Women and Politics in Turkey: There Is a Long Way to Go

Women in Turkey gained the right to vote and to be elected with the amendment made in the Constitution and Election Law on December 5, 1934.

This fundamental right, which came at the end of the struggle for equal rights and freedoms that accelerated since the second half of the 19th century, points to a space of struggle rather than a final achievement. Because women still have a long way to go.

Following a series of basic legal rights, such as participating in municipal elections, being elected as ‘mukhtar’ in villages and members in councils of elders, with a series of laws enacted since 1930, women in Turkey gained the right to vote and to be elected after the the law amendment made in the Constitution and Election Law on December 5, 1934.

The importance of the right to legal representation is too great to be denied. However, it is necessary to point out how the narrative that “Turkey is the first country to give women the right to vote and to be elected” and which gives applause only to those who hold political power, distorts the truth in two different ways.

Rendering the history of women’s struggle invisible

The first is that there were countries that recognised this right long before Turkey: As a matter of fact, in New Zealand in 1893, in Australia in 1902, in Finland in 1906, in Norway in 1913, and women were given the right to vote in national elections soon after the revolution in the Soviet Union in 1917.

The second is that this right is commemorated independently of the women’s movement and women’s demands, which sowed the seeds of struggle during the decades between the decline of Ottoman Empire and the rise of the Republic.

Although the androcentric narrative renders women’s struggle invisible and to sever its ties with the history of struggle, there is a truth that history tells us.

For example, we know that important gains have been achieved by the women’s movement after the distinct moment of relative freedom brought by the Second Constitutional Era (the period of restored parliamentary rule in the Ottoman Empire between the 1908 Young Turk Revolution and the 1920 dissolution of the General Assembly, during the empire’s twilight years.), thanks to the public opinion created by both magazines and associations.

The first of these is that primary education became compulsory for girls. Different types of educational institutions were opened for women, vocational training was established for them to become teachers, and even the first women’s university was opened in 1914.

In addition to the field of education, but in a way that can be thought of in connection with it, we also know that articles published in the magazines encouraged women who want to start a business to become entrepreneurs. Undoubtedly, it is possible to count dozens of such gains that women have fought for with tooth and nail.