Women and Turkish Cinema

Gender Politics, Cultural Identity and Representation

Eylem Atakav

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415674652
• eBook ISBN: 9781136681592
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Since 2000, there has been a considerable effort in Turkish cinema to come to terms with the military's intervention in politics and subsequent national trauma. It has resulted in an outpouring of cinematic texts. This book focuses on women and Turkish cinema in the context of gender politics, cultural identity and representation.

The central proposition of this book is that enforced depolticisation introduced after the coup is responsible for uniting feminism and film in 1980s Turkey. The feminist movement was able to flourish precisely because it was not perceived as political or politically significant. In a parallel move in the films of the 1980s there was an increased tendency to focus on the individual, on women's issues and lives, in order to avoid the overtly political.

Women and Turkish Cinema provides a comprehensive view of cinema's approach to women in a country which straddles European and Middle Eastern cultural conceptions, identities and religious values and will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of Film Studies, Gender Studies and Middle East Studies, amongst others.

1	Women of Turkey
	Feminism and the 1980s’ Women’s Movement

[…] history is not concerned with ‘events’ but with ‘processes’ … ‘processes’ are things which do not begin and end but turn into one another … There are in history no beginnings and no endings.

R. G. Collingwood¹

The precondition to understanding the filmic representation of women in Turkish cinema in the 1980s is to decipher the link between the existing social and political milieu of the decade. I, therefore, aim to provide an account that relates earlier eras to the 1980s thereby laying foundations to the issues that were foregrounded in this era.

Since it is important to understand Turkish culture and the role of women within it before looking at the representation of women in Turkish cinema, a historical overview of feminism in Turkey in relation to politics and religion post-1923 is essential. Here, I examine the social and political milieu of the 1980s with regards to the emergence of the women’s movement.² In addition, I focus on the discussions around whether state-feminism was undermined or revived throughout the women’s movement of the 1980s. I will examine the different strategies that the movement used in order to survive as a political movement in a period of depoliticisation, as well as the activities of the movement from consciousness-raising groups to publications and then to institutionalisation.³ I also delve into how the movement was conducive to democratisation of society in the post-coup period and concentrates on its after effects.

Politics, religion and feminism in Turkey

Here I aim to explore the relationship between politics, religion and feminism in the context of Turkish women’s experience through the evolution of modernisation whilst providing an overview of the history of feminism and the history of women in Turkey. This offers the opportunity to explore, articulate and share the experiences and reflections of women’s change in Turkey. This chapter also recognises that Turkey has been experiencing an evolutionary feminist movement within its modernisation project. Before exploring these themes, it is necessary to outline initially the understanding of women in Islam. This will serve to situate Turkish women within its structure. Simone de Beauvoir wrote:

There is a justification, a supreme compensation, which society is ever wont to bestow upon woman: that is, religion … Man enjoys the greatest advantage of having a God endorse the codes he writes; and since man exercises a sovereign authority over women, it is especially fortunate that this authority has been vested in him by the Supreme Being […] For the Jews, Muslims, Christians, among others, man is master by divine right; the fear of God, therefore, will repress any impulse towards revolt in the downtrodden female.⁴

Through these words de Beauvoir illustrates why Mary Astell asks the question: ‘If all men are born free, how is that all women are born slaves?’⁵

Focusing on Islam, it is relevant to mention that feminist interpretations of the Qur’an are sparser than feminist interpretations of the Bible. Nevertheless, they often include a discussion of a passage that has frequently been interpreted as a justification of male domination in Islam. The text in question (Surah 4: An Nisa’: 34) reads:

Men are the managers of the affairs of women because Allah made the one superior to the other and because men spread their wealth on women. Virtuous women are, therefore, obedient … As for those women whose defiance you have to cause to fear, admonish them and keep them apart from your beds and beat them.⁶

One of the few Muslim feminist scholars of Islam, Riffat Hassan, argued that the passage should not be interpreted to signify that men have complete power over women. Punishments referred to in the text are permissible only in the case of a full-scale revolt by Muslim women against their childbearing role.⁷ Clearly, feminist scriptural interpretation shows that much of a text’s meaning is in the eyes of the beholder. Hence, the meaning received depends on whether the reader is wearing androcentric or androgynous lenses. What Hassan has shown is that popular Muslim views justifying male dominance are not found in the Qur’an at all, but came about through androcentric interpretations of the biblical creation stories, already well known in Arabia when Islam began.⁸

At this point, it is vital to raise the topic of the construction of a new Muslim woman. This integrates the study of a more informed and sensitive understanding of the complexity of women’s lives. Haideh Moghissi stresses that most feminist interpretations of Islam do not focus on (often exaggerated) domination exercised by men over women within Muslim culture. Rather than their victimisation, they emphasise women’s irrepressible strengths and struggles. Thus this does not mystify their life experiences under patriarchal Islamic legal and cultural traditions and institutions.⁹

At one end of the spectrum, some scholars locate Muslim women in history as social and political agents because of Islam, not despite it. According to this group, Muslim women are not aware that their Islamic rights have been violated by the patriarchal societies in which they live. Thus, women’s urgent task is to deconstruct gendered Islamic discourses, and to challenge the monolithic interpretational power.¹⁰ At the other end of the spectrum, some scholars stress the historical articulation of Islam with classical-type patriarchy. This is grounded in distinct material, social, political and cultural factors. These determine the degree of women’s access to education, employment and political participation in different societies.¹¹ Therefore, there is a need to deconstruct the categories of Islam, modernity and women. This will begin a more fruitful discussion of the changing lives of women of different classes, ethnic groups and regions.¹²

Turkish culture under Ottoman rule has been characterised as a ‘traditional Islamic culture’, experiencing very little change for centuries. What change did occur has typically been attributed to Western contact. Turkish culture was believed to have been transformed into a new entity after the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. This belief has also been the official line of the Republican regime: a widely accepted characterisation of social change in Turkey.¹³

The Ottoman Empire dissolved after the First World War and was replaced by a self-consciously modern and Westernised Turkish Republic in 1923. Through this process, new doors were also opened to women. The Republican state itself evolved into what later scholars called a ‘feminist state’. Although it continued to be a male-dominated state, it made women’s equality in the public sphere a national policy. The new government radically changed laws. It encouraged women to unveil, enter the universities and professions, become airplane pilots and even run for parliament – an opportunity which at that time had yet to be introduced in other European societies. However, these state reforms represented the vision of only a single charismatic leader. The founder of the Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, represented the values and interests of a small group of urban, middle-class citizens.¹⁴

The Republican state determined the characteristics of the ideal woman. It established a monopolistic system to propagate this ideal in a population that often held quite different values and perceptions of the ideal woman’s behaviour. At this point, I would like to recover the dialogue of Atatürk and a female teacher candidate for a 1925 teacher training school for girls. This is documented in Zehra Arat’s introduction to her book Deconstructing Images of the ‘Turkish Woman’: ‘What should the Turkish woman be like?’ asks the female candidate. Atatürk answers:

The Turkish woman should be the most enlightened, most virtuous, and most reserved woman of the world … The duty of the Turkish woman is raising generations that are capable of preserving and protecting the Turk with his mentality, strength and determination. The woman who is the source and social foundation of the nation can fulfil her duty if she is virtuous.¹⁵

This dialogue is a rare example of the use of the expression ‘the Turkish woman’. The example is significant not simply because it demonstrates the attempt to push women into an idealised prototype, but because it also shows the willingness of women to accept and participate in the construction of their gender. As Arat notes, it also reflects prevalent power relations.¹⁶

Since the new Republican woman represented the modern, secular, Westernised state, she was expected to behave and dress in what the state defined as a modern, secular, Western manner. Women who felt that their religious beliefs required them to dress modestly and cover their heads, and women who maintained older customs, were excluded from this Republican sisterhood. White observes: ‘poverty and rural origin hindered women from “obeying” the injunction to leave the private sphere, become educated, and contribute to the Republic’s professional life, [thus] social and urban/rural differences were implicit in the differentiation of the Republican woman from the “reactionary” woman’.¹⁷

However, this was not the first time women were becoming visible in the public sphere. Even reformists of the late Ottoman period were concerned with striking a balance between Islam and modernisation. Indeed, women became more visible in public after the 1908 revolution. As Jenny White notes, elite women had long been active in the public sphere through publications in which they had demanded expanded roles. In the nineteenth century, they formed women’s associations and issued publications educating women. Their concerns included child care, the family and household, and women’s legal rights – rights they later gained under the Turkish Republic. Women’s demands had centred on education, employment and electoral rights. While Ottoman women closely followed women’s movements around the world, nevertheless they argued that living in an Islamic society required different solutions. These solutions followed one another.

Between 1920 and 1938, ten per cent of all university graduates were women. A secular civil code replaced Islamic law in 1926, giving women equal civil rights. Religious and polygamous marriages were no longer recognised and women could initiate divorce. Under Islamic law, a woman’s inheritance was half the share of a man whereas under the new laws, men and women inherited equally. Nevertheless, under the civil law men were still, for instance, officially heads of households and women needed their permission to travel abroad, and to work outside the home, as was the case in many European countries at the time. In 1930, women were given the vote in local elections, and the first female judges were appointed. In 1934, women were given full suffrage. In 1935, 18 women were elected to the Turkish Parliament of around 400 members.¹⁸

It is important to note here that in 1935, the Turkish Women’s Union, which played the role of a bridge between the Ottoman women’s movement and the Republican women, was asked to shut down. The government claimed that as women had full equal rights with men, there was no need for a woman’s organisation such as the Turkish Women’s Union. Şirin Tekeli writes about this unfortunate decision: ‘That was the end of [the] women’s movement for 40 years to come.’¹⁹

Despite the enormous changes and new opportunities for women, Turkish society was socially conformist. In spite of many efforts, the public domain continued to be seen as man’s domain. Accordingly, it continued to be defined in masculine terms. Atatürk’s modernisation preserved the culture that perceived women as the symbol of honour for family and nation alike. The ideal Republican woman was a ‘citizen woman’: urban and urbane; socially progressive. Beyond this, however, state feminism did not concern itself with what happened in the private sphere. It was not until the 1980s that a new, liberal feminist movement reclaimed women’s sexuality and desires outside of family duty. This movement opened shelters for battered women, and also provided a women’s library. Indeed, it was not until the feminist movement of the 1980s that Turkey’s state feminism was challenged by women. Feminist criticism developed in parallel to the women’s movement in the 1980s. It was critical of the state feminism of the Republican period, emphasising the symbolic significance of modernised images of women. These presented state feminism as representative of a ‘civilised nation’; and the new Republic as a democratic state emulating the West.²⁰ Feminists discussed the meaning of Republican reforms for women. They argued that these reforms did not achieve women’s liberation. Reforms continued to define women essentially as breeders and educators of new generations. Kemalist modernisation projects – introducing and increasing state control over marriage, divorce, inheritance, etc. – were seen as problematising precisely what was private.

Kemalist feminists, adopting the legalist approach, emphasised the protection and expansion of what was already granted in Kemalist reforms. They struggled against the Islamists who threatened women’s continued gains. Islamist feminists embraced the Muslim identity and attempted to reform the family using this religious framework. The feminist groups that emerged in the 1980s insisted on their autonomy from the state. The 1990s crystallised the diversity of women’s movements. Islamist, Kemalist, socialist, liberal and radical feminists all shared a single objective. Not only did they demand women’s right to work; they all emphasised the need to gain and sustain an independent identity.²¹

Arat suggests that the emergence of new feminist groups is characterised by changes in women’s agendas. These may be interpreted as a reaction to the limitations, unfulfilled promises or the marginalising effect of Kemalist reforms.²² Today, a younger generation of women have acquired power as corporate executives. Nevertheles...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Women of Turkey: Feminism and the 1980s’ Women ‘s Movement
• 2 Historically Framing Women and Turkish Cinema
• 3 Representing Career Women
• 4 Representing Female Desire and Subjectivity
• 5 Representing Prostitution
• 6 Representing Widowhood and Sexuality
• 7 Women and New Turkish Cinema
• Filmography
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index