Turkey lies where Asia, Africa and Europe are closest to each other and it straddles the point where Europe and Asia meet. Conversion to Islam was gradual and varied from one group to another, but by the 10th century Islam dominated. The hugely

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• Turkey lies where Asia, Africa and Europe are
  closest to each other and it straddles the point
  where Europe and Asia meet. Conversion to Islam
  was gradual and varied from one group to another,
  but by the 10th century Islam dominated. The
  hugely powerful, influential and sprawling
  Ottoman Empire, c.1300 - 1922, originated in
  north-western Anatolia. The state of Turkey was
  created in 1923 from the Turkish remnants of the
  Ottoman Empire. It has a population of about 67
  million, 80 Turkish and 20 Kurdish and other
  minorities. 98 of the population is Muslim,
  mainly Sunni.
• Note to images where not attributed, the early
  historical images have been taken from Women of
  Istanbul in Ottoman Times, a wonderful book
  dedicated to all the women of the world,
  compiled by Pars Tuglaci, Istanbul, 1984.

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Dress History

• There are thousands of historic images of Turkish
  women. Turkish and western artists have long
  been fascinated by the rich variety of Turkish
  dress of both sexes.
• In womens dress, the contrasts of home and
  street dress are shown again and again as are the
  variations of urban and rural costume and that of
  women from the many ethnic backgrounds who lived
  in Turkey, especially in
• Istanbul.

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Ibn Battuta, in the 14th century, wrote about
the Sultans lady On the Khatins head is a
bughtaq which resembles a small crown decorated
with jewels and surmounted by peacock feathers
and she wears robes of silk encrusted with
jewels, like the mantles worn by the Greeks. On
the head of the lady vizier and the lady
chamberlain is a silk veil embroidered with gold
and jewels at the edges, and on the head of each
of the girls is a kula which is like an aqruf
with a ciraht of gold encrusted with jewels round
the upper end and peacock feathers above this,
and each one wears a robe of silk gilt, which is
called nakh. Travels of Ibn Battuta 1325-1354
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18th Century

• The costume books show the richness of fabrics
  and the fashion variations on a theme of home
  wear worn by the better-off.
• But outside, all women wear the voluminous
  feraje or carshaf and a headcover.

Home dress
Street dress
Street dress
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Second Half of the 18th Century
Home dress
Street dress
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Early 19th Century
Home and Street dress
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• Misunderstanding of the concept of concealment
  led the Turks to consider the charshaf (long robe
  worn out in the streets) as the religious dress
  of Muslim women, and thus it has been interpreted
  as a product of fanaticism. According to Dr
  Levinson in Histoire de la Vie Sexuelle the
  charshaf and the harem are very ancient concepts
  dating back to the earliest periods of history,
  and are both the result of male jealousy, having
  no connection with Islamic principles at all.
• Women of Istanbul in Ottoman Times, Pars Tuglaci,
  1984

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Arab
Turkish
Armenian
Jewish
Russian slave
Greek
Jewish
Artists depictions of various types of dress
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• They wear a towel (cloth or woollen underscarf)
  round the neck and head, so that one can only see
  their eyes and mouth, and these they cover with a
  thin silk scarf a palms width each way, through
  which they can see and not be seen by others.
  The scarf is fastened with three pins to a
  suitable part of the head above the forehead, so
  that when they go through the streets and meet
  other women, they raise the scarf that hangs over
  their faces and kiss one another.
• I Costumi et i modi particolari de la vita de
  Turchi, Bassano da Zara, 1545

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• Women and children going to the baths. 18th
  century.

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• Turkish women first began covering themselves
  in public by wrapping themselves in a bedsheet
  when they went out of the house, and this
  practice continued for hundreds of years in the
  villages. Meanwhile in Istanbul and other large
  cities women wore the feraje and yashmak, or a
  yeldirme and headscarf.
• Tuglaci, 1984

Street dress. 19th century.
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• From the earliest days of the Ottoman Empire,
  the state had taken upon itself to issue decrees
  and edicts on even the minutiae of womens dress.
  The detailed nature of these regulations,
  affecting the thickness of the material used in
  the yashmak (face veil worn in Turkey), the
  length of skirts, and the degree to which women
  should be covered in public by charchaf (cloak)
  and yashmak, indicate the importance the
  authorities attached to the physical appearance
  of women in public.
• during the Ottoman period this concern had
  been expressed in a conservative view of how
  women should be seen, in subsequent decades it
  became a device through which the state could
  signal its desire for change.
• Images of Women, Sarah Graham-Brown, 1988

Turkish Imperial Edict. 1725
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Turkish women gathered in front of a mosque in
Istanbul, late 19th century. Abdullah Biraderler

• Edmundo de Amicis, an Italian visitor in the
  1880s, remarked After hearing so much about the
  life of captivity led by Turkish women, it is
  most astonishing for any visitor to Istanbul to
  see women about in every place at every hour,
  just as in any European city.

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Turkish women doing shopping for the bairam, mid-
19th century.
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Turkish women at a picnic.
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Dress History Early last century

• Gradually in the nineteenth century European
  fashions influenced Istanbul and slowly spread to
  other cities amongst the middle and upper
  classes. Rural women, poor women and those of
  the many ethnic groups continued to wear their
  traditional dress.

Upper-middle class family, early 20th
century. coll. Alev Lytle Croutier, Harem The
World behind the Veil, 1989
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• Upper-middle class women friends dancing in a
  private house courtyard, early 20th century.
• Lytle Croutier

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Harem lady visited by a bundle woman and a gypsy
fortune teller, early 20th century. Lytle Croutier
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A Turkish lady in outdoor costume. Living
Races of Mankind, 1900
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A woman wearing a ferage and dark veil. Lytle
Croutier
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A Turkish woman wearing a ferage and a yashmak
1890s.
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• Some modes adopted were not appreciated by the
  authorities.

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• Then, as now, some women adopted styles of dress
  for political reasons
• Another interesting phenomenon is the use of
  Islamic dress code (carsaf) by women activists
  during the Independence War between 1918-1923,
  although this was not at all the fashion for the
  socio-economic classes to which these women
  belonged. Ilyasglu concludes that this reflected
  an effort by women activists to bridge the gap
  with the women on the street. Moreover, by
  wearing the carsaf, women activists felt that
  they were able to establish equality with women
  of other classes and anonymity for the goal of
  fighting for independence.
• The Womens Movement in Turkey The influence of
  political discourses, Pinar Ilkkaracan, Iran
  Bulletin, I995

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However, by the early 1920s the official tide had
turned and Kemal Atatürk was exhorting women to
abandon the veil.
From Atatürks address to women in Konya, March
21, 1925
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• Where women had taken it upon themselves to
  change their style of dress, it might be taken as
  an assertion of freedom, a defiance of
  convention, or a flouting of family authority.
  But where the wearing of a western-style dress
  and hat had been sanctioned by community or
  state, it could just as well imply conformity and
  was certainly not a reliable guide to a womens
  freedom of choice or action.
• Graham-Brown, 1988

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Women in Political Struggle

• All through the 19th century Ottoman society had
  been under the spell of modernizing reforms,
  Özdalga but it was not until after the collapse
  of the Ottoman Empire and after the 1914-18 World
  War that change accelerated.
• The Republic of 1923 and the Constitution of 1924
  enshrined Kemal Atatürks vision of modernised,
  secular Turkey. The legal reforms of 1925/6 made
  sweeping alterations in womens legal status,
  freedom of movement and prospects for education
  and employment
• Graham-Brown
• all reflected in the following three
  photographs.

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Three of the first women parliamen-tarians in
Turkey, 1937. Graham-Brown, 1988
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• The Sapka Kanunu of 1925 banned the fez and
  imposed the use of a Western (modern) type of
  felt hat, with dire punishments for
  non-compliance. The law initiated by Atatürk was
  levelled at mens, not womens, dress.
• The veil was not forbidden, though, because it
  was felt that it would lead to an uprising by the
  vast majority of Muslims who were of a
  patriarchal persuasion.
• Geschiedenis Van Turkije ed Bakker, Vervloet,
  Gailly, 1997

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Modern Turkey

• Turkey is the only country in the Middle East
  perhaps in the whole Muslim world where
  secularism became the official ideology of the
  state. The most controversial issue on which
  official secularism has been challenged in recent
  times is the headscarf. All through the 1980s,
  that problem was the issue around which
  secularism clashed with Islamism.
• The Veiling Issue in Modern Turkey, Elizabeth
  Özdalga, 1998

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• Contrary to a widely held belief, there have
  never been any laws prohibiting the use of the
  veil in universities or elsewhere in modern
  Turkey. however even if there have not been
  any laws, there have certainly been various kinds
  of regulations relating to clothing.
• Özdalga, 1998

Newspaper headlines 1999-2002.
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• In Turkey, the secular regime considers the
  head scarf a symbol of extremist elements that
  want to overthrow the government. Accordingly,
  women who wear any type of head-covering are
  banned from public office, government jobs and
  academia, including graduate school. Turkish
  women who believe the head-covering is a
  religious obligation are unfairly forced to give
  up public life or opportunities for higher
  education and career advancement.
• An Identity Reduced to a Burka,
• Laila al-Marayati and Semeen Issa, 2002

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Again we see Saudi influences in dress. Atatürk
would be as critical as he was over Western
fashion.

• Islamist women proclaim their need to cover
  their heads with reference to their civil right
  to practice religion without the hindrance of the
  state. Paradoxically, in doing so they propagate
  a belief system where civil rights as such have
  no relevance.
• On Gender and Citizenship in Turkey MER 1996
  No.198, Yesim Arat

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• Those women who dress in extreme styles, and
  those who imitate the garb of European women,
  should remember that every nation has its own
  traditions, ethics and characteristics. No
  nation should be an imitation of any other,
  because such a nation cannot be the same as that
  which it imitates, nor retain its own national
  character. Such an attempt is bound to result in
  disappointment.
• Kamal Atatürk, 1925

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Newspaper headlines 1999-2002.
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Everyday clothes

• Historically, periods have varied in the extent
  to which people have signalled or obscured their
  religious identities. Usually it is not
  necessary to mark explicitly the religion of the
  majority unless a frenzy of piety imbues
  religious symbols for a time with special
  meaning.
• Reveal and Conceal, Andrea B Rugh, 1986

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The Village of Nar Central TurkeyThe Women of
Nar, Joyce Roper, 1974
Village Wedding 1971 the women celebrating in a
private house
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Grand-daughter
Kazim and Gulazar
Grand-mother
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Farming women of South Eastern Turkey, near the
Syrian border

• Traditionally, in most villages, women did not
  wear veils the entire village was considered an
  extended family. Even nowadays, while women work
  unveiled with men in the fields, as soon as they
  see a stranger from another village, they pull
  down their scarves to hide their faces.
• Harem The World Behind the Veil,
• Alev Lytle Croutier, 1989

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Elderly woman and her friend. South-central
Turkey, 1985
Shopkeeper in Istanbul. Sean Sprague, 1996
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Market at Edirne. Caroline Simpson, 1992
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Traditional dress to ethnic chic

• As in many countries traditional regional
  dress is now most commonly seen by the general
  public at Cultural Festivals and used as
  inspiration for modern fashion shows

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• Young women in traditional costume.
• UNESCO, 1980s