Since World War II, the West has positioned Turkey as a role model for the Islamic world and a gateway to the Middle East.  A secular nation with a parliamentary system, Turkey, which occupies the eastern-most corner of Europe, and the western-most corner of Asia, is the only Muslim nation with European Union candidacy status.  However, despite its EU status and membership in NATO, it is a country that is still caught between its Eastern heritage and the “modernity” of the West. Thus, it is a nation that eludes categorization: part of Europe and Asia, but somehow not comfortable with the socially-constructed label “Eurasian”; bordered by the Mediterranean Sea, but somehow not “Mediterranean”; contiguous with the Middle East, but not “Middle Eastern.”

While ninety plus percent of Turkey’s over seventy million inhabitants
identify themselves as followers of one of the branches of Islam (the
majority being Sunnis), there is a strict separation between religion and
state—or secularism— that is enforced by the Turkish military.[1] This
secular-religious divide that serves as the backbone of the Republic of
Turkey was established by its first President, 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.

This anthology seeks to explore Kemalist feminism in modern Turkey.
Some papers discuss the rise of the Turkish Republic, specifically with
Atatürk’s reforms aimed at women.  These reforms instituted state dress
codes (1924), which forbade the wearing of headscarves in public buildings.
Of course, this law stood until 2012 when students at religious school
were permitted to wear them.  Yet, throughout this more modern-day
controversy concerning the headscarf, Turkish women have been continuously
engaged in feminist politics.  The myth that Turkey stands ahead of the
West in regards to gender equality will be examined here, in terms of
women’s activism and demands for expanded rights within the public sphere,
international community and organizing, and the use of fashion as a
political tool and marker of discourse.

In the late 1960s gender emerged as a category for analysis, and the
studies from this movement act as texts of women’s lives.  These juxtapose
nicely alongside the letters and accounts of YWCA workers seeking to
develop a Christian community and global connection of women in the early
twentieth century.  Of course, media forces, advertisements, and a sense of
global social pressure structured the Turkish women’s front.  Just as these
women were fighting for a place within their own nation—a land on the
metaphorical and literal border of modernity and western—their acts for
rights and social and political acceptance forced personal and political
debates to color their lives and actions.

We are seeking proposals for articles (4000-7000 words in length) that
address questions of Turkish feminism during the twentieth century.
Please send your proposal (250 words) and a cv to:
turkishfeminism@gmail.com by March 1, 2014.  For those whose proposals are
accepted, completed articles will be due by July 15, 2014.  Any questions
can be directed to: turkishfeminism@gmail.com.