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148 œ> JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EAST WOMEN'S STUDIES The New Legal Status ofWomen in Turkey Women for Women's Human Rights (WWHR) New Legal Status of Women in Turkey. April 2002. Reviewed by Zehra Arat, Purchase College, SUNY Although not free from idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies, the Republic of Turkey has had an outward disposition and sought close ties, particularly with the western world. Since the mid 1980s, Turkish governments' desire to have the country integrated into the international markets gained a momentum. Especially after filing a formal application to the European Union membership in 1987, the country increased its rate of participation in the regional and international human rights regimes and adopted several reform packages in order to harmonize its laws with those of the European Union. The New Legal Status ofWomen in Turkey is a booklet prepared by the Women for Women's Human Rights (WWHR), a women's organization that has been actively promoting women's rights in Turkey since its establishment in 1993. In addition to political activism and lobbying efforts, the organization conducts research and workshops and attempts to disseminate the research findings and inform the public about women's conditions and rights in Turkey. (Some of its booklets and research reports, as well as more information on the activities of the organization, can be obtained by accessing its web page at www.wwhr.org.) The emphasis of the booklet is on the rights of women under the new Civil Law enacted in 2001 and entered into force on January 1, 2002. The new code replaced the 1926 Civil Law, which was overtly sexist despite the fact that the secularizing mission of the 1926 law included some progressive clauses that eliminated several male privileges (e.g., polygyny, divorce by repudiation, and superior inheritance rights) that had been permitted by the religious code inherited from the Islamic Ottoman Empire. Through a thematic discussion of various issue areas such as marriage, divorce, custody, adultery, inheritance, adoption, property regimes, etc., the booklet addresses the changes introduced by the new Civil Law and briefly discusses the shortcomings ofthe law as well as the remaining constraints and discrimination faced by women. The latter concern compels the booklet to address the treatment of women and gender relations in other laws, includ- BOOK REVIEWS 149 ing the Penal Code and labor laws. The Penal Code, also enacted in 1926, was particularly notorious for restricting individual freedoms, criminalizing various acts ofpolitical opposition, treating sexes unequally, and being lenient on violence against women. In fact, some of the topics covered by the booklet, such as citizenship, adultery, honor killings, reproductive rights of women, sexuality, sex workers, and pornography, fall into the domain ofthe legislation other than the Civil Law. Unfortunately, the immediate publication and comprehensive coverage of the booklet also constitute a weakness, because the other laws in question have been also subject to amendments, and their replacements were being drafted at the time of the booklet's preparation. For example, a new Labor Law (no. 4857) was enacted on May 22, 2003, and entered into force on June 10 ofthe same year, and a completely new Penal Code (no. 5230) was adopted on September 26, 2004. These two new laws and the other recent changes to the country's laws, including the Constitution, also mark a change in the normative approach to gender relations, as well as an improvement in women's legal status; they employ a nonsexist language and take a stronger stand on offenses and discrimination against women. Consequently, the continuation of the legal reforms beyond the legislation of the new Civil Law has destined the booklet to be dated before it was published. Of course, this was an inevitable problem, and as an organization that tries to inform people about women's rights and status in a timely manner, the WWHR could not wait for the reform process to be completed. However, the booklet, which includes valuable information, could be allowed to have a longer shelf life, if the WWHR team preparing it were more attentive to the dating of changes and specified when each article of a given law had been amended. Nevertheless, the scope of the issues covered and...

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