The Cover Up

Women’s liberation is a matter of pride in Turkey. Not only was polygamy outlawed and Sharia law abolished in the early days of the republic, but by 1934 Turkish men had granted women full suffrage back when many Western nations (not to point fingers, but some of which rhymed with “rance” and “elgium”) were busy experimenting if women-friendly ballots should have kittens or puppies in the margins.

Regrettably, we had been told that giving women the right to vote would resolve all gender issues and society could move on. Yet more than seventy years later, many women still refuse liberation and cover up in un-emancipated defiance of both the Turkish state and the fashion editors at Vogue.

This was not much of a problem back when the religious were too poor to leave the house, but somewhere they acquired money and entered politics, and now for the first time both the President and Prime Minister’s wives sport headscarves.

That is the Prime Minister’s wife to the right, the only covered woman in the middle of Arabic first ladies; societies the West considers as treating their women a little better than a three-legged ox but worse than a refrigerator.

And the white Turks are pissed, particularly the female ones, at having the world judge Turkish women by such dated threads. If the uncovered woman is a symbol of secularism and modernity, covering up must be a renouncement of such values. A woman’s appearance has become a major source of contention between the elected conservative government and the secular establishment, with the country see-sawing between permitting and re-banning the headscarf.

Some could argue women’s issues extend beyond appearance, especially since the second greatest leap in women’s rights began in 2001, almost all of which was undertaken by the conservative government. The legal framework was revised granting women greater equality and deeming their sexuality an individual right rather than pertaining to family honor. Critics might contend it was vocal women’s organizations and EU pressure that brought about these changes, but it doesn’t speak highly of prior secular administrations that spent their eight decades in power “just about to get around to the women thing.”

As for how Turkish women are appearing in the eyes of the world, the woman to the left was selected by a conservatively-appointed public television board to represent Turkey at last Saturday’s Eurovision song contest. That is her performing in a governmentally-approved outfit.

So the only principle that all Turks can agree upon, whether they are on the path of secularism or the path of God, is the same the rest of the world agrees on: “sex sells.”