Kemalist State Feminism and the Islamic Dress Code

Abstract

The women’s headscarf issue takes up one of the most significant areas of debate in the struggle over an Islamic ideational orientation. After providing a brief history of women’s Islamic clothing as context for the current era of Islamic politics, this chapter examines the solidification of ‘state feminism’ during the formative years of the Kemalist state. A Kemalist debate with the ghost of Ottoman social life underpins both the state’s silencing of an autonomous women’s movement and the rise of educated, urban women to positions of privilege within the Kemalist cultural hierarchy. These women frequently refer to themselves as Ataturkcu or Kemalist women. After a lengthy historical struggle with the Kemalist state-ruling male elite, Ataturkcu women have come to identify themselves as modern and progressive. At the same time, they have defined Muslim women’s embodiment of a specific type of Islamic dress code as symbolizing a social condition of ignorance and backwardness. In this binary formulation of Kemalist ideas, the view that women’s Islamic clothing is a symbol of ignorance results from the persistence of an assumption that there exists an oppressive ‘Islamic’ tradition that supports male domination in society. Ataturkcu women see themselves as possessors of Kemalist laik knowledge that is crucial to sustaining a project of modernity against Islamic cultural oppression.