ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to indicate how feminist ideas have a great impact at the grassroots level, at the same time creating a challenge to the state institutions, and constituting an element of civil society in Turkey. It discusses the external factors, and end of the Cold War, the rise of globalization, and Turkeys attempt to join the European Union have all fostered the idea of civil society. The dynamics of political life came to be determined by various social groups who focused upon special topics in the 1980s. They came to influence different public policies ranging from environmental issues to women's rights and from the headscarf issue to the collective rights of Kurdish citizens. Diverse groups have pushed their stamps over government policies in regard to their own problems. In short, the Turkish state has become faced with a plural society colored by the demands of diverse groups in the post-1980 period.
