Parliamentary Affairs Vol. 61 No.

3, 2008, 461– 475

Advance Access Publication 29 February 2008

Critical Acts without a Critical Mass: The

Substantive Representation of Women
in the Turkish Parliament
BY AYŞE GÜNEŞ AYATA AND FATMA TÜTÜNCÜ

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ABSTRACT

Drawing upon in-depth interviews with 20 women MPs and parliamentary debates
during the amendment of the Turkish Civil and Penal Codes, we elaborate on the
possibility and conditions of women’s impact on politics without their constituting
a critical mass in the parliament. Our research reveals that when state machinery,
women’s machinery, and supra-national agencies have created a conducive context,
as in the case of the last decade in Turkey, the substantive representation of
women’s issues become possible even in a political culture where women constitute
only a ‘skewed’ group in the parliament.

WOMEN are latecomers to the political arena as representatives in the

world’s parliaments. Moreover, there has been very slow progress in
achieving women’s greater descriptive representation. The effectiveness
of women representatives has also been questioned. Attempts by early
feminist scholars to explain this situation generated two contentions.
First, the apparent limited effectiveness of women representatives was
accounted for by their low levels of representation; this would be over-
come when women representatives constituted a ‘critical mass’ articu-
lating ‘women’s perspectives and interests’. Second, it was claimed that
women’s descriptive representation could be more quickly achieved
through the use of quotas. Hence, feminists in many countries support
quotas, and there has been strong pressure for such measures at the
international level, through bodies such as the IPU and Socialist
International, and through international agreements and conventions,
such as CEDAW.1
Whether women’s descriptive representation has any substantive sig-
nificance is a widely debated issue in the gender and politics literature.
Lovenduski, e.g. has argued that ‘women’s issues’ and ‘women’s per-
spectives’ are different, and whereas women’s issues have always been
present in parliament, it is the women’s perspective that is of greater
significance.2 It is often said that to bring ‘women’s perspective’ into
politics requires a critical mass of women. Women members, where

Parliamentary Affairs Vol. 61 No. 3 # The Author [2008]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the
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please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
doi: 10.1093/pa/gsn012
462 Parliamentary Affairs

they constitute a significant proportion of the parliament, may not

only prove to be better role models and thus attract more female atten-
tion to politics, but they also increase the likelihood of articulating and
integrating women’s issues and perspectives into parliamentary
debates. Consequently, women representatives will be active in chan-
ging political attitudes, policy priorities and legislative styles and
issues. In addition, it is often assumed that the presence of a critical
mass of women in parliaments will lead to inter-party coalitions

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amongst women. Empirical research is, however, contradictory. It is
not clear how numbers affect women’s substantive representation.
More specifically, there is plenty of evidence that in parliamentary
systems party discipline prevails, leaving very little room for women’s
solidarity.
In Turkey, the discussion of women in politics has always been at
the level of descriptive rather than substantive representation.3 The
descriptive representation of women is unbalanced—in 2007, women
constituted 8% of all parliamentary representatives.4 In the Turkish
case, then, neither the representation of women’s perspectives nor the
presence of a critical mass has been achieved. Nevertheless, there have
been two major legal reforms in Turkey in recent years, both of which
were demanded by feminist groups. Despite the absence of a critical
mass, and as will be discussed next, these reforms were cases where
women MPs could form coalitions. But these cases also provide
examples where party discipline and ideological cleavages lead to only
very limited cooperation. As such, the outcomes cannot be explained
by intra-parliamentary dynamics. Rather, the achievement of the
reforms reflects a constellation of critical acts by particular critical
actors. The feminist movement was an active pressure group used to
motivate representatives in the parliament. Inside the parliament a
small minority group of women acted together. However, while in the
case of the Civil Code they could create gender champions and
mobilize strategic male partners behind the reforms, in the reform of
the Penal Code the demand and push from international organisations
was more important.

Women’s status in Turkey since the 1920s

The legal rights granted to women by the so-called feminist state of the
1920s and 1930s went far beyond the rights gained by women else-
where in the world, including not only in the Middle East but also in
many Western European countries. Although feminist scholars have
acknowledged the role and activism of Turkish women since the final
decades of the Ottoman Empire and the early decades of the Turkish
Republic, the major actor in the field of women’s rights was the state.
It was only after the 1980 military coup, which suppressed the
left-wing movement, that new actors—the women’s movement—
emerged. Women who were previously active on the left began to
 Substantive Representation of Women 463

transfer their efforts and experience to the women’s movement, and to

voice women’s interests in eliminating discrimination against women in
the Turkish society. The Turkish women’s movement was fed by both
Western feminist theory and activism, and by Turkish state feminism of
the 1920s and 1930s, with its legacy of legislation as a significant
instrument for changing women’s status in Turkey.
The women’s movement aimed to transform Turkey into what
Wängnerud has called a ‘favourable society to women’.5 Turkish

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society was considered unfavourable to women because there was a
sharp differentiation between the private and the public; children, the
sick and the elderly were cared for as unpaid work in the home; and
violence against women and children was seen as a private matter. In
order to transform Turkish society into a woman-friendly society,
actors in the women’s movement initiated various campaigns that
initially targeted the private sphere. For example, the 1987 campaign
against the battering of women was noteworthy, with women activists
using creative methods to draw public attention. Their Mother’s Day
celebrations in the streets involved handbills stating, ‘Do you love your
mother, but do you beat your lovers (wives)?’ Their efforts were also
remarkable for women’s use of the media, which would later prove
effective for enhancing the public visibility of the women’s movement
during the improvement of women’s legal status.
Prior to launching their two big national campaigns related to the
Civil and Penal Codes, decisive cooperation by women’s groups
resulted in: (a) the annulment by the Constitutional Court of Article
159 of the Civil Code, which stated that women needed their
husbands’ consent to work outside the home (1990); (b) the repeal by
parliament of Article 438 of the Penal Code, which reduced punish-
ment for rapists by one-third if the victim was a sex worker (1990);
and (c) a new law enabling a survivor of domestic violence to file a
court case for a protection order against the perpetrator of the violence
(1997).6 However, the women’s movement’s most significant impact
occurred during the adoption of the New Civil Code (2002) and the
amendment of the Penal Code (2004).
In the 1990s the women’s movement began to leave behind its pre-
dominantly grassroots character, becoming more institutionalized. It
also recognized the importance of the representation of women in par-
liamentary politics. At this time, the legacy of state feminism in the
Turkish context intertwined with the role of the state in the global
context. As Inglehart and Norris observed, the international women’s
movement and official bodies such as the United Nations and the
European Union directed attention to the ‘role of the state in reinfor-
cing or alleviating institutional barriers to women’s progress for bring-
ing about ‘gender equality through legal reform and the courts’.7
These developments particularly directed attention to women in par-
liament as the most probable actors who would play a significant
464 Parliamentary Affairs

role in international organisations, state institutions and the women’s

movement.

Women in the Turkish Parliament

Women’s enfranchisement in Turkey dates to the 1930s, when the
modernizing republican regime committed itself to bringing about full
public visibility for women. Turkish women were elected at local gov-
ernment level in 1930 and at national parliamentary level in 1935.

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However, since then women’s political under-representation has
become a permanent reality in Turkish politics. Centre-right and
centre-left parties have always listed female candidates and have had
female members of parliament and cabinet members since women’s
enfranchisement in the 1930s, but it was not until the 1999 elections
that religious and nationalist-right parties had female deputies. In the
2002 general election, all parties listed women candidates, and 24
women MPs won seats in the parliament.
Twenty women MPs who were in parliament during the revision of
the Turkish Civil Code and/or Penal Code were interviewed to observe
whether there was a suitable context for the substantive representation
of women, and whether women MPs were significant actors in bring-
ing about gender equality through legislation.8 Our interviews were
informed by the possibility that women MPs would enunciate women’s
interests9 and curtail the male-dominant face of Turkish parliamentary
politics.
All the interviewed women MPs were highly educated, especially in
comparison with their male peers, and held powerful positions as aca-
demics and bureaucrats before entering politics. However, many of
them felt like ‘a fish out of water’ in the Turkish parliament because
they lacked political experience, having entered politics through a last-
minute decision after receiving an invitation from political party
leaders. In addition, women’s political effectiveness was limited by the
lack of strong role models or a legacy of female representatives to guide
newcomers to the Turkish parliament.10
An important aspect of Turkish political culture is the existence of
strong party discipline: political parties prescribe and control the activi-
ties of their MPs and, more significantly, Turkish MPs rely on their
parties for re-election, which in turn strengthens party discipline.11
Our research confirmed that women MPs are constrained by party dis-
cipline regardless of their party affiliation. Almost all the MPs noted
difficulties in cooperation among women MPs from different parties,
with only three acknowledging inter-party cooperation. In contrast,
many of the women MPs claimed there was stronger inter- and intra-
party cooperation among men MPs. Some underlined that because of
their numerical majority, male MPs seem to more frequently establish
an intimate dialogue and act harmoniously than women MPs.
However, they maintained, at the same time, that men’s relationships
 Substantive Representation of Women 465

are more competitive and harsher than those of women. One woman
from the centre-right stated:

We can say that there is collaboration among men, but the reason of collabor-
ation is their numerical majority. We could not expect solidarity for 8 women
in parliament. If they were 200, or 50, or 30, there would have been solidarity.
The solidarity of women in parliament is limited; they also confess this. I am
very much upset about this, because this means self-denigration.

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None of the interviewees confirmed the well-known feminist claim that
the political style of women is characterised by ‘cooperation, collabor-
ation and honesty’ rather than by ‘conflict, hierarchy or sleaze’. Indeed,
one woman MP discussed the ‘masculinisation’ of Turkish women
MPs: in order for women MPs to be successful in Turkish parliamen-
tary culture, ‘they have to be quarrelsome like men MPs’. One of her
colleagues supported her, arguing: ‘I have a good connection with the
MPs of my own party. My relation with other MPs is very limited.
There is cooperation among women in my party, but there is also com-
petition, in fact competition is the reality of life’. Another interviewee
stated:

We, as women MPs, have no solidarity in parliament. Only during the debates
on the new Civil Code, did all women MPs cooperate. Apart from that, we
occasionally met at dinner parties. The party discipline prohibited the estab-
lishment of an interest group among women MPs coming from different
parties.

This assessment was confirmed by another MP, who explained that:

‘Because our worldviews are very different, it is not possible to estab-
lish a strong friendship with men or women MPs of other parties’.
Another indication of the strength of party discipline can be
observed in an incident when a woman MP from the party in govern-
ment supported an opposition party proposal demanding the addition
of a clause for ‘special temporary measures’ to be taken by the state to
correct the extensive gender inequality in the society. As a result of
this, she had to resign from her party. Although inter-party solidarity is
rare, as the women MPs stated before, inter-party mobility is very high
in the Turkish Parliament. Changing party is a common way for MPs
to escape party pressure in Turkey. However, given the token status of
women, changing party in most cases means political suicide. This
makes women MPs more loyal party members. In other words, if
women MPs seek collaboration with other women MPs it is likely to
be under the roof of the same political party. This is not, however, to
suggest complete harmony in intra-party relations among women MPs,
or with women holding other positions within the party hierarchy.
Indeed, our interviewees underlined harsh competition among the
women within parties to achieve the limited number of MP positions.
466 Parliamentary Affairs

In line with another feminist expectation that women are more likely
to substantively represent women, we asked whether women Turkish
MPs were concerned with women’s interests when they had an oppor-
tunity. We followed Lena Wängnerud, who suggests that women’s
interests are divided into three components: (a) the recognition of
women as a social category; (b) the acknowledgement of the unequal
balance of power between sexes; and (c) the occurrence of policies
designed to increase the autonomy of female citizens.12 To test recog-

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nition of women as a social category, Wängnerud asked Swedish
members of the parliament the definition of their job: ‘Do they sepa-
rate women as a particular group when it is important for them to rep-
resent?’ She also asked: ‘Are women’s organizations included in this
network?’ We posed similar questions to the Turkish women MPs, and
found that only eight considered that they represented women as a
social category, four clearly rejected the idea that they represented
women and the rest gave ambivalent answers.
In directing our questions, we also had in mind another argument
developed by feminist scholars of representation: to substantively rep-
resent women requires women MPs to have a feminist commitment.
Given the hegemony of the patriarchal discourse, as well as the
extreme gap between the number of male and female representatives,
in our interviews with female representatives we relied on questions
such as whether they represented women or not, if they were interested
in women’s questions and if they had any connection with the
women’s movement, instead of searching for their self-identification as
feminist or their articulation of overtly feminist attitudes. Childs under-
lines the societal disapproval attached to the concept of the feminist by
stating: ‘to be a feminist in the twenty-first century in the UK is an
identity few women seek to claim, since it risks opprobrium’.13 It goes
without saying that there are pejorative connotations to feminism in
Turkish society as well as in the Turkish parliament. In the UK case,
Childs left the question of whether the MPs were feminist towards the
end of her interview conversations; we preferred not to use the concept
at all. None of the Turkish MPs independently provided a self-
definition as a feminist. However, given the definitions of feminism
provided by some of the British MPs, such as ‘the importance of recog-
nizing the role and importance of women’, ‘the equality between
women and men’, and that ‘girls and women should have choice in
their lives’, we can conclude that a great many of the female MPs we
interviewed are feminists, if feminism is defined very loosely.
We also established that the women MPs are concerned with
women’s issues. This does not mean that they are all attitudinally fem-
inists, but rather that they feel particularly obliged to deal with and
care about women’s concerns. The numerical minority of women in
parliamentary politics creates a sort of division of labour, where politi-
cal parties lead women representatives to participate in commissions
 Substantive Representation of Women 467

and ministries connected with women’s issues. Furthermore, feminist

groups seeking women’s substantive representation devote a significant
amount of energy in creating a bridge between the women in the
Turkish parliament and the women outside of it. This explains how,
even if female representatives have no intention of doing so, women’s
groups pressurize them to ‘act for’ instead of simply ‘standing for’
women.

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Parliamentary debates and the feminist impact
Since the 1990s the Turkish women’s movement has begun to voice a
new set of demands, and to search for mechanisms to infiltrate political
parties and other political movements in order to bring about gender
awareness and correct gender-based inequalities. Women’s organis-
ations have attempted both to integrate women into formal means of
representation, and also tried to connect women MPs with the
women’s movement. Turkey’s integration into the EU—with its require-
ment for a crucial reconfiguration of the state and legal structures—
provides an example of how in certain circumstances all political
parties, even the most conservative, are unable to resist the demands of
the women’s movement.14 In that case, political parties, including
nationalists and the religious right, began to articulate elements from
the discourses of democratisation, human rights and equality in their
political language. These were often the same discourses and language
used by actors from the women’s movement to articulate women’s inter-
ests. Thus, ‘democracy in family, democracy in society,’ ‘equal rights,
equal participation’ and ‘from male democracy to real democracy,’
became the mottos of women actors as they sought to avoid the anti-
feminist rhetoric of many male politicians.
In the case of revisions to the Civil Code, the women’s movement
worked together with women in political parties and strategic male
partners in parliament, who included the Minister of Justice at the
time, a social democrat party member and defender of gender equality.
In a parliament where women only constituted 4% of the representa-
tives, it would have been impossible to create a woman-friendly Civil
Code without the support of male MPs. However, in the case of the
revision of the Penal Code, a religious right party was in power and the
women’s movement had difficulty finding equality champions and stra-
tegic male partners to convey women’s interests within parliamentary
debates. Indeed, women’s groups were ‘faced with a dramatic backlash’
from government authorities, including the new Minister of Justice,
who repeatedly rejected the appointment demands of actors in the
women’s movement.15 Although EU authorities pressurised the govern-
ment to bring about a more egalitarian Penal Code, without an effec-
tive intra-parliamentary effort revisions to the code could not remove
all statements that discriminated against women. Moreover, while the
women’s movement was able to create a gender-based agenda during
468 Parliamentary Affairs

the amendment of the Civil Code, they were unable to disseminate the
idea of the Penal Code being as important as the Civil Code for gender
equality.

THE CIVIL CODE. The new Civil Code instituted the full equality of
women and men in the family by ending the supremacy of the husband
over the wife. Although ‘equality fever’ spread among many male MPs,

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the leading equality champion was the Minister of Justice, Hikmet
Sami Türk. A left-wing politician and professor of law, Türk declared
that all revisions to the Civil Code were based upon the equality
principle guaranteed by the constitution, as particularly demonstrated
in the article stating: ‘The family is the foundation of Turkish society
and is based upon equality between spouses’. In addition to the
Turkish constitution, Türk also reminded MPs of the international
treaties and conventions, primarily CEDAW, which oblige Turkey to
eliminate all gender-based discrimination, adding that the equality
principle had been adopted by all civilized countries since the Second
World War. The full equality defended by Türk included
decision-making power and economic rights, as well as representative
status in the family. The replacement of the terms ‘wife’ and ‘husband’
with ‘spouses’ reflects the equality principle of the new Civil Code.
This makes the new Turkish family an egalitarian entity where not
only rights, but also obligations and responsibilities, are equally shared
and enjoyed.
Celebrating the revisions in the Civil Code, one male MP from the
centre-right underlined the crucial importance of the equality of individ-
uals within modern law, and defended the extension of the equality
principle to the Turkish family. Defining housewifery as a job, he
explained that because women’s service at home has no monetary
value, women have been extensively exploited; the new property regime
would correct this unjust situation. The MP also noted that the equality
principle’s inclusion within law does not guarantee equality within
practical life, stating: ‘We should question our attitudes and behaviour
in daily life to bring an egalitarian relationship beyond the laws’. For
him, the worth of female citizens in a society is the gauge of that
nation’s civility, and thus if female citizens have equal rights in the
family, this improves Turkish society as a whole. He summed up by
stating: ‘Given the process of our integration with EU, we repeatedly
talk about democracy and human rights as our priorities. The revisions
in the Civil Code reflect our respect for human rights and democracy’.16
It is not only male MPs from the left and the centre right parties
that can be viewed as having acted as equality champions.
Pseudo-egalitarian language was also adopted by many male MPs from
the religious and nationalist right. One of these stated that their party
 Substantive Representation of Women 469

would support the draft law as soon as it abolished all discrimination

against women, brought complete equality between women and men
and protected women in cases of divorce. Another male MP referred to
the international conventions Turkey had signed, adding:
[T]he Turkish state has to prevent all kinds of discrimination against women,
should change cultural and social values accordingly, should eliminate the
exploitation of women, should bring equality in social, political life before the
laws, and eliminate the laws discriminating against women.

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However, his main concern in demanding the correction of inequalities
was not principally the inequality between women and men, but rather
the inequalities to which veiled women were subjected.17
Despite such egalitarian discourse on behalf of some male MPs,
many male MPs from the nationalist and religious right voiced serious
objections to the restructuring of the Turkish family, whose traditional
authority figure is the father. Although none of the right-wing male
MPs used overtly misogynist discourse, they criticised the ‘exaggerated’
emphasis on women’s rights in revision of the Civil Code. In their
opinion, the code should regulate the happiness and welfare of the
entire family, not that of the isolated woman, man and children, who
in fact share identical and common rights and interests. For right-wing
male MPs, such women-oriented discourse was produced by ‘marginal’
and ‘ideological’ women’s groups and organisations which did not rep-
resent Turkish women at all. One male MP explained: ‘[A]lthough
many revisions are being made for the female citizens, I do not observe
any enthusiasm of the women in our society; only women’s associ-
ations seem to be interested in the revisions’. Such observations are
based upon the idea that truly Turkish women—generally labelled as
Anatolian women who are remarkable through their devotion, affec-
tion and support for the family—do not pursue the interests and
demands voiced by ‘marginal’ (read feminist) groups.18
Right-wing male MPs were also annoyed by the lobbying of
women’s groups. In their opinion, those groups were seeking to under-
mine the moral and spiritual harmony of the Turkish family, seen as
the cement of Turkish society. The holy Turkish family, in their view,
would be transformed into an arena of rational calculations, an iron
cage of rights and interests-based modern Western discourse. Along the
same lines, one male MP from the religious right was highly critical of
the revision’s abolition of the father’s supremacy within the family. He
stated:
We have no objection to the equality between women and men, but we think
it is wrong to abolish [the] man’s status as the head of family. In Turkish
society, which has a tradition to choose a head even for the smallest commu-
nity, the family could not be maintained peacefully without a head. In choos-
ing the family domicile, in deciding about children’s education, in paying
familial expenditure, in sharing housework and in many similar cases, there
470 Parliamentary Affairs

will appear conflicts and family life will be open to the interventions of the
judges.
In fact, two male MPs from the religious right proposed an article to
make spouses choose a family head during the marriage ceremony. In
defending their proposal, one stated:
[L]egally we have been bound by the article stating ‘the head of the family is
[the] husband’ for 75 years. Our traditions and customs are also harmonious

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with our legal bind. But now, because of the Minister’s stubborn demands,
because of his justification about bringing a modern regulation, the husband
loses their authority as the head of family . . . Dear friends, in our beliefs and
opinions, if two persons go to travel together, one of them must be the head.
Without the authority of a head, anarchy and chaos is inevitable. A family
without a head will be the nest of conflict and chaos. We do not insist that
men should be the head; women would be the family head. Let them choose.
Another male MP from the religious right stated: ‘To protect women’s
rights, of course, means to protect human rights . . . Human rights
include the right to marry. [The] Marriage contract is based upon the
free will and the consent of the partners’. He contended that by abol-
ishing the authority figure in the family, the state would violate the free
will of partners who wanted to define a family head within their own
marriage. If the Civil Code no longer defined a family head, then part-
ners must be free to choose one for the happiness of their family, to
avoid unceasing quarrels dominating family life.
At the heart of the parliamentary debates in revising the Civil Code
was the new property regime. One woman MP from the nationalist right
reported that ‘[regardless of] their party affiliations, the most paralysing
point for all male MPs was the new property regime’. The new Civil
Code adopts a property regime that provides for ‘equal division of prop-
erty acquired during marriage’ upon divorce, unless the couple does not
choose one of the other regimes, namely division of property, division of
shared property and joint property regime. One woman MP said that
male MPs were threatened and acted as if they were being ‘eaten alive’.
Such sentiments were also apparent in our interview with the Minister
of Justice from that time, Hikmet Sami Türk, who stated: ‘[T]he most
burning debate revolved around the property regime’. Indeed, Türk
attempted to resign his office when the Justice Commission sidestepped
his property regime proposal. He noted: ‘Even the MPs from my own
party [centre-left] did not accept my proposal’.
According to one nationalist right male MP, a few female journalists
claiming to be advocates of women’s rights as well as 100 women’s
associations were blindly defending the new property regime. He stated:
These women assault mercilessly whoever criticizes the new draft law. Many
lawyers have sent us fax messages to warn us about the negative results of the
new property regime for women, however their voice is unheard. The resigna-
tion threats of the minister in the commission eventually resulted in the
 Substantive Representation of Women 471

amendments, which are harmonious with his ideas and with that of women’s
associations.
One male MP from the religious right asserted that:
This draft law is a complete product of [the] Democratic Left Party; it is the
reflection of [the] Democratic Left Party’s mentality. Although there is a
coalition government in power having three different mentalities, the Minister
of Justice does not negotiate about certain articles, particularly about the legal

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property regime. It is true that the minister is a professor of law. But since he
is a professor of commercial law, he wants to make the family a company.
Another MP used similar language when talking about the new pro-
perty regime:
Although the marriage is based upon mutual love, respect and goodwill, new
revisions make it a company, and thus it will abolish the marital love and sin-
cerity; trust in marriage will leave its place to suspect. Every family will need
an accounting member. Turkish people will not bear this familial insecurity
and calculations.
Some MPs exaggerated the possible result of the new property regime
by stating that the draft law would also lead to moral degeneration:
[P]ropertied people will choose to live together instead of entering into the
burden of marriage. Coupling out of wedlock is already increasing in our
society. This law will be a catalyst for moral and sexual degeneration. This
law is a threat to a lovely marriage and to Turkish society.
All women MPs were, in contrast, supportive of the new property
regime. Only one female MP from the nationalist right criticized the
Minister of Justice by asking why he concentrated solely on divorce,
because in her opinion young people must be educated about the
beauty of love and togetherness rather than the benefits of separation.
In response, the Minister of Justice explained that
[T]he main aim of the draft law was not regulating divorce, but rather to regu-
late marriage as a happy union of two persons and of their children, having
equal rights, equal obligations, and equal responsibilities. The draft law brings
all precautions to realize the happy union of equal partners; however, the hap-
piness of a family cannot be maintained solely by legal precautions. However,
the law guarantees the strong material foundations of such a marriage.

THE PENAL CODE. Given the fruitful results of their efforts in relation to
the Civil Code, women’s groups launched another campaign for the
amendment of the Penal Code, called the ‘Campaign for the Reform of
the Turkish Penal Code from a Gender Perspective’. This campaign
claimed that penal codes are significant in terms of gender equality,
because they regulate not only sexual crimes, including violence against
women, but also women’s sexual, bodily and reproductive rights.19 As
we have discussed, during the amendment of the Civil Code there was
472 Parliamentary Affairs

a coalition party government and a Minister of Justice who was a

social democrat and open to the demands of the women’s movement.
However, during the amendment of the Penal Code the religious party
came to power with a different gender agenda, and the new Minister of
Justice refused the demands of the women’s groups. Facing a backlash,
and with government officials rejecting the demands from the women
movement’s Working Group for the Penal Code in May 2003, a
widespread public campaign was launched to pressurise the

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government. The National Platform for Turkish Penal Code used the
media, and organised numerous conferences, meetings and press
conferences. In September 2004, a special session was opened in the
Turkish Parliament to vote on the new Penal Code and the women’s
platform was there as a lobbying force.
Women’s groups and social democrat MPs in the parliament acted in
harmony to amend the Penal Code in line with the requirements of full
gender equality. At the heart of their demands was the penalising of
so-called ‘honour crimes’ as aggravated homicide. Most of the violence
and assault on women’s bodies, sexuality and autonomy have been jus-
tified in the name of honour, an unclear term and one which is sym-
bolic of the widespread patriarchy in Turkish society. However, the
governing religious right party reflected patriarchal interests by propos-
ing the criminalisation of adultery, an issue which dominated parlia-
mentary and public debates in September 2004. One male MP asked
why a code as important as the Turkish Penal Code was being blocked
by such a trivial debate on adultery, adding that he ‘. . .believe[d] that
this debate is a deliberate act of the party in government’ which had
not mentioned adultery while it was being discussed by the Justice
Commission but had belatedly remembered to ‘protect women’s
honour’. Similarly, another male MP from the centre-left expressed his
anxiety:

We always consider that [the] adulterous act is illegal and unfair. However,
bringing a punishment for adultery is irrelevant to the modern law under-
standing. If the adultery is criminalised, this will be the intervention of the
Islamic law to the modern law, to the European law, to the norms of EU, and
to the civilization.20

In fact, the government had no intention of bringing in an Islamic law.

The penalisation of adultery it proposed was distinct from the way
Islamic law regulates the adulterous act.
The main objection of women’s groups to the penalisation of
adultery was that, in a country where the sexuality and bodies of
young girls and women are under the strict control of men and where
women are tortured and killed because of their actual or probable
sexual acts, any law penalising adultery would only serve to punish
and control the sexuality of women. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister
 Substantive Representation of Women 473

harshly criticised the women’s movement because, in his view, it was

voicing marginal demands. He insisted that the penalisation of adultery
was demanded by real Turkish women, who suffered through their
adulterous husbands. The female minister of state in charge of
women’s and family affairs also spoke out in support of penalisation,
explaining that, as a lawyer, her office was like a social laboratory, and
thus she was very familiar with the problems of Turkish women: the
main concern of many Anatolian women was their adulterous hus-

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bands. Women’s groups, in response, underlined the economic and
educational disadvantages of Anatolian women, most of whom would
not file a court case. They doubted the sincerity of the government;
which if it were sincere would take serious measures to end ‘honour
crimes’, a bleeding wound in Turkey and the nightmare of many young
women. Such measures would include removing sentence reduction for
honour killing and opening shelters for women.
One female social democrat MP, who was in touch with women’s
organisations, criticised the insufficient emphasis on ‘honour crimes’ in
the new Penal Code. Although sentence reduction for ‘honour crimes’
was removed by the draft, only ‘customary killings’ rather than
‘honour killings’ were deemed to be aggravated homicide. She stated:
Customary crimes and honour crimes are the same in the dictionary, but in
practical life, customary crimes are generally connected to a certain region of
our country . . . However, honour crimes happen all over the world. The
crimes in the name of namus (honour) must [be] heavily . . . sentenced. All over
the world women are killed because of honour, jealousy and passion. Women
are killed because they want to marry men they choose; because they want to
divorce; and simply because they are raped . . . The crimes against young girls
and women are unfortunately a bitter reality of our country. The United
Nations define the crimes against women as ‘honour crimes’. The customary
crimes may not cover and emphasize the honour crimes committed against
women. We should make our laws harmonious with international laws.21

Male MPs from the social democrat party also spoke in support. One
underlined the necessity for modernising the Turkish legal system by
eliminating from the Penal Code all clauses discriminating against
women. Another underlined Turkey’s prickly road to the European
Union, with the latter’s concerns about democratisation and equality
between women and men. A third referred to Turkey’s commitment, in
line with the Copenhagen criteria, to freedom of speech, human rights,
equality between women and men and the struggle against torture, and
added that:
It is unfortunate that debates on adultery during the revisions of the Penal
Code created suspects about the secular principles of Turkey in Europe.
Adultery debates put our European advocators into difficulties and support
the prejudices of those Europeans who are against Turkey’s integration
into EU.22
474 Parliamentary Affairs

In the case of the Penal Code, the lack of strategic insiders within the
party in government led women’s groups and left-wing MPs to seek
to influence the religious right party in power through emphasising
likely sanctions from international authorities, primarily the EU.
After a heated debate in September 2004, the new Penal Code institu-
tionalised women’s autonomy over their bodies and sexuality; instead
of criminalising adultery, as the Prime Minister had proposed, marital
rape was criminalised, which had been one of the most significant

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demands of feminist groups; and sexual crimes were regulated as
crimes against individuals, rather than crimes against society or
public morality. The new Penal Code also abolished measures bring-
ing sentence reduction for honour killings, eliminated discrimination
between non-virgin and married women and criminalized sexual har-
assment in the workplace.23

Conclusion
Having studied the descriptive and substantive representation of
women in the Turkish context, it is clear that a numerical minority of
women in the parliament does not necessarily lead to the suppression
of women’s concerns and perspectives; equally, the numerical increase
of women in the parliament does not guarantee women’s substantive
representation. In the Turkish case, global and national developments
provided a conducive context. Women in the Turkish parliament,
together with a strong women’s movement as the voice of feminist per-
spectives, were critical actors in the substantive representation of
women. Put another way, Turkish feminists in the 1990s were faced
with the dilemma expressed perfectly by Anne Phillips: ‘Should femin-
ists simply refuse to engage with this dreary universe [of parliaments,
government, political parties and formal representation] or do we have
to engage in order to transform?’24 Their answer was to engage with
formal politics. At the same time they never gave up making and
searching for alternative political methods. Thus, in the absence of
high women’s presence in the legislature, a strong women’s movement
sought alternative ways of making politics work for women and enhan-
cing the democratic climate, in making politics for women to animate
the democratic climate, without disregarding the importance of women
holding public office. Thanks to their meticulous and multi-
dimensional efforts, which connected the national with the inter-
national, the parliamentary with the extra-parliamentary, the streets
with the offices, Turkish women now inhabit a more democratic and
egalitarian society.
1 M. Sawer, ‘Parliamentary Representation of Women: From Discourses of Justice to Strategies of
Accountability’, International Political Science Review, 7(2), 2000, pp. 361 –80.
2 J. Lovenduski, ‘Women and Politics: Minority Representation or Critical Mass?’, Parliamentary
Affairs, 54, 2001, pp. 743 –58.
 Substantive Representation of Women 475

3 A.P. Griffiths, ‘How can One Person Represent Another’, The Aristotelian Society, 34, 1960,
pp. 187 –208.
4 The following analysis relates to the 1999 and 2002 parliaments, where the level of women represen-
tatives was 4%.
5 L. Wängnerud, ‘Testing the Politics of Presence: Women’s Representation in the Swedish Riksdag’,
Scandinavian Political Studies, 23, 2000, pp. 67 –91.
6 Women for Women’s Human Rights—New Ways, Turkish Civil and Penal Codes from a Gender
Perspective: The Success of Two Nationwide Campaigns, 2005.
7 R. Inglehart and P. Norris, Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change around the World,
Cambridge, 2003.

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8 All interviews were conducted in April and May 2006.
9 S. Childs, ‘In their Own Words: New Labour Women and the Substantive Representation of Women’,
British Journal of Politics & International Relations, 3(2), 2001, pp. 173 – 190.
10 Seventy per cent of women MPs we interviewed stated that they were invited into political parties
when they had no intention of holding an office. One woman MP’s words are emblematic in this
regard: ‘I entered into politics in 1995 with a last minute decision after seven separate conversations
with the leader of one political party. I was not ready . . . I was not interested in politics’. Another col-
league expressed a similar story about another political party: ‘I entered into politics with an invita-
tion in 1995; it was a last minute decision. At that time I was the governor of a city’. In the same
spirit, one woman MP explained: ‘In 1995 I was invited by one party, but when the Constitutional
Court cancelled the representative status at the national level, I could not be a representative. Then
I went back to my post at the academy. Then, in 1999, another party invited me and I became a
politician’.
11 G. Dorronsoro and E. Massicard, ‘Being a Member of Parliament in Contemporary Turkey’,
European Journal of Turkish Studies, 3, 2005, 1 –43, http://www.ejts.org/document502.html
12 L. Wängnerud, op. cit., p. 70.
13 S. Childs, ‘Attitudinally Feminist? The New Labour Women MPs and the Substantive Representation
of Women’, Politics, 21(3), 2001, p. 179.
14 A. Ayata and F. Tütüncü, ‘The Party Politics of Justice and Development Party and the Predicaments
of Women at the Intersection of the Westernist, Islamist and Feminist Discourses’, British Journal of
Middle Eastern Studies, 35(3), 2008.
15 Women for Women’s Human Rights—New Ways, op. cit.
16 TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 31 October 2001.
17 Ibid., 25 October 2001.
18 Ibid., 24 October 2001.
19 Women for Women’s Human Rights—New Ways, op. cit., pp. 9–10.
20 TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 September 2004.
21 Ibid., 15 September 2004.
22 Ibid., 26 September 2004.
23 Women for Women’s Human Rights—New Ways, op. cit., pp. 14 –15.
24 A. Phillips, Feminism and Politics, Oxford, 1998, p. 2.