Women in Turkey
Women in Turkey obtained full political participation rights, including the right to vote and run for office nationwide offices in 1934. Article 10 of the Turkish Constitution bans any discrimination, state or private, on the grounds of sex. It is the first country to have a woman as the President of its Constitutional Court. Article 41 of the Turkish Constitution reads that the family is "based on equality between spouses".
There are many historical examples of Turkish women involved in public life and activism. The Turkish feminist movement began in the 19th century during the decline of the Ottoman Empire when the Ottoman Welfare Organisation of Women was founded in 1908. The ideal of gender equality was embraced after the declaration of the Republic of Turkey by the administration of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, whose modernising reforms included a ban on polygamy and the provision of full political rights to Turkish women by 1930.
Turkish women continue to be the victims of rape and honour killings, especially in Turkish Kurdistan, where most crimes against women in Turkey take place. Research by scholars and government agencies indicate widespread domestic violence among the people of Turkey, as well as in the Turkish diaspora. Turkey is the first and only country to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention, the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence. It was estimated in 2012 that 40 percent of women have experienced physical sexual violence. The participation of Turkish women in the labour force stands at about 35 percent.
Women in Turkey face discrimination in employment, and, in some regions, education. The participation of Turkish women in the labor force is less than half of that of the European Union average, and while several campaigns have been successfully undertaken to promote female literacy, there is still a gender gap in secondary education. Child marriage in Turkey dropped below 1%, although some cases still occur in the Kurdish-inhabited eastern parts of the country.
History
Sultanate of Women
In the course of the 16th and 17th centuries during the Sultanate of Women, some individual women of the Imperial Harem achieved an uncommon degree of influence on politics of the Ottoman Empire.The period started in 1520 during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent until 1656, the reign of Mehmed IV.
The sultans did not fear their female relatives as much as they feared their male relatives, allowing women to become close advisers.
Some of the Sultans during this time were minors and it was their mothers, like Kösem Sultan, who were the leaders of the Harem and effectively ruled the Empire, though at one time it was the daughter of the sultan, as with Mihrimah Sultan.
Most of the sultan mothers were former concubines.
Decline of the Ottoman Empire
During the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, educated women within the elite classes of Istanbul began to organise themselves as feminists. The first women's magazine, Terakki-i Muhadderat, appeared on 27 June 1869 as a weekly supplement to Terakki newspaper.With the Tanzimat reforms, improving women's conditions was considered as part of a wider modernisation effort. Ottoman women's movement began to demand rights.
They fought to increase women's access to education and paid work, to abolish polygamy, and the peçe, an Islamic veil. Early feminists published woman magazines in different languages and established different organizations dedicated to the advancement of women.
The first women's association in Turkey, the Ottoman Welfare Organization of Women, was founded in 1908 and became partially involved in the Young Turks Movement, and the Sade Giyinen Hanımlar Cemiyeti campaigned for the unveiling of women and their participation in public life.
Writers and politicians such as Fatma Aliye Topuz, Nezihe Muhiddin and Halide Edib Adıvar also joined the movement.
In her novels, Halide Edib Adıvar criticised the low social status of Turkish women and what she saw as the lack of interest of most women in changing their situation. Nene Hatun became a folk heroine during Russo-Turkish War
Turkish Republic
During the Turkish War of Independence, Kara Fatma, a widow, proved herself as a successful militia leader.After the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the feminist movement gradually became part of the Kemalist modernization efforts. Polygamy was banned, divorce and inheritance rights were made equal. Mustafa Kemal had the ambition to make Turkey a new modern secular nation. In 1925, the Turkish government introduced a new Family Law modelled after the Swiss Family Law, and in the same year, it banned the fez. In 1928, the Turkish government removed the official religion provision from the constitution.
Mustafa Kemal viewed modern clothing as an essential visual symbol of the new secular nation and encouraged both women and men to wear modern fashion, but in contrast to his law against traditional wear for men, he never introduced a ban against the hijab. However, he appeared in public with his wife Latife Uşaki unveiled and arranged formal state receptions with dinner and dance were men and women could mingle, to encourage women to leave seclusion and adopt modern clothing, and in the mid-1920s, upper and middle class Turkish women started to appear unveiled in public. In the 1930s, Turkey gave full political rights to women, including the right to elect and be elected locally and nationwide. Granted by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkish women gained women's suffrage before women in many European countries such as France, Italy and Greece. There still remained, however, a large discrepancy between formal rights and the social position of women.
In the 1980s, women's movements became more independent of the efforts to modify the state. After the 1980 Turkish coup d'état, women from both urban and academic milieus began to meet in reading groups and discuss feminist literature together. In these "awareness-raising groups", which were established notably in Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir, they criticized the standard construction of the family as well as the gender-specific role behavior that was forced on women. The movement was criticized for being feminist because of western influence, of being middle class, as well as criticized by the socialists for being reformist and liberal. Independent feminist women's magazines were founded to expose the frequency of sexual harassment and violence against women. Şirin Tekeli, Stella Ovadia and Gülnur Savran were some notable women in the movement. They were part of the TUMAS trade union which they organized, which they hoped would be a democratic and egalitarian organization. The feminists published articles in Somut, which subsequently became the most widely spread paper among Turkish women.
According to an article by Charlotte Binder and Natalie Richman, in 1987 feminists organized the first public protest against male violence, followed by campaigns against sexual harassment, "purple needle" and campaigns seeking the right of self-determination over the female body. These campaigns arose due to women's wish to reject the traditional patriarchal code of ethics, honor, and religion, which left men to decide the fate of the female body. The second wave of the women's movement in Turkey reached a wider and more diverse group of women than the first women's movement.
The acceptance of women's issues as an independent political and planning problem was discussed for the first time in the Fifth Five Year Development Plan, and "the General Directorate for the Status and Problems of Women" was established as a national mechanism in 1990. The General Directorate, which was connected to the Prime Ministry in 1991, has been carrying out its activities under the responsibility of a State Ministry. It conducts a large variety of activities with the objectives of protecting women's rights, strengthening the position of women in social, economic, cultural, and political life, and providing the equal utilization of rights, opportunities, and capacities. Since the 1990s, feminist discourse has become institutionalized, with the foundation of women's studies centers and university programs at universities such as Marmara University and Istanbul University. In 1993, Tansu Çiller became the first female Prime Minister of Turkey.
In 2002, the Turkish government reformed Turkish criminal and civil law to equalize the rights of women and men during marriage, divorce, and any subsequent property rights. A criminal law has been established that deals with female sexuality as a matter of individual rights, rather than as a matter of family honor. Additions to the Turkish constitution oblige the state to use all the necessary means to promote the equality of the sexes. Family courts were also created, labour laws were instituted to prohibit sexism, and programs were created to educate against domestic violence and improve access to education for girls.
In 2021, Turkey left the Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence at the Istanbul Convention. In response CEDAW told the Turkish government to reverse its decision. A UN special rapporteur said that Turkey's abandonment of the convention "emboldened perpetrators" against women.
The Turkish government prohibited marching to commemorate International Women's Day, but despite the prohibition, several thousand women marched in Istanbul in March 2024.
Legal rights
Turkey is a party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women since 1985, as well as to its Optional Protocol since 2002.Article 10 of the Turkish Constitution bans any discrimination, state or private, on the grounds of sex. It is the first country which had a woman as the President of its Constitutional Court, Tülay Tuğcu. In addition, Turkish Council of State, the supreme court for administrative cases, also has a woman judge Sumru Çörtoğlu as its president.
The article 41 of the Turkish Constitution was revised to read that the family is "based on equality between spouses". The new code also granted women equal rights to property acquired during marriage, which was supposedly meant to give economic value to women's labor within the family household.
File:Nezihe muhiddin.jpg|150px|thumb|left|Nezihe Muhiddin, one of leading names of the First Wave Republican feminists. She completed the formation of Women's People Party
The minimum age for marriage was also raised to 18. In cases of forced marriage, women have right to ask an annulment within the first five years of marriage. In 2004, an update to article 10 of the constitution placed the responsibility for establishing gender equality on the state: "men and women have equal rights. The state shall have the obligation to ensure that this equality exists in practice".
In 2005, the Turkish penal code was changed to criminalize marital rape and harshen the sentences for those convicted of honor killings, which previously carried reduced sentenced because of "provocation". The Human Rights Directorate reported that the number of honor killings committed in Turkey rose to 220 in 2007, with most of the killings occurring in major cities.
The Islamic headscarf, worn by 20% of Turkish women, is allowed to women working in public offices during the practice of their functions. Girl students in primary and secondary education also are allowed to use headscarf.