The beginning of the emancipation dated back to Tanzimat, the period of reforms in the Ottoman Empire (1839–1876). Among the young Ottomans we can
17 Hanioglu, M. Sükrü, Ataturk: An Intellectual Biography, History Departments at The Ohio State University and Miami University, 2011, pp. 160-199.
18 By the time of the 1995 election, it had fallen to 2.4% with 13 women out of 550 members. By 2002, this proportion was 4.4%. 14% by 2011 (79 out of 471 women) and 17% by 2015 (96 out of 454 women).
The situation of female voters was very interesting: 73% of female voters believed that a woman could be a good leader, 64% believed that a woman could be a successful prime minister, while 79% did not want her daughter to be politically active. Abadan-Unat Nermin: Movements of Women and National Liberation. In: Unat, Nermin Abadan (ed.): Women in the Developing World: Evidence from Turkey, Monograph Series in World Affairs 22. Denver, Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver, 1986, pp. 11-25.
19 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/08/record-number-women-elected-turkish-parliament (Download: 01.12. 2020.)
20 Müftüler-Bac, Meltem, Turkish Women’s Predicament, Women’s Studies International Forum, 22/3, pp. 303–315, 1999. By 2015 that number had risen to 30.3% for women. According to statistics nearly 70% of Turkish women worked in the agricultural sector, 10.6% in industry, and 19.4% in the service sector. These figures have of course underestimated women’s semi-formal employment and unpaid female family labor in the countryside, which puts the proportion of female workers in Turkey at 43.7%, with an official participation rate of 28.7%. Women's Studies International Forum, Volume 22, Issue 3, May–June 1999, Pp. 303-315, 314.
21 Müftüler-Bac, Meltem, Opt.cit. 313.
find the earliest advocates of female emancipation, who laid the foundation of the later reforms. They found women (and focusing on their situation) as an effective tool for expressing how archaic and unacceptable social traditions and customs were. Atatürk also saw a similar tool in emancipation and an effective support base in women. In 1908 the Committee of Union and Progress of the Young Turks overthrew the power of the Sultan causing a social and ideological space and unrest. From that time lots of women’s societies and organizations were formed with a wide range of charities for women’s rights in their profiles.
Celal Nuri (1881-1938) a renowned Islamologist, who lived at the time of the adoption of the Ottoman Family Law Act - 1917 stated that problems with women’s rights were not caused by Islam but by ignorance and tyranny. Islam does not deny women’s rights and does not prohibit their social participation. On the contrary, Islam grants women more rights than in Western societies. For example, while in Europe women could only hold office under certain circumstances, in Islamic law they could do so without restrictions. Moreover, Islam has allowed women to be heads of state - but only in an Islamic state. In their view, Islamic law grants women rights, but tradition protects them from exercising.22
In contrast, radical Westerners directly blamed religion for women’s problems.
One of their prominent members, Abdullah Cevdet (1869-1932) issued the following:
„Open both the Qur'an and the women!”23 According to Cevdet, monogamy should be the rule.24 Women should be allowed to wear the clothes they like. Marriage and divorce must be proceeded in accordance with European law. In his view, women’s biggest problems - the veil, divorce, inequality in inheritance and polygamy - stem from
22 Lewis, Reian – Mills, Sara, Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. Routledge, 2003, pp. 263-285.
23 Akgunduz, Belkiz, Reforms Concerning Women Rights in the Family Act of 1917 in the Ottoman Empire, 2011.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271383313_Reforms_Concerning_Women_Rights_in_the_Fam ily_Act_of_1917_in_the_Ottoman_Empire (Download: 01.12.2020)
24 Özdalga, Elisabeth, Late Ottoman Society: The Intellectual Legacy. Routledge, 2005, pp. 117-135.
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both Islam and the Islamic tradition. As long as people insist on this, there is no hope of a solution.25
According to Ziya Gökalp (1876-1924), known as the father of Turkish nationalism, a representative of Turkish nationalists, the most influential ideologue, poet of Atatürk, the Islamic family consists of four elements: the Arab family, the Islamic family, the Iranian-Roman family, and the Turkish family. The anti-female traditions, that Europeans often attribute to Islam, do not really stem from Islam, but can be traced back to Iranian-Roman culture.26 Gökalp found the cause of the problem in the legislative power was granted to the head of state, which assured him, that where the custom is contrary to Islam, he would choose the custom (e.g. the consent of the guardian is required for the validity of a marriage, which rule is not required by Islam but by the legislature). According to Gökalp, women should be given equal rights with respect to marriage, divorce, inheritance, labor law, and political rights. The situation of women will only improve, if they come together and act together. In his view, if absolutism can be abolished in a state, it can also be abolished in the family. According to Gökalp, one of the most important tasks of the constitutional monarchy is to integrate family law into the legal system and to ensure that family law disputes can be negotiated before normal courts.27
Among the women activists, we can find the Society for the Protection of Women’s Rights, which stood out for ensuring women’s access to paid professions. We can also find the first women’s magazines (Hanimlara Mahsus Gazette - Women’s own magazine) actively participating in shaping public opinion on how to become better women, wives, mothers and Muslims. In the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) women played an active role in providing social assistance, such as collecting donations to war orphans and participating in the care of the wounded. The women’s section of the Red Crescent
25 Caha, Ömer, Women and Civil Society in Turkey: Women's Movements in a Muslim Society, Ashgate, 2013, p. 72.
26 Gökalp, Ziya, The Principles of Turkism. Brill Leiden, 1968, pp. 34-38.
27 Parla, Taha, The Social and Political Thought of Ziya Gökalp: 1876-1924, Brill, 1985, 62-65.
Society provided nurse training for Turkish women.28 University education was opened to women in Istanbul in 1914 giving them access to business and commercial knowledge (the name of the University was Inas Darül Fünuna).
The losses of the First World War significantly reduced the male population and thus increased the demand for female labor. The expansion of women’s employment was not limited to so-called white-collar jobs (banks, post offices) but created a wider mobilization in the Anatolian provinces. As a result of the First World War in 1925, a form of compulsory female employment was introduced, so the number of female employees also increased. Female volunteer groups were formed to assist the army in its activities. Although better conditions have increased the presence of women in the labor market, understandably the phenomenon elicitied ambivalent reactions. During working hours women could leave wearing headscarves, but it was not uncommon for police to repatriate women whose skirts deemed too short. This period was full of controversy over the issue of women.29
The Family Law Act 1917 (Hukuk-i Aile Kararnamesi=HAK) was the first written law in this subject in the entire Muslim world. It declared marriage without consensus illegal and incorporated the conciliation procedure into the divorce process.30
According to the analysis of most historians among the Turkish nationalists the articles of the moderate branch, especially Ziya Gökalp had the greatest influence on the legislature. He proposed the establishment of the Family Law Council, giving the state the right to intervene in marriage contracts. It would not be fair of course to say that Ziya Gökalp was the only one who influenced.31 He mentioned and suggested setting up a family council and introducing the listed reforms32 (which was very similar to the
28 Boyar, Ebru, Beyond the Harem: Ways to be a Woman During the Ottoman Empire, University of Cambridge, 2016, pp. 18-22.
29 Davis, Fanny, The Ottoman Lady. Social History from 1718 to 1918, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. 1986, p. 23.
30 Tucker, Judith, Revisiting Reform: Women and the Ottoman Law of Family Rights, 1917. The Arab Studies Journal Vol. 4, No. 2 (Fall 1996), pp. 4-17.
31 Hanioglu, Sükrü, Ataturk: An Intellectual Biography. Princeton, 2011, pp. 62-65.
32 Az iszlám jogi iskolákkal kapcsolatban Lásd: SISKA, Katalin, Guy Burak: The Second Formation of Islamic Law. The Hanafi School in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire. Journal on European History of Law, 7/2016.
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Malikite law school)33 while he was also careful not to violate or cross the boundaries of Islamic law in any way. They continually mitigated the impact of Islamic law, but did not attack or insult the views of any group. Gökalp had influence on the legislation of both the late Ottoman era and the young Turkish Republic, and Atatürk’s reforms on women’s rights grew out of the reforms embedded in the Empire.
3. OPINIONS ABOUT THE TURKISH FEMALE EMANCIPATION IN