Feminism in Turkey: A Short History

In May 1987, about 3000 women marched through the streets of Istanbul to protest against the battering of women in the home. This was not the first time that women in Turkey had taken to the streets, but it certainly was the first time that they had voiced demands specific to their conditions of existence as women in Turkish society. As stated by one of the speakers at the rally marking the end of the march, women were not marching for their nation, their class, nor for their husbands, brothers and sons, but for themselves. I take this march and events following it to signal a new form in which the position of women in Turkish society is being articulated within the political terrain of Turkey. This new visibility of women in Turkish political discourse has many links to strands of thought that can be broadly called ‘feminist’ and as such provides a fruitful arena for the investigation of the forms this ideological current takes in Third World countries.