takes place in Hobbes as follows (Ibid.: 227):

… by covenant of every man with every man, in such manner, as if every man should say to every man, I authorize and give up my Right of Governing myselfe, to this Man, or to this Assembly of man, on this condition, that thou give up thy Right to him, and Authorize all his Actions in like manner. This done, the Multitude so united in one Person, is called a COMMON-WEALTH. This is the Generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather (to speak more reverently), of that Mortal God, to which we owe under the Immortal God, our peace and defense.

The theory of the covenant of man enables Hobbes to make the transition from the condition of atomic individualism to organized society. Self-interest, according to him, lies at the basis of organized society, in which the self-destructive attempts are checked by the fear of the sovereign’s power. Civil society, as stated by Hobbes, allows individuals to seek self-preservation on the principles of their particular interests. This essential unit is, on the contrary, the state or the public domain that unite the fighting individuals. If men are naturally egoistic and always remain so then the only factor that can hold them together effectively is a centralized power vested in the sovereign.

Now, the question arises as to how women’s roles are formulated by Hobbes in civil society. Hobbes began from the premise that there is no natural dominance of men over women. In the state of nature, female individuals are as free and equal as male individuals. But their position changes in marriage, whereby life and family are then artificial political institutions rather than natural forms. The roles given to the members of the family are gained in civil society. For Hobbes (1841: 109), “a father with his sons and servants, grown into a civil person by virtue of his paternal jurisdiction is called a family.” Hobbes’ families are ruled by men, not as fathers but as political masters: masters of families rule not by their paternal and procreative capacity, but by virtue of contract. Men as masters enter into the original contract that constitutes civil society. Women, now in subjection, no longer have the necessary standing to take part in creating a new civil society. Thus, for Hobbes, conjugal rights are not natural; rather they are created through the original contract and so are politically right. Hobbes (Ibid.: 67) states that in civil society the husband has dominion “because for the most part the commonwealths have been created by the fathers not by the mothers of the families.”

Matrimonial law takes a patriarchal form because men have made the original contract. Through the civil institution of marriage, men can lawfully obtain the familiar “helpmate” and gain the sexual and domestic services of a wife, whose permanent servitude is now guaranteed by the law and political authority. Shortly, in Hobbes’ political theory all individuals including women have self-protection rights in the state of nature. But in civil society women as wives who have given up their right in favor of the “protection” of their husbands are now protected by the sword of the Leviathan (Pateman 1991). Civil society thus comes into being as a contractual agreement among men on behalf of the representation of men and the subjection of women.

John Locke extended this definition of civil society. He, accordingly, began with the state of the nature and resulted with a society established by the consent among free individuals. In his view all men are equal in the state of nature and remain so until they become members of a political society. Unlike Hobbes, he argues that the state of nature is the state of liberty and it has a natural law to govern it (1988: 270–1). Natural law obliges everyone to be equal and independent in a way that no one harms another in his life, liberty or possessions. To him, God put men under strong obligations of necessity, convenience, and inclination to force him into society. For Locke, in the state of nature all men enjoy equal rights and are morally bound to respect the rights of others. It is in men’s interest, therefore, to form an organized society for the more effectual preservation of their lives, liberties, and estates he calls property. Civil society thus comes to be closely identical to political society:

Wherever any number of Men are so united into one Society, as to quit everyone his Executive Power of the law of Nature and to resign it to the public, there and there only is a political, or Civil society (Ibid.: 350–1) [A civil society comes into being] … wherever any number of Men, in the state of Nature, enter into Society to make one People, one Body Politic, under one Supreme Government, or else when anyone joins himself to incorporates with any Government already made. (Ibid.: 89)

Man being free, equal, and independent by nature cannot be subjected to the political power of another without his own consent. Even though civil society grows out of the family and tribe, it is a fact that the rational foundation of civil society and government is consent. Civil society and government are created on the basis of two covenants. By the first contract a man becomes a member of a definite civil or political society and obliges himself to accept the decisions of the majority. However, by the second contract the majority of the members of the newly formed society agree to form a government (Coplestone 1964: 145). Unlike Hobbes, Locke considers individuals and groups as those whose moral convictions give them a strong feeling of autonomy and independence from the official system. They preserve their own values and interests even in civil society.

Locke analyzed the relationship of man and woman, in civil society, on the basis of conjugal and political relationships. Both were grounded in consent and existed for the preservation of property. Yet conjugal society was not a political society because it conferred no power over life and death of its members. Men and women, in the state of nature, were free to determine the terms of the conjugal contract. But, in civil society, these terms could be limited or created by the customs or laws of the country (Butler 1991: 86). He analyzed several non-political relationships including those of master-servant, master-slave, parent-child, and husband-wife. Each of these forms of association is distinguished from the political relationship of ruler-subject (Ibid.: 84). Thus, the conjugal society is a natural unit which is based on a voluntary contract between man and woman. Although the conjugal relationship began for the sake of procreation, it continued for the sake of property:

[Men’s power] leaves the wife in the full and the free possessions of what by Contract is her Peculiar Right and gives the Husband no more power over her Life, than she has over his. The power of the Husband being so far from that of an absolute monarch that the wife has, in many cases, a Liberty to separate from him; where natural Right or their Contract allows it, whether that Contract be made by themselves in the state of Nature or by the Customs or Laws of the Country they live in; and the Children upon such Separation fall to the Father or Mother’s lot, as such contract does determine. (Jones 1989: 14–5)

Locke distinguished also between the property rights of husband and those of wife. All property in conjugal society was not automatically under the husband’s control. Because of certain inconveniences, men quit the state of nature to form civil society through an act of consent. Locke’s insistence on the relationship between men and women was based on the premise that in the state of nature man dominated woman since he was naturally the more able and was stronger. However, in civil society, man dominated woman on the basis of the consent of the two to preserve women’s rights. Thus, Locke, like Hobbes, stated that civil society is an agreement among free men who, at the same time, represent women whose roles are as the homemaker in civil society.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in relation to the condition of women, developed the same definition of civil society as Hobbes and Locke. He also began with the natural state of man. Natural man, for Rousseau, was somehow a tabula rasa awareness of nothing, not a culture gainer and therefore in peace with his environment. Since natural man thinks that coming together with others enables them to overcome natural disasters and to have a more fruitful life, they come together to form society. But, once society comes into being we see a conflict, a war, and a struggle among them (Rousseau 1950: 236). Therefore, they need a government in order to protect their property on the principle of peace and security. Social contract thus leads man to transform his particular will into the common will. He is now a member of a new society of equals in which he has gained a new form of equality on a higher level than the one he enjoyed in the state of nature (Zeitlin 1968: 33).

Rousseau insisted that the inequality of power and wealth transformed the expression of drive for self-preservation into rational egoism. Since all develop different concerns, different interests are necessarily in constant opposition. Therefore there is no room, in Rousseau’s theory, for particularistic and individualistic thought (Lange 1991: 105). For Rousseau the Supreme Being, which is denounced as the “General Will,” is the essential unit and woman could be saved under such a General Will.

The Supreme Being wanted to honor the human species in everything. While giving man inclinations without limit, He gives him at the same time the law which regulates them, in order that he may be free and in command of himself. While abandoning man to immoderate passions, He joins reason to these passions in order to govern them. While abandoning women to unlimited desires, He joins modesty to these desires in order to constrain them (Bloom 1979: 359).

The timidity and the weakness of woman, according to Rousseau, inspired her to be pleasing to a man. Acting to please man is a quality of woman directly derivable from her nature. Within civil society man is stronger and dependent on woman only through desire. However woman depends on man through need in addition to desire. The habit of living together paves the way for man’s conjugal and paternal love. Within the family, as the little society, woman becomes more sedentary and grows accustomed to being housewife while man becomes a political actor (Rousseau 1964: 117).

“Natural” man and “natural” woman imply quite different things for Rousseau. Natural man, for him, is a man in the original state of nature; one of total independence of his fellows, devoid of selfishness, and equal to everyone else. Natural woman, however, is defined according to her role in the golden age of the patriarchal family: dependent, subordinated, and naturally imbued with those qualities of shame and modesty which served to make her sexually appealing to her husband (Thiele 1987: 37).

The virtues of women in civil society are characterized as closer to “nature” than men. Man can be transformed and denatured in a political society. However, women constitute a link between the supreme artifice of political society and nature (Lange 1991: 101). If women attempt to act, in political society, according to their particular interest they will be oppressed by men. In civil society, “particular interest” of women is disastrous, for Rousseau. He proposed for women a sphere of their true competence, namely childcare, household tasks, and recreation for men. In a good society women should devote themselves to the development of a patriot nation for the interest of all materialized in the state. The love of the self should be transformed to the love of the nation, in other words, of the common will of men. In short, Rousseau formulates a family in which women are dependent upon men in a way that they are devoid of any particular interest and rational egoism (Ibid.: 107).

As a concluding remark, for social contract philosophers civil society seems to be identical with the public life of the state, which comes into existence on the basis of agreement among individuals who are assumed to be men. The chief principle of civil society functions under the rule of male individuals. Women, treated as being close to nature, are represented in civil society through their husbands who are their political masters. It would not be wrong to say that women, in such a definition of civil society, are hidden or are considered to be absent in social or political life.

Women in the Separation of Civil Society from the State

The distinction between the state and civil society was systematically made by Hegel in his Philosophy of Right published in 1821. Civil society (bürgerliche Gesellschaft), in Hegel’s philosophy, represents a “stage” in the dialectical development of historical spirit (Zeitgeist) from the family to the state. While social life typical of civil society is different from the ethical world of the family and different from the public life of the state, it forms a necessary element within the totality of a rationally structured political community (Pelczynski 1984a: 1). For Hegel, civil society is conceived as a historically produced sphere of ethical life positioned between the simple world of the household and the universal state. It includes a mosaic of private individuals, classes, groups, the market economy, social classes, corporations, and institutions whose transactions are regulated by civil law (Keane 1988: 50; Pelczynski 1984b: 263).

In the Philosophy of Right Hegel subdivides the sphere of ethical life into family, civil society, and the state. They are “moments” of the ethical order and are the ethical powers which regulate the life of the individual. Ethical duties in the family are determined according to one’s place in the family, which ultimately depends on the natural factors of sex and birth. Love, altruism, and concern for the whole are the dominant features of ethical dispositions in the family. However, in civil society this type of “natural” ethical unity disintegrates. Men are primarily concerned with the satisfaction of their private, individual needs by working, producing, and exchanging the product of their labor in the market. This develops a new ethics. Men behave, in civil society, selfishly and instrumentally towards each other. The only thing they care about is increasing their self-interest (Knox 1967: 148).

It is the self-interest of man which results in conflict within civil society that necessitates the state. For Hegel the state is the concrete human embodiment of the ethical idea of mind (Geist) developing from a stage of immediate, undifferentiated unity (the family) through to that of explicit difference and particularity (civil society)...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Civil Society in Modern Political Thought and Feminist Reaction
• 2 Women and Civil Society in Turkish Politics: From Past to Present
• 3 The Feminist Movement in Turkey During the 1980s
• 4 The Feminist Movement from Streets to Institutions
• 5 The Islamic Women’s Movement
• 6 The Kurdish Women’s Movement
• 7 Concluding Remarks: Women’s Movements and Feminine Civil Society in Turkey
• Bibliography
• Index