Abstract
The nation building project in Turkey has precipitated improvements in women’s status and the expansion of women’s opportunities. Contemporary feminism, on the other hand, has focused on women’s agency in this process. Most post-1980s feminists developed their discourse, if not identity, in opposition to the Kemalist discourse on women’s rights. If Kemalists expanded women’s rights because, as founding fathers, they knew what women’s interests were, feminists claimed they wanted rights because they knew their interests better than men did. Women’s agency was at the heart of the controversy. Even today, as Turkey’s process of nation building undergoes important structural changes in its desire to become part of Europe, any women’s issue that is significant in shaping the contours of the nation state is still about women’s agency.
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© 2010 Yeşim Arat
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Arat, Y. (2010). Nation Building and Feminism in Early Republican Turkey. In: Kerslake, C., Öktem, K., Robins, P. (eds) Turkey’s Engagement with Modernity. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230277397_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230277397_4
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