Feminist and Nationalist Discourse in Kadınlar Dünyası

Abstract

There is a widely presumed idea that Ottoman women did not ask for their rights but those rights were bestowed upon them. The bourgeoning feminist studies of 1980s, however, refuted this long-lasting myth as they discovered what has been buried within the annals of history. With the efforts of these studies shedding light on Ottoman women’s emancipation, we reach out to the knowledge that our grandmothers put up a valiant struggle under challenging circumstances. Ottoman women struggled not only to gain their rights within the national boundaries but also to circumvent orientalist dichotomies that have traditionally prevented their feminist voice to be heard internationally. Even after being discovered from the long-forgotten dusty shelves, accessing what has been discussed by our grandmothers was not simple and straightforward. As Ottoman women recorded their struggle in the Ottoman script, their ideas could not be conveyed effortlessly and needed transliteration into Latin script. Thanks to the transliteration project of women periodicals carried out by The Women’s Library and Information Centre, we can now access and analyse what had been discussed by our grandmothers. While there are several notorious women periodicals published for women, within the frame of this paper, I will conduct a contextualised reading of the feminist and nationalist discussion that has taken place within the Women’s journal Kadınlar Dünyası (Women’s World) and discuss how women of that time took the issue of feminism and nationalism. Did they relate themselves to the word, feminism, or tried to find a new way to defend themselves? How did they situate themselves within the frame of Western feminist ideals and Eastern nationalist norms? In this paper, I will mainly discuss how these rather opposite terms entangled within the discourse of female freedom.