The late night posting on the website of the Turkish general staff on 27th April was a shock, even in a society used to surprises. In a short message, the military reminded the Turkish government and the world of its role as "defender of secularism," and warned that it would act "when it becomes necessary." Turkish columnists argued about whether this was a new style of intervention: the "e-coup." It certainly had an impact, bringing to a halt the process of electing a president and triggering early elections on 22nd July.
Ever since the one-party regime established by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the 1920s gave way to multiparty democracy in the late 1940s, Turkish politicians have operated in the shadow of possible military intervention. Turkey's first coup, in 1960, ended with the execution of the country's first elected prime minister. A second coup in 1970 saw mass imprisonments. When generals stepped in again in 1980, they detained 180,000 people, hanged 25 and drafted an authoritarian constitution that gave them the right to control most aspects of Turkish society. A "soft coup" in 1997 saw politicians, including the current prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, sent to prison on trumped-up charges. By early 2007, however, many believed that these interventions belonged to the past: the Turkish economy was growing fast, the government was popular, and the country was in the middle of negotiations for membership of the EU.
Not everybody was shocked by the e-coup. A group of "authoritarian feminists" argued that Turkey's generals were protecting the rights of women. Nur Serter, vice-president of the Atatürk Thought Association, told a flag-waving crowd in Istanbul that "we line up in front of the glorious Turkish army."
But is there any indication that Turkey is about to embrace Sharia law? Does the Islamic AKP, on course to win a comfortable victory on 22nd July, represent a threat to the rights of Turkish women? Can there be progress towards gender equality in a Muslim society without secular authoritarianism?
Generations of Turkish women have certainly been taught that their emancipation was accomplished single-handedly by a great leader. They were told to be both grateful and watchful: the task facing future generations of "daughters of the Republic" was to defend these rights against the threat of resurgent Islamists. According to nationalist intellectuals, nomadic central Asian Turks had in fact "invented feminism." It was foreign influence—Greek, Persian and Arab—that had brought the pre-Islamic golden age of Turkish gender equality to an end.
In fact, notwithstanding Kemalist propaganda, at the end of the 20th century Turkey had fallen behind all other comparable European countries when it came to gender equality. Turkish women had unequal status under both civil and criminal law. Rape was treated as a question of family honour. A rapist was exempt from punishment if he offered to marry his victim—thereby restoring her honour. Until 2004, the penal code valued single women less than married women. One provision granted a reduction in punishment to the perpetrators of honour crimes where the victims had been caught in the act of adultery or "illegitimate sexual relations" (including, for women, sex before marriage).
It has been the process of European integration, the central policy priority of the AKP, which has provided the Turkish women's movement with the opportunity to end some of these anachronisms. Recent years have seen a number of reforms inspired by the EU accession process. Reforms to employment law were passed in 2003. Family courts were established in the same year. An amendment in 2004 to the Turkish constitution states that "the state is responsible for taking all necessary measures to realise equality between women and men." But the most spectacular reform was that of Turkey's penal code, an explicit condition for the start of EU membership negotiations.
To the surprise of some activists, the AKP, which won a landslide election victory in November 2002, has been rather open to lobbying by women's organisations. By 2004 the penal code was almost entirely rewritten. All references to chastity, morality, shame and public customs were eliminated. The new code treats sexual crimes as violations of individual women's rights and not as crimes against society, the family or public morality. It criminalises rape in marriage, eliminates sentence reductions for honour killings, ends legal discrimination against non-virgin and unmarried women. It criminalises sexual harassment in the workplace and treats sexual assault by members of the security forces as aggravated offences. This was a legal and philosophical revolution.
Clearly, passing new laws is not sufficient. Turkey still lags behind every other European country in almost every measure of gender equality. It has the lowest number of women in parliament, the lowest share of women in the workforce and the highest rates of female illiteracy. At a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Istanbul in November 2006, a table measuring the "gender gap" (inequality between men and women) put Turkey 105th of 115 countries, behind Tunisia, Ethiopia and Algeria. The perception that, in this highly sensitive area, Turkey is out of step with other European societies has become central to European debates on Turkey's EU accession. In both France and Germany, opponents of Turkish accession have made this a key plank of their campaign.
To understand the nature of the challenge one should visit any of the eastern provinces of the country. Van, lying on the Iranian border in the far east of Anatolia, is one of Turkey's poorest provinces. Per capita income is €55 per month. Large families continue to be a key mechanism for social protection and control. Households in Van average 7.4 members, with most women kept at home to look after children and the elderly and to perform domestic work. Girls marry at a very young age—around half of them between 16 and 20—and often within the extended family. Sixteen per cent of men and nearly half the women in Van are illiterate.
Van is one extreme in a hugely diverse country. The Istanbul suburb of Kadikoy is another. In this district of 660,000 on the Asian side of a city with a population larger than that of most EU member states, 95 per cent of residents are literate, and one in five is a university graduate. Female employment is the norm. Many women are choosing to delay marriage and childbirth, and the average household size has fallen to 2.4. Not surprisingly, the women of Kadikoy have been at the forefront of Turkey's women's movement, forming a large number of voluntary associations.
It is clearly a challenge to address the concerns of constituencies as different as the professional women in Kadikoy and the illiterate women in Van. But rapid progress is being made.
There are those in Europe who see the low status of Turkish women as a reflection of an alien culture that has no place within the EU. Yet patriarchy was an integral part of European culture not so long ago. If the low proportion of women in Turkey's parliament (less than 5 per cent in the previous parliament) seems shocking today, remember that the proportion of women in Britain's House of Commons passed 5 per cent only in 1987.
Another Mediterranean country provides a good model. Spain has made dramatic progress in closing its gender gap. Under Franco's rule, which lasted until 1975, women's opportunities were severely limited. Discrimination was institutionalised in marriage, property ownership and the workplace. Until 1975, a woman needed her husband's permission to work, buy property or even travel. One generation later, Spanish women have made up the lost ground with extraordinary speed. Today, women make up more than 40 per cent of Spain's judges and doctors, 65 per cent of schoolteachers and 50 per cent of senior government ministers.
Is there any reason why Muslim Turkey should not follow in the footsteps of Catholic Spain, Ireland and the rest of Europe? In 1945, only a quarter of Turks lived in cities; by 2000, the proportion was 65 per cent. More Turkish women are living in cities, with greater access to education and other modernising influences. Turkey's urban population more than doubled between 1985 and 2000: an increase of 24.4m people. Female literacy leapt from 13 per cent in 1945 to 81 per cent in 2000. Attitudes are changing. In 1997, a nationwide survey suggested that 69 per cent of marriages in Turkey had been arranged. By 2004, that had fallen to 54 percent. Among young, unmarried Turks, only 10 per cent endorse the idea of arranged marriage today.
Turkey's authoritarian feminists have got it wrong. It is the maturing and development of Turkish democracy, the opening of Turkey to the EU, and the development of a modern economy that holds out the promise of progress for Turkish women—not a return to secular authoritarianism.
