Merve Kavakçı Islam, will she return to her vacant seat in Parliament?
Merve Kavakçı Islam was once forcefully taken out of
Parliament during her oath-taking ceremony as a member of Parliament for wearing
a headscarf.
A strong believer in the importance of female representation in the political
machinery, she calls on women from all walks of life and from all creeds to run
for Parliament.
Turkey is currently discussing ending a headscarf ban at universities, but
Kavakçı says the country should move beyond that and free the headscarf
everywhere to allow women wearing headscarves to fully participate in the
country’s public life. Noting that state animosity towards the headscarf has
been in place for over 30 years, Kavakçı says the headscarf ban has affected the
lives of generations of women. “Headscarved women are here, they are not going
away, and they are maybe growing in number and they want to participate in
public life,” Kavakçı says.
A lecturer in international affairs at The George Washington University, and the
heroine in the “Kavakçı affair,” when she was forced out of Parliament for
wearing a headscarf, shared her views on a number of topics with me through a
telephone interview on Oct. 26 from her office in Washington, D.C.
I see your name has changed. Congratulations on your marriage, Dr. Kavakçı.
Thank you. Yes, I am now Dr. Merve Kavakçı İslam and am very happily married to
Nazir Cihangir Islam, MD, an orthopedic and spine surgeon in İstanbul.
And I also understand you have a book coming out?
Yes, in fact today. It’s published by Palgrave Macmillan and it’s called
“Headscarf Politics in Turkey: A Postcolonial Reading.”
Sounds like an academic book.
Yes, in fact it was my PhD thesis with some modifications.
Can you tell us what the book is about and how it relates to your experience in
Parliament?
It analyzes Turkey’s role model status within the context of Turkey’s treatment
of headscarved women, and tries to shed a personal light on the rights of these
women and how their lives have been affected over the decades.
What do you mean by a “postcolonial reading”?
It basically looks at the Orientalist assumptions within the Turkish context and
brings a critique to those Orientalist ideals that are entrenched within the
Turkish Republic, and how these Orientalist assumptions were used to marginalize
headscarved women from public life. At the end I argue that this is a disservice
to the republic politically, socially and economically.
So the West was Orientalist and felt itself superior towards its colonies, and
in the postcolonial era Turkey followed this although it had no colonial
experience in the past?
Yes. The Turkish Republic found its way to modernization at the outset and
embraced the Westernization project in a fervent and adamant manner. It also
internalized the very Orientalist assumptions itself, that the West was much
better than the East and therefore the Turkish people needed to keep up with
Western civilization, and this process led to the “indigenous-ation” of
Orientalist assumptions by the regime. So I name these people Orientalized
Orientals and I shed light on how they treated headscarved women and argue that
they are actually neither part of the Orient nor the Occident -- they are caught
in between. They look up to the West and thus legitimize the marginalization of
headscarved women in society. Of course it is also a misreading by Turkey of the
West as well. Here our own Orientalized Orientals, rather than taking in and
internalizing the concept of liberties and freedom from the West, import an
attitude of bans which is antithetical to what the West really stands for. As a
result, for an Orientalized Oriental to be “uncovered” supersedes to be
educated.
What are some of your feelings about what is happening now in Turkey with
renewed public discussions regarding headscarf prohibitions?
The headscarf ban is a cancerous wound that needs immediate attention. It is
finally sitting on the national agenda with national coverage and hopefully an
in-depth discussion because this is a matter that has been affecting Turkish
women’s lives for over 30 years. It’s unfortunate we women fail to attract much
attention in the political arena. It’s often been a matter that no one wanted to
think about or talk about and try to resolve. Now we are finally addressing what
we really want to do with this large population of women who are in a way
ostracized from society. They are here, they are not going away, and they are
maybe growing in number and they want to participate in public life.
But most articles in the paper say the ban has been in effect since 1997. You
are saying it’s really been much longer?
Yes, many of the women who are affected by the ban are not aware of its history.
This is not a new thing. It started in 1981 right after the military coup. Prior
to that, individual cases were raised. Of course, afterwards, depending on the
political environment and administrators at universities, the ban was loosened
up here and there but it has been part and parcel of Turkish women’s history for
the past 30 years.
You are well known in Turkish political history, but wasn’t your first goal in
life to be a doctor?
Yes, well I suppose you could call me a person who believes in destiny and I am
a person who goes with the flow in terms of my life. I never thought that I
would end up in political life. Politics was not one of my passions early on. I
come from an academically established family, so my parents always wanted to see
me in academia and I originally wanted to be a medical doctor, and so I entered
the Ankara University School of Medicine, one of the top medical schools in the
country. However, the headscarf ban hit me right there, right then, as a
freshman in 1986 and it was really impossible to go to school and sneak into
classes in and out with my headscarf, so by my second year I had to choose
between my convictions and my profession.
And this coincided with your family being subjected to the ban as well?
Yes, this is a very sad fact about the headscarf ban in Turkey. It affects
generations. It’s not just one small group of people whom you could overlook and
tend to ignore. It affects not just one generation but so far, in the last 30
years, we are talking about three generations. I am a living example of that
very fact. My mother had to leave the university when she taught German
literature right after the ban was implemented by the coup government, and right
when I was in medical school I ran into the same problem. I was the second
generation. But my parents took this very bold step of leaving everything behind
and moving to another country so that I and my two younger sisters could have an
education without having to compromise our religious values. And now I look at
my daughters who have already graduated from college, two young women with a
headscarf, and unfortunately three generations have already been affected.
And yet you decided to come back to Turkey in the 1990s. Why?
It was important for me to be in my country and to expose my children at an
early age to Turkish culture and language and to the rest of our larger extended
family. We were also homesick. You cannot stay too long away from where your
loved ones are and we came back to Turkey only to find out that I would find my
new niche in life, politics. I was coming back to Turkey with a software
engineering degree, and in those years I thought, what can I do? I am a woman
with a headscarf. And therefore the only thing I could do was rear my children
and meanwhile, with the power of destiny, I was asked to volunteer for a
political party which I felt was my niche.
When you started working for the Welfare Party [RP], what was the role of women?
The RP was one of the first to organize women in large numbers. We hadn’t seen
that in the political Islamic tradition and those preceding the party, including
the National Salvation Party [MSP], but the RP was different. It was more
comprehensive, more embracing and it wanted to utilize women’s efforts, half the
population of Turkey, and bring them into the political realm. So what was
interesting to see was how women, who only had an agency in the family as
mothers, wives and sisters, were brought out to the public realm and rendered
political agency. I was one of the women who worked at the headquarters. I
oversaw this whole project and was responsible for international affairs.
When was this?
In 1993, 1994. We were going into the municipal elections.
Did Recep Tayyip Erdoğan benefit from women’s involvement in the party?
Yes, definitely. In fact, Erdoğan, who was the head of the İstanbul branch of
the party and got elected mayor, was one of the front liners who encouraged
women’s participation in political life and he worked very closely with the
women’s commission and of course benefited from their involvement.
Did this participation by women continue in the Virtue Party [FP]?
Yes. What happened was, at the end of the general elections in 1995, everyone
conceded that it was the women of the RP who helped bring it to power, and other
parties emulated what the RP had done with women involved in one-to-one
interaction with constituents. They took this as a model, so it became a focus
of study, if you will, because women’s power was for the first time wielded to
bring a party to power. We are talking about 200,000 women across the country
who were responsible, from the headquarters down to the street level, who
covered every apartment to get out the message for the RP. So when the RP went
down, the FP continued in the same tradition.
The RP was very much criticized for not nominating women, for utilizing women’s
efforts but not letting them represent themselves in Parliament. Ironically,
this criticism came from outside, from the Kemalists, who used this to bash the
RP movement. It also came from liberals, it came from women’s groups, it came
from leftist groups, too, and was a topic of discourse within the party, as
well. So, when the RP was closed down and the FP was established, the question
of including women at higher representative places was raised. The FP became
more of an open party, more democratic. And women from secular lifestyles came
into the party, women like Nazlı Ilıcak, and for the first time in a political
Islamic movement women were included in the Central Executive Board [MYK]. But I
continued heading the foreign affairs division of the Women’s Commission.
When the time for early elections came, there were pressures from within and
from outside the party regarding headscarved women on the question of
nominations. They had played an indispensable role in the success of the
movement. The nomination of women who were secular would be embarrassing without
nominations of women with headscarves. After all, this is the Turkish nation
and, like it or not, at the time, 73 percent of Turkish women wore a headscarf.
This is part of our culture, tradition and history, but most importantly part of
our religion. The FP had a healthy discourse and made the right decision by
involving women.
But many writers in the West described your nomination as something that simply
came from Necmettin Erbakan. How do you respond to that?
Well, it is unfortunate. The reality is actually a lot more complicated. Erbakan
always had a sway over the Islamic political movement. However, at this time he
was banned from politics. He had an indirect role in the decision-making body as
well, still. Nonetheless, the nomination of a headscarved woman was discussed at
the MYK time after time, people put out their views, the advantages and
disadvantages, and a list of the ones who were brought in. I was only one of the
17 women, covered and uncovered, who were nominated.
It was almost a guarantee that two women with and two without headscarves were
going to be elected, but it turned out that I was the only one who got elected,
so it is a wrong reading of history to put this on one person. When they started
discussing the nomination of Ilıcak and other secular women, the hardcore
workers who put their lives in this 24/7 over the years started raising their
voices that they wanted to be represented. I know this because I worked with
these women. We know that we carried the party to power in 1997, and therefore
it was very important that we have some sort of representation. So there was
pressure from the bottom up, not just at the decision-making body of the party.
Is Muslim women’s support part of the Justice and Development Party’s [AK Party]
support today?
Well, I can only speak as an outsider now as I am not too familiar with how the
Women’s Commission under the AK Party currently works, but from personal
experience I know that some of my friends who worked for the FP are now working
for the AK Party and that women still hold an important and influential place
within the party. However, I do not understand the AK Party’s position of just
wanting to lift the ban at universities and of course the Republican People’s
Party [CHP], coming from the Kemalist tradition, they are even having trouble
with that. I do not feel rights can be partially granted. Lifting the ban only
at universities would be similar to eradicating cancer halfway. Once we are
there in the operating theater, let’s complete the job and free the body of this
cancer.
Do you think there is now a bottom-up movement to bring about headscarved women
candidates today, given how some women are speaking out now?
I think it is a similar one. The AK Party embraces and values women’s
participation. The prime minister has talked about it as well, including in the
political realm, where women’s representation is very low. Unfortunately, the
reality on the ground is very grim and therefore to include a number of women in
Parliament and decision-making bodies is critical and so women with headscarves
also need more representation.
What are your plans for running for office? Would you consider doing it again?
Women must be represented in higher numbers in all facets of the political
machinery. Therefore, I believe that more women, including women with
headscarves, must run for office in the next election. After all, all concur
that Turkey must democratize itself, and this is one way of doing it. As far as
my case is concerned, I have a court decree in hand, that of the European Court
of Human Rights, that states that Turkey violated free elections in the Kavakçı
affair. I was
Merve website http://www.mervekavakci.net/