Consuming Identity: Feminism and the Politics of Clothing in Modern Turkey

While ninety plus percent of Turkey’s over seventy million inhabitants identify themselves as a follower of Islam, there is a strict separation between religion and state enforced by the Turkish military.  This secular-religious divide serves as the backbone of the Republic of Turkey was established by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923, and includes a series of political, social, and cultural reforms, such as the institution of a public dress code, that deconstructed the patriarchal hierarchy of the Ottoman Empire and increased women’s rights.  Many progressive women were drawn to Atatürk’s reforms, and mobilized to create a distinct brand of secular (i.e., state) “Kemalist” feminism which would allow Turkey to “catch up with the West.”[1]  One of the prominent causes of these early feminists was the enforcement of Atatürk’s secular dress code—a political issue which still divides Turkish women today.  While some Turks approve of the proliferation of western styles of dress and consumer goods (e.g., Turkey’s first female Prime Minister, Tansu Çiller, was even praised for her western appearance), beginning in the 1980s, those who felt that the new westernized Turkey did not represent their religious or cultural beliefs began an Islamic political backlash that has resulted in the reclamation of the headscarf, or more specifically the türban(an icon of political Islam not to be confused with the turban). 

This study will examine a significant issue that is currently facing women in the Middle East: clothing.  Using media images, material objects, and consumer geographies, it will analyze the influence of Westernization, globalized consumer culture, tradition and politics on the way Turkish women dress. 

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[1] Deniz Kandiyoti, “Some Awkward Questions on Women and Modernity in Turkey,” Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998): 272–275.

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