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 Tuğlaci,
Istanbul, 1984.
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 women’s 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.
Ibn Battuta, in the 14th century,
wrote about the Sultan’s lady:
“On the Khatin’s 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
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
Second Half of the
18th Century
Home dress
Street dress
Early 19th Century
Home and Street dress
“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 Tuğlaci, 1984
Arab
Turkish
Jewish
Armenian
Russian slave
Jewish
Greek
Artist’s depictions of various types of dress
“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 palm’s 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
Women and children going to the baths. 18th century.
“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.”
Tuğlaci, 1984
Street dress.
19th
century.
“From the earliest days of the Ottoman Empire,
the state had taken upon itself to issue decrees
and edicts on even the minutiae of women’s
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
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.”
Turkish women gathered in front of a
mosque in Istanbul, late 19th century.
Abdullah Biraderler
Turkish women doing
shopping for the bairam,
mid- 19th century.
Turkish
women at a
picnic.
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
Upper-middle class women friends
dancing in a private house
courtyard, early 20th century.
Lytle Croutier
Harem lady
visited by a
bundle
woman and a
gypsy fortune
teller, early
20th century.
Lytle Croutier
A Turkish lady in
outdoor costume.
Living Races of Mankind,
1900
A woman wearing a
ferage and dark veil.
Lytle Croutier
A Turkish woman wearing a ferage and a yashmak 1890s.
Some modes adopted were not appreciated by the authorities.
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 Women’s Movement in Turkey – The influence of political discourses, Pinar Ilkkaracan, Iran Bulletin, I995
However, by the
early 1920s the
official tide had
turned and Kemal
Atatürk was
exhorting women
to abandon the
veil.
Esteemed ladies; this mistaken impression gained
by our enemies is based on this outward
appearance, in particular on the garb of our women
and the fact that they are veiled…
These forms of dress are not a requirement of our
religion but in opposition to it. The concealment
which our faith recommends is in keeping with both
the exigencies of daily life and modesty. If women
dressed in accordance with canonical law and the
requirements of religion, they would neither conceal
themselves nor reveal themselves to such an
extent….
Religious dress should not constitute a hindrance to
women, but should be simple enough to allow them
to participate alongside men in social, working and
academic life. This plain style is not contrary to the
ethics of our social system.
From Atatürk’s address
to women in Konya,
March 21, 1925
“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 women’s freedom of
choice or action.”
Graham-Brown, 1988
Istanbul, 1919.
M Tuğrul Acar
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 Atatürk’s vision of modernised, secular Turkey.
The legal reforms of 1925/6 made “sweeping alterations in
women’s legal status, freedom of movement and prospects
for education and employment”
[Graham-Brown]
…all reflected in the following three photographs.
Three of
the first
women
parliamentarians in
Turkey,
1937.
GrahamBrown, 1988
Süreyya
Ağaoğlu, first
woman lawyer,
Ankara, 1930s.
Graham-Brown, 1988
Mixed class of biology
students in the Ghazi
Institute.
M. O. Henchez, Women of All
Lands, ed. Rosita Forbes, 1939
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 men’s, not women’s, 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
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
A new generation questioning the legacy of the
country’s founding father, Atatürk.
Özdalga, 1998
“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.
“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 headcovering 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
Again we see Saudi influences in
dress. Atatürk would be as critical
as he was over Western fashion.
Friends going
shopping in Istanbul
www.angelfire.com
Visiting Topkapi
Palace, Istanbul
Luc Olivier, 1999
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
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
Newspaper headlines 1999-2002.
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
The Village of Nar –
Central Turkey
The Women of Nar,
Joyce Roper, 1974
Village Wedding 1971 – the
women celebrating in a
private house
Grand-daughter
Kazim and
Gulazar
Grand-mother
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
Photograph
taken by a
British male
tourist.
Photograph
taken for the
World Bank
by a male
Turk.
Yosef Hadar, 1984
Elderly woman and her friend.
Shopkeeper in Istanbul.
South-central Turkey, 1985
Sean Sprague, 1996
Market at Edirne.
Caroline Simpson, 1992
‘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:
Turkish Fashion Show at
Turkish Cultural
Festival, Cairo, 2002.
Hisham Habib and Atef Naguib,
Cleo Magazine, 2002
Young women in
traditional
costume.
UNESCO, 1980s