Reading the Woman Image of Kemalism and Islamism Through Novels

Abstract

While the currents of thought and political movements in Turkey determined their theories and actions regarding the country, they also attached great importance to the position of women in social life. The most important reason for this is that these movements are directly related to Turkey's Westernization/modernization process, and they reveal their attitudes by relating to this process. Since westernization/modernization has made perhaps the most radical and serious transformations in women's lives, these movements cannot stop without addressing the “women's issue”. Kemalism and İslamism dişscuss this issue most in Turkey rather than other political thoughts.
In order to examine the views of Kemalism and Islamism on women, one can look at what the intellectuals of these movements wrote and the speeches and attitudes of political leaders. On thje other hand, in this study, the main novels that are believed to represent these movements are examined. When the social position of women is mentioned, it can be thought that novels are functional in this regard, since daily life practices and cultural products will also become very important. For this purpose, in this study, the Ankara novel of Yakup Kadri, one of the most important ideologists and novelists of Kemalism, fictionalized over a female character, is discussed. The Ankara novel is very informative as it tells the author's comments, expectations and disappointments about the Republic and the modernization process through a female character.
On the other hand, in the process of the strengthening of the Islamist movement in the 1980s, the guidance novels, which are a product of the attempt to make the views of Islamism dominate not only in the field of macro politics but also in the micro practices of lif, and which try to achieve this by first explaining how women should behave in modern urban life, how they should dress, and what kind of life they should lead. The novels written by Emine Şenlikoğlu, one of the influential writers of this genre, are one of the main subject of the study. At the end of the study, it is seen that Kemalism, through Yakup Kadri, gave women certain social rights and duties in the society and carried them to public life more, while Islamists kept this area narrower to women, especially in the first rise period. However, in the final analysis, it is seen that both currents of ideas define women in the axis of their social/national or religious duties, not their gender identities, assign them primarily the duty of motherhood, and encourage men to work in areas that are left unattended if they are to work.