The Politics of women‟s rights reforms during the early republican era: state feminism versus pioneer women

Download
2019
Sadi, Hande İrem
The objective of this thesis study is to analyze the nature, objectives and the repercussions of “state feminism” which pioneered the secularization and modernization reforms during the early Republican period in Turkey (from 1923s to the 1940s) and implemented in the context of an authoritarian regime until the late 1940s. It emphasizes the continuity between Ottoman-Turkish modernization and the Republican transformation of women‟s rights by inquiring into the stands of nationalist and feminist modernizing women pioneers vis-à-vis egalitarian reform policies of the male-dominated state in the context of state and nation- building processes. This study especially focuses on the impact of a dilemma created for the women activists of the era, who were committed to the nationalist- collectivist ideals of the Republic as well as to the women‟s rights. To this end, it aims to contribute to the critical examination of the egalitarian reforms of the early Republican era by analyzing the emancipatory ideals and discourses of the prominent women activists, Nezihe Muhiddin and Halide Edip. While both women were committed to the Kemalist revolution and held feminist ideals, both were silenced by the authoritarian regime and experienced this dilemma.

Suggestions

The emancipation of women in Stalinist Central Asia
Erdal, Şule; Güneş Ayata, Ayşe; Department of Eurasian Studies (2011)
This thesis mainly deals with the issue that if the policies of women's emancipation implemented in Stalinist Central Asia were constructed on the basis of Marxist ideology. For this purpose, after how the issue of women‟s emancipation is conceptualized in classical Marxism, the existing political, economic, sociocultural structures as well as the gender relations in the region before the confrontation between the Central Asians and Soviet Russians and the policies of women‟s emancipation implemented in the...
The power effects of human rights reforms in Turkey: enhanced surveillance and depoliticisation
Bahçecik, Şerif Onur (2015-06-03)
While the perspective of 'liberalism of fear' assumes that human rights limit the despotic power of the state, this paper argues that human rights reforms promoted in the context of institution- and capacity-building programmes have had significant power effects by enhancing the disciplinary capacities of the Turkish state and blunting the transformative potential of rights claiming. The reforms increased state surveillance by rechanneling criminal justice processes towards producing evidence (such as telec...
The Role of the EU in Turkey's Legislative Reforms for Eliminating Violence against Women: A Bottom-Up Approach
Ozdemir, Burcu (2014-01-01)
This paper analyses Turkey's legislative reforms on violence against women (VAW) with particular focus on the European Union (EU) role and impact in triggering the reform process. By using a bottom-up Europeanization approach, the paper traces the reform process from the 1980s up until 2005 in terms of the interaction of external and domestic factors. The empirical evidence shows that the impact of external factors (be it the EU accession process or the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Fo...
The political parties in georgian democratization
Karadağ, Yelda; Ergun Özbolat, Ayça; Department of Eurasian Studies (2011)
This thesis analyzes the development of the multi-party system and the role of political parties in the process of democratization in Georgia during both pre-independence and post-independence periods. The conditions shaping both the multi-party system and democratization are analyzed in the light of findings obtained through in-depth interviews with the representatives of political parties, civil society organizations and academicians in Georgia. In accordance with the post-Soviet political system, the nat...
The politics of recognition of Crimean Tatar collective rights in the post-Soviet period: With special attention to the Russian annexation of Crimea
Aydin, Filiz Tutku; Şahin, Fethi Kurtiy (2019-03-01)
This paper examines the process of how Crimean Tatars strived to attain group differentiated rights since they have returned to their homeland in the early 1990s. Whereas the politics of minority rights were viewed through security lens in earlier literature, we emphasize the significance of cultural constructs in influencing the minority policies, based on qualitative content analysis of "speech acts" of elites, and movement and policy documents. Focusing on the interaction of the framing processes of Crim...
Citation Formats
H. İ. Sadi, “The Politics of women‟s rights reforms during the early republican era: state feminism versus pioneer women,” Thesis (M.S.) -- Graduate School of Social Sciences. Political Science and Public Administration., Middle East Technical University, 2019.