“I’m Not A Walking Ilmihal”: A Case Study of Religious Women’s Activism in Turkey

• In Event: 4124 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (100 min): Table 9. Activism/Social Justice

Abstract

This article focuses on the activism of religious women in Istanbul and their relationship to the politics of gender in Turkey. Based on ethnographic research on religious women activists, my findings show that religious female activists in this study aimed to create a space for themselves to participate in the public and political sphere through their discursive activism. Their urge for action stemmed from their marginalized outsider-within standpoint as pious women in Turkish society which persisted since the late nineteenth century. Devout Istanbulite women applied to discursive activism to challenge and deconstruct the persistent illustrations of religious women as inappropriate citizens of the Turkish nation and to redefine and explain Islamic culture and Muslim women from a more heterodox perspective.

Author

• Seyma Ozdemir