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Behice Boran (1910–1987): A Committed Communist Woman in Cold War Turkey

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The Palgrave Handbook of Communist Women Activists around the World

Abstract

This chapter is a biographical study of Behice Boran (1910–1987), the most prominent communist woman in the history of modern Turkey, from a feminist revisionist perspective. The chapter shows that Boran’s strong presence at the forefront of socialist politics provided a political trajectory for left-feminist women’s organizing in Turkey during the 1960s and 1970s. As the leader of Türkiye İşçi Partisi (the Workers’ Party of Turkey, TIP) and the first woman to lead an officially registered political party in the history of Turkey, she had a stimulating influence on women’s participation and political socialization in the socialist movement as many women first joined the ranks of the TIP and became political actors in the momentum of political enthusiasm for a radical social change. This eventually proliferated women’s experiences in political activism, which were soon converted into political organizing of left-feminist women in the 1970s.

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  1. Department of Gender Studies, Central European University, Vienna, Austria

    Sercan Çınar

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    Francisca de Haan

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Çınar, S. (2023). Behice Boran (1910–1987): A Committed Communist Woman in Cold War Turkey. In: de Haan, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Communist Women Activists around the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13127-1_16

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