Nükhet Sirman

It has always been said that a citizen has no race, sex or religion. Both in Turkey and in the liberal democracies of the West, it is said that citizenship is determined through a discourse of universal human rights. Indeed, constitutions have made such a clause one of their most basic principles. The saying “Happy is the one who says I’m a Turk” can, in a sense, be interpreted as a statement which has the purpose of constructing a citizen fit for the universal norms, which are to be valid for all Turkish citizens. However, everyday practice demonstrates quite clearly that citizens in Turkey are not at all perceived as an abstract group of people with equal rights. This inequality appears, first of all, as an issue of identity. Those who should have no difference in their identities as citizens are, when appropriate, defined through expressions such as ‘alleged citizen’ or ‘businessman with Jewish origin’. And Europe, when continually reminding Turkey that Europe is actually a group of values, is, in reality, defining the ‘European citizen’.

These definitions show that citizenship is, first and foremost, a definition of identity. According to the perception common in Western countries which is becoming more widespread through international governance, citizenship is not an identity but a contract between individuals agreed to in the name of living together, defining their rights and responsibilities to each other. However, this idea of a contract disregards the issue of identity; the fact that the identity of citizenship has a content whose history has been determined through certain processes just disappears within the discourse of universal and abstract individuality. It is possible to observe that discrimination on the basis of colour, race, political stance, religious belief and gender exists in every country. In this article, by examining how women were accepted as citizens in Turkey, I will try to demonstrate that gender-based discrimination is an inseparable part of this universal and abstract perception of citizenship.

Carol Pateman holds that citizenship is a gendered phenomenon and that in liberal democracies women are included into the social contract through their fertility . This phenomenon is based on the myth of liberal democracies that any discrimination, except for those made by nature, is against human rights. However, in societies such as ours the main structure is formed through a mobilization in the name of attaining the level of ‘advanced’ societies and not through this idea of naturality. In order to explain this proposition, it is necessary to make certain general determinations. What must be emphasized above all is that a citizen with universal rights is a construct and that, like every construct, it has emerged as part of a historical process formed under certain social and political conditions. Within this historical process, the processes of nation-state building undergone by countries by resisting and rebelling against powerful countries and those undergone by countries which have progressed technologically and scientifically by collecting the riches of the world ever since 1492 have been significantly different. Nation-states which came out through resistance against economic and/or political exploitation have emerged out of this process with the concern of catching up with this progress in information and technology and with the effort of becoming modern.

As a matter of fact, modernity has even formed the basis of legitimacy for these nation-states in changing the old regime. In the effort of making the nation-state both different from and equal to other states, the construction of these modern identities has taken the path of defining citizenship through new identities of womanhood and manhood. While the identity of the ‘modern man’ was to constitute equality with advanced Western societies, creating difference became the function of the identity of the ‘modern woman.’

The modern man, who was called the ‘New Man’ in Turkey, was constructed as the head of the modern family that now had to include a mother, father and children and who would desire to be the subject of science and progress because of the sovereignty this subject position promised. The Civil Code of 1926 was the form this construct took at the legal level. The husband was to be the head of the household, responsible for its livelihood, while the wife was to be his ‘helper and advisor’. By way of the Constitution which defined the family as the foundation of the society, this imaginary of the modern family became the institution charged with the formation of the Turkish citizen. Within this institution, where individuals had to be attached to each other through love and respect, the most important duty of women as wives was to raise children who loved their country . These ties of love and respect, which were to keep the family together, were, at the same time, to establish the relationship between the citizens – who were all imagined to be members of a family – and the country itself. These ties of love and respect included making sacrifices for the family and for the country, and even giving one’s life. This emphasis on sacrifice for the community is what differentiates the construct of citizenship in countries which became nations by resisting exploitation, from the identity of the citizen formed through naturality, in the West.

Love and respect are words which must be dwelt upon since they include interesting relationships. As we all learn in primary school, love is a type of behaviour which must be shown to those younger than us, while respect must be shown to our elders. Thus, we are talking about a hierarchy based on age. When we look at traditional societies what we see is that hierarchies, divisions of labour, identities and social positions are indeed determined by age and gender. Therefore, we may say that this new society, which claims to be modern, has placed the identity and hierarchy of traditional society at the foundation of its definition for citizenship. On the other hand, it is possible to assert that, that which is traditional has interesting functions within this construct. The traditional hierarchies based on age and gender, which were placed at the centre of the definition of the modern family, were not perceived as traditional; on the contrary, they defined the genuineness and originality of the Turkish identity (if we are to use the common terminology of our day, its töre ) and therefore took on the duty of creating the difference from the West. The relationships between men as sovereign heads of the households, were determined through equality, with their identities being defined through their professions. This became an indicator of sameness, uniformity with the West. Women and children, who were made subject to men, were defined in the context of the duties given to them within the family. This, on the other hand, became an indicator of the very difference from the West.

The function of tradition was not limited to merely underlining the difference from the sovereign societies of the West. This concept was also used to describe that which was different in social practice from what had been imagined. If, for instance, domestic violence was taking place, instead of a problem created by current social conditions, this could be seen as a problem of cultural lag which could be solved by education,. When the women’s movement demanded changes in the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) or the Civil Code, traditions were once again brought up; it was said that this society could not yet accept these demands and that much time had to pass before it would be able to! And of course, tradition, that is, not being able to have a modern family, was seen as a sign that certain ethnic and class-based groups were not able to modernize. Our duty now was to watch women’s programs aired in the afternoons or TV serials put on during prime-time after the evening news and to draw lessons from them – that is, to learn what the correct family, correct womanhood was.

Who is this ‘we’ that I have mentioned? Learning what love and respect were exactly, who should love whom and respect whom and thus become modern people who led their lives within nuclear families, was no easy feat. This lesson was first learned by those who founded the new society. From experts writing articles in newspapers and from politicians and writers trying to understand where the power and success of Western societies lay, elites learned that the secret of progress was hidden in the family. The secret of modernity was spread first through novels, then through weekly and monthly magazines targeting women, then through films and finally, through television programs. This sequence demonstrates that the learning of modern womanhood started out from those who were literate and had the opportunity to access these publications and broadcasts and, through time, became more and more widespread. Those who internalized these values and based their identities on them formed the modern middle class. These are the people I call ‘we’. Those who wish to learn how to be the woman of the house, how to transform love into affection by way of reason, those who accept being helpers and advisors as their duty to their country could manage to become subject-citizens fully equipped with the desires of modernity thanks to these very publications. This desire encompasses a very wide sector today, thanks to the television. However, there are those who can manage and those who can not. Constructs of citizenship never, in any way, say that the realization of these desires is an economic issue. The people who ‘can not manage’ can only be those living under the pressure of traditional values, right?

This “we” took different forms in political discourse with the transformation of society through neoliberal policies. In the second half of the 1980’s Turgut Özal began mentioning a group called ortadirek . Later on, this term was forgotten and the formula of “What does the citizen want?” came to be used, for short. We became familiar with the myth that the policies of the government were determined according to the desires attributed to this very ‘citizen’ after the 80’s, along with this term, ‘ortadirek’. It may be useful to remember how the political orators used to address the public in the past: Either a separation between the people and the elite was constantly made, or the fractions which constituted the people were all enumerated in every speech – workers, labourers, peasants, civil workers… This public, which always used to be a plural identity – even though it was only ever imagined as male – is now, however, imagined to be a singular subject. This subject is a head of a household, who loves his country and puts all his effort into taking care of his family. Therefore, this subject is a ‘he’. It is male. Maybe there is actually nothing surprising about the fact that we have become a society which has less and less tolerance for any kind of difference!

The women’s movement learned once again the criteria through which this family-based citizenship differentiates between men and women, and the duties that befell onto women during the campaigns to change the Civil Code and the Penal Code as well as through various campaigns to establish positive discrimination policies within the political system. Women were to be first of all wives and mothers and only then could they take advantage of their citizenship rights. Even if laws changed, in practice women would be perceived, first and foremost, as wives and mothers who made sacrifices for their country. This formula, that is, the construction of women as the ruled and men as the rulers, means that women would not legitimately be able to demand power under any condition whatsoever, except for the sake of their families and country. Those who act any differently are only naked bodies, which are to be abandoned in the waste land of citizenship.

From Amargi- Issue 7