Change in the status of Turkish women during the Ottoman modernization and self- evaluation of women in Kadınlar Dünyası of 1913

---

Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Edebiyat Fakültesi, Tarih Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2010

Öğrenci: CEREN AYGÜL

Danışman: RECEP BOZTEMUR

Özet:

This study, which aims to portray the circumstances of Ottoman women’s movement during the first years of Second Constitutional Era from the eyes of the writers of Kadınlar Dünyası Periodical, makes an analysis of the meanings ascribed to the efforts for the restoration of women’s position in social life and the roles claimed for women during Ottoman modernization period. This research intends to confirm the fact that the basis for the mentality of defenders voicing women’s rights was the progressive outlook which chose the “women question” as the focus on the way of securing not only social progress but also social integration, solidarity, national consciousness and progressiveness. Thus, the ideas expressed in the articles all written by women writers of Kadınlar Dünyası are evaluated with the question in mind that whether the boundaries of Ottoman women’s movement and the social role granted for them in the modernization process were wholly determined by the women themselves or theorized predominantly by the policymakers of the state who were all men. Deducing from the self-evaluation of women in Kadınlar Dünyası of 1913, this thesis consequently underlines the fact that the struggle for women rights, which were carried out on behalf of patriotic and nationalist claims in accordance with the socio-political conditions of the time, could not overcome their invariable position of being “historical objects” despite of the fact that women held a considerable progress in their status during the Second Constitutional Era which laid the parameters of the “women question” during the early Republican Era.