Women And Civil Society In Turkey

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.

Civil society is often seen as male, structured in a way that excludes women from public and political life. Much feminist scholarship sees civil society and feminism as incompatible a result. But scholars and activists are currently trying to update this view by looking at women's positions in civil society and women's activism. This book contributes to this new research, arguing that civil society is a contested terrain where women can negotiate and successfully challenge dominant discourses in society. The book is based on interviews with women activists from ten women's organizations in Turkey. Foregrounding the voices of women, the book answers the question "How do women's NGOs contribute to civil society in the Middle East?”. At a time when civil society is being promoted and institutionalised in Turkey, particularly by the EU, this book demonstrates that women's organisations can help achieve women's emancipation, even if there are significant differences in their approaches and ideas.

Examining the rise of global women's human rights and their interpretation and application to Turkey, Nüket Kardam provides an in-depth study that applies global norms - including women's empowerment, overcoming violence against women, and gender and good governance - to a specific locale in order to examine events post application. The volume examines whether a gender equality regime exists and looks into the Turkish attempt at compliance. Moreover, it analyzes the tension between abstract universalism, Western enlightenment values, and local values and identities, including the role of Islam regarding women's rights. This groundbreaking study also includes research on the women's movement in Turkey, its discourses and its relationship with the state from the 1980s onwards, during which time multilateral and bilateral donors, and the European Union came to exert more influence, and new civil society partnerships were formed with the state.

This book focuses on the strong state tradition as well as plural society that developed in Turkey. Indicating how an unitarian ideological public sphere has evolved into a pluralistic and civil public domain, it enriches the literature on modernization, democracy, civil society, public space and social movements.

This thesis asks how women's organisations are affected by and responding to the promotion and institutionalisation of civil society in Turkey, as led by the European Union (EU). More specifically, I enquire into the civil society discourses articulated by members of women's organisations in the country in order to evaluate the extent to which they reflect or contest hegemonic views of civil society currently in circulation. I employ feminist critical discourse analysis to make sense of forty-one semi-structured interviews conducted with women activists from Kemalist, Islamic, Kurdish, feminist and anti-capitalist organisations, and of their group documents. I make four main sets of empirical arguments about this data, namely that members of women's organisations in Turkey articulate diverse discourses of civil society; that these discourses cut across different organisations in ways that belie what are often seen as fundamental ideological differences in the Turkish context; that these discourses show women activists in Turkey do not passively reproduce dominant views of civil society, even if many cling to it as a normative ideal; and that there is evidence of important critiques of and/or resistance to civil society, and of its outright rejection, meriting wider attention amongst activists and analysts. With these arguments, the thesis contributes to the literature on NGO construction of civil society in Turkey and the Middle East, and on the women's movement in Turkey, and to the feminist theorisation of civil society.

Drawing on data from ethnographic fieldwork among civic activists and identifying a range of domestic and international socio-political contexts, Refractions of Civil Society in Turkey explores different perceptions of civil society in Turkey and pursues the general question of why civil society holds such power to move those who evoke it.

Pt. 1. Empire and nation-state. A history and geography of Turkish nationalism / Caglar Keyder ; The formation of the state in Greece, 1830-1914 / Kostas P. Kostis ; Greek bull in the china shop of Ottoman 'grand illusion' : Greece in the making of modern Turkey / Faruk Birtek ; Nation and people : the placticity of a relationship / Padelis E. Lekas ; 'Do not think of the Greeks as agricultural labourers' : Ottoman responses to the Greek War of Independence / Hakan Erdem -- pt. 2. Nation and civil society. Civil society and citizenship in post-war Greece / Nicos Mouzelis and George Pagoulatos ; Women's challenge to citizenship in Turkey / Yesim Arat ; Between duties and rights : gender and citizenship in Greece, 1864-1952 / Efi Avdela ; Citizenship in context : rethinking women's relationship to the law in Turkey / Dicle Kogacioglu ; Greek and Turkish students' views on history, the nation and democracy / Thalia Dragonas, Busra Ersanli, and Anna Frangoudaki ; Speculative thoughts on nations and nationalism with special reference to Turkey and Greece / Ilkay Sunar.

Winner of the 2021 Suraj Mal and Shyama Devi Agarwal Book Prize This book provides a socio-economic examination of the status of women in contemporary Turkey, assessing how policies have combined elements of neoliberalism and Islamic conservatism. Using rich qualitative and quantitative analyses, Women in Turkey analyses the policies concerning women in the areas of employment, education and health and the fundamental transformation of the construction of gender since the early 2000s. Comparing this with the situation pre-2000, the authors argue that the reconstruction of gender is part of the reshaping of the state–society relations, the state–business relationship, and the cultural changes that have taken place across the country over the last two decades. Thus, the book situates the Turkish case within the broader context of international development of neoliberalism while paying close attention to its idiosyncrasies. Adopting a political economy perspective emphasizing the material sources of gender relations, this book will be useful to students and scholars of Middle Eastern politics, political Islam and Gender Studies.