Democracy and women in Turkey: in defense of liberalism.

This article examines how different groups of women, including feminists and Islamists, contributed to the process of democratization since the 1980s in Turkey. It is argued that as women sought their rights, they liberalized the polity. To the extent that liberalization protects democracies from degenerating into mere formalism, women expanded the parameters of "substantive" democracy. In the Turkish case where a strong state has traditionally stifled claims for individual civic rights, the process of liberalization women cultivated was particularly important for democratization. This article aims to explore how women in Turkey contributed to the process of democratization since the 1980 military intervention in the country. Different women's groups, feminists, Islamists, and others expanded the parameters of democratic participation as they demanded substantive rather than formal democracy. Women's activism took place in the context of a representative democracy that was struggling to liberalize itself. The critical relationship between democracy and liberalization has long been emphasized. Liberalization secures civil liberties and rights to individuals and groups and protects democracy from degenSocial Politics Fall 1999 © 1999 Oxford University Press at U niverstsbibliothek Johann C hstian Senenberg on A ril 5, 2013 http://sp.rdjournals.org/ D ow nladed from Democracy and Women in Turkey • 371 erating into mere formalism. In turn, minimum requirements of representative democracy such as suffrage, regular elections, and accountability to the constituents guarantee that those who govern do not manipulate or retract liberal rights (O'Donnell and Schmitter 1986, 9). Within this close relationship between democracy and liberalization, women in Turkey contributed to the former by expanding the confines of the latter. Against a strong state that limited civic rights, they demanded the expansion of these rights with their diverse activism. The different agendas they articulated in the public realm expanded the scope of pluralism and consequently democracy in Turkey. Even though it is a necessary if not sufficient condition of substantive democracy, liberalism and, by extension, individualism have long been criticized as an inadequate ideology for cultivating responsible citizenship and nurturing the "common good." Civic republicans forcefully argue the importance of going beyond particular individual interests in the public realm to realize the common good (Phillips 1991, 46-53). Preoccupation with individual interests obstructs the proclivity to construct a better world for the public at large. Feminists have played their part in criticizing liberalism. Feminist criticisms of liberalism range widely including criticisms of contract theory, liberal moral theory, individual liberal thinkers, and liberal feminism. While some are concerned with the patriarchal foundations of liberal thought (Eisenstein 1981; Pateman 1988), others criticize the competitive pursuit of self-interest in the public realm that liberalism defends (Elshtain 1981, 298-53; Fox-Genovese 1991, 8). The latter argue that a collaborative participatory conception of politics is missing in liberal thought. Many feminists have long been dissatisfied with women's search for equality to men, a search based on universal liberal notions of equality of individuals; they urge that women's difference be recognized not on an individual but a collective basis, as a gender issue (Taylor 1994, 25-44). In this article, I argue that these valuable criticisms need to be contextualized. We need to remind ourselves that they emerged in the historically specific Western contexts of liberal democracies and could be inadequate to respond to problems of women in sociopolitical contexts where liberalism could not flourish. Against a tradition of liberalism and liberal individualism, feminists who uphold women's collaborative, nurturing culture can criticize demands for individual (women's) equal rights as "destructive" of the "common good" and advocate various collectivism collaborative goals. In a context where the individual has traditionally been subordinated to the demands of the collective, these criticisms might be irrelevant. A at U niverstsbibliothek Johann C hstian Senenberg on A ril 5, 2013 http://sp.rdjournals.org/ D ow nladed from