ABSTRACT
Background to the study The role of women and their respective liberties within any society have been vulnerable to broader political and social conflicts and processes of change. The question of appropriate dress for Muslim women has been a particularly controversial issue as women struggle to maintain harmony between personal identity and societal norms. In Turkey, where most of the population is Muslim, women’s feelings about themselves and their identity as Muslims are often reflected in their participation in sport and exercise (Hargreaves 2007). Dress code can be an important dimension of that reflection because of the Islamic requirement for modesty in followers and the religious symbolism this represents to others. Consequently, the dress code for women to engage in official sports activities, as well as in other spheres of public life, has been a focal point for disputes regarding religion in the political sphere of modern Turkey. In order to understand the dress code discourse and the role of Muslim women’s involvement in sport in Turkey, it is important to analyse the historical reforms that have fuelled much of the controversy today. In the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic, the discourse regarding the role of women in Turkey greatly transformed. During this period, enhanced freedom for women was seen as a symbol of modernisation. Wide-ranging reforms were instituted in a top-down process as reformers eradicated old institutions of the Ottoman Empire. These changes were especially prevalent in the religious and political spheres. For example, ‘reforms
initiated by the founders of the Turkish Republic were part of a spate of legislation which amounted to a radical break with Ottoman Islam and its institutions’ (Kandiyoti 1991: 22). Furthermore, the Ankara government abolished the Sultanate in 1922, and the Turkish Republic was proclaimed in 1923. In 1924, the Caliphate was abolished, the state had a monopoly of control on the educational system, and the madrassas (religious schools) were terminated. Religious affairs were put under the authority of the office of the Prime Minister. The new secular government, in 1928, also eliminated the constitutional provision which recognised Islam as the official religion of the state (Kandiyoti 1991). Hence, as Özdalga (1998) stated, Turkey became the only country in the Middle East where secularism became the official ideology of the state. The significant political and social changes during this period, as well as the framework of the modernisation process, had many effects on the legal status of women. As a part of the modernisation/Westernisation process, the Turkish Civil Code, inspired by and almost identical to the Swiss Civil Code, was adopted in 1926. In 1930, women were granted suffrage in local elections in 1930, and at the national level in 1934 (Kandiyoti 1991). Women in Turkey have always been at the centre of changes in the relationship between religion and the state, as in other Muslim countries (Hargreaves 2007). In the Republic of Turkey, after the new government adopted secular legal and political reforms, the wearing of more modern dress and the abandoning of the veil were considered symbolic of progress. Indeed, Atatürk, founder of the Republic, urged women to adopt modern styles of dress (Kandiyoti 1991).
