The Women’s Movement under Ottoman and Republican Rule: A Historical Reappraisal

Since the 1980s, the second wave of the feminist movement in Turkey contributed a great deal to the launching of important academic research on women’s history, established activist associations, and continued to be vocal and visible in different aspects of women’s issues. While academic research focused on a critical review of the women’s movement during the late Ottoman era (the nineteenth century) and early Republican decades (1923–1950), activism focused primarily on a feminist critique of civil law, women’s visibility in the political arena, socially traumatic issues like domestic violence and honor crimes, and on peace regarding the Kurdish issue. This article tries to conceptualize the turning points of this historical journey, which led us in new directions in Turkish women’s history and its changing paradigms.