Dissertation
Kemalism in the periphery: anti-veiling campaigns and state-society relations in 1930s Turkey
This dissertations studies state-society relations in 1930s Turkey, focusing on the anti-veiling campaigns in the mid-1930s and aiming to understand the ways in which the Kemalist policies were received, interpreted, negotiated, compromised and/or resisted by various actors in the provinces.
- Author
- Sevgi Adak Turan
- Date
- 12 February 2015
- Links
- Full text available in Leiden University Repository
The single-party era in Turkey has been studied through a state-centered approach, preoccupied with the ideological underpinnings and political discourse of the Kemalist elite. Recently, a new body of literature, which shifts the focus away from the state and the elites, began to appear.
This thesis is a part of and contributes to this literature. It is a study of state-society relations in 1930s Turkey, focusing on the anti-veiling campaigns in the mid-1930s and aiming to understand the ways in which the Kemalist policies were received, interpreted, negotiated, compromised and/or resisted by various actors in the provinces. It presents a detailed trajectory of the debates on and attempts at women’s unveiling in Turkey and contextualizes the anti-veiling campaigns as part of a new phase the Kemalist regime entered in the 1930s.
With a strong emphasis on the significance of studying the local, it analyzes the campaigns within the complexities of their local settings and power dynamics, and thus emphasizes the role of the local elites, the resistance of the social actors and women’s agency in the shaping of the anti-veiling campaigns in 1930s Turkey.