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RELIGION, POLITICS AND GENDER
EQUALITY IN TURKEY:
CONFRONTATION, COEXISTENCE OR
TRANSFORMATION
Author(s):
Yesim Arat
Programme Area: Gender
and Development
Project Title: Religion,
Politics and Gender Equality
Turkey is going through a revolutionary experiment with Islam in liberal
democratic politics the results of which are not yet clear. The process of
democratization dictated the relaxing of a statist hold on religion which, in
turn, revived the spectrum of restrictive sex roles for women. The country is
thus struggling with a democratic paradox where the expansion of religious
freedoms accompanies potential and/or real threats to gender equality.
This paper explores the implications of the democratic paradox. It first
traces how religion and politics are intertwined in Turkey and then examines the
social and political effects of this intertwining in contemporary politics from
a gender perspective. The main argument is that even though the ban on the
Islamic headscarf in the universities has been the most visible source of
public controversy, it is not the uplifting of the headscarf ban in the
universities that we should prioritize as a danger, but the propagation of
patriarchal religious values (through the public bureaucracy, the educational
system and civil society organizations) that sanction secondary roles for
women.
The paper first locates the context, and then traces the intertwining of
religion and politics at the level of political as well as civil society. It
focuses on the politics of the Justice and Development Party that has been in
power since 2002 and briefly turns to the Gulen movement in civil society. It
examines how their policies and activities sanction societal norms legitimizing
gender inequality, and then assesses the implications of these sanctions. This
assessment draws attention to the opportunities women gain in this process and
the context of adaptive preferences in which women make life choices.
Finally, the paper considers countervailing forces and strategies for gender
equality and empowerment. It primarily surveys secondary material, as well as
daily newspapers, public opinion surveys, and party documents.
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