Women and Turkish Cinema

Since 2000, there has been a considerable effort in Turkish cinema to come to
terms with the military’s intervention in politics and subsequent national
trauma, and this has resulted in an outpouring of cinematic texts. This book
focuses on women and Turkish cinema in the context of gender politics, cultural
identity and representation.
The central proposition of this book is that the enforced depoliticisation
introduced after the coup of 1980 is responsible for uniting feminism and film
in 1980s’ Turkey. The feminist movement was able to flourish precisely because it
was not perceived as political or politically significant. In a parallel move, in the
films of the 1980s there was an increased tendency to focus on the individual,
on women’s issues and lives, in order to avoid the overtly political.
Women and Turkish Cinema provides a comprehensive view of cinema’s
approach to women in a country that straddles European and Middle Eastern
cultural conceptions, identities and religious values, and will be an invaluable
resource for students and scholars of Film Studies, Gender Studies and
Middle East Studies, amongst others.

Dr. Atıl Eylem Atakav is Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the
University of East Anglia. She is the editor of Directory of World Cinema:
Turkey (2012). She is currently working on two co-edited collections: Women
and Contemporary World Cinema and From Smut to Soft Core: 1970s and
World Cinema. She is on the editorial board of Sine/Cine: Journal of Film
Studies. She teaches Women, Islam and Media; Women and Film; and World
Cinemas modules at UEA. Her current research interests are on the repre-
sentation of ‘honour’-based violence in the media. She writes regularly on
issues around gender and womanhood for the Huffington Post (UK) and for
her co-authored (with Melanie Williams) blog on women’s cinema: Auteuse
Theories.
Routledge Studies in Middle East Film and Media

1. Women and Turkish Cinema

Gender Politics, Cultural Identity and Representation
Eylem Atakav
Women and Turkish Cinema
Gender Politics, Cultural Identity
and Representation

Eylem Atakav
First published 2013
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2013 Eylem Atakav
The right of Eylem Atakav to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Atakav, Eylem.
Women and Turkish cinema : gender politics, cultural identity and
representation / Eylem Atakav.
p. cm. – (Routledge studies in Middle East film and media)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Women in motion pictures. 2. Feminism and motion pictures–Turkey.
3. Motion pictures–Turkey–History–20th century. I. Title.
PN1995.9.W6A85 2012
791.4309561–dc23
2012023534

ISBN: 978-0-415-67465-2 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-81037-8 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Taylor & Francis Books
To the memory of two remarkable women:
my grandmother Jale Gümüş (1928–2006) and
filmmaker and artist Meral Okay (1959–2012)
Contents

Acknowledgements viii

Introduction 1

1 Women of Turkey: Feminism and the 1980s’ Women’s

Movement 19

2 Historically Framing Women and Turkish Cinema 38

3 Representing Career Women 55

4 Representing Female Desire and Subjectivity 67

5 Representing Prostitution 83

6 Representing Widowhood and Sexuality 97

7 Women and New Turkish Cinema 108

Filmography 116
Notes 119
Bibliography 132
Index 141
Acknowledgements

In writing this book, I have been privileged in enjoying indispensable

encouragement and support from a number of individuals and institutions.
I should like to express my gratitude to all of them. My enduring appreciation
is for Melanie Williams, Karen Randell and Su Holmes for the time and
effort they have spent in reading, editing and responding to drafts of the
chapters at different stages, and for their affectionate supportiveness. I would
like to thank them for believing in my work and for their tremendous expertise
and enthusiasm. My gratitude is also for all my colleagues and friends in the
School of Film and Television Studies at the University of East Anglia, who
have been an incredible support. Special thanks to Chris Berry and Jacqueline
Furby for their invaluable feedback on the first draft of this project. I would
also like to thank Kathryn Rylance, Stacey Carter, Rachel Norridge and
Suzanne Richardson for the tremendous editorial support.
I am grateful to the Faculty of Media, Arts and Society at Southampton
Solent University which funded my research for this project. I am also
indebted to Ruken Öztürk, an expert on women and women filmmakers in
Turkish cinema, who has greatly facilitated my work and helped me
locate key critical texts on the topic, and who has provided me with not only
hard-to-track resources, but also copies of films from Ankara University’s as
well as her own archive. I am grateful also to the Women’s Library and
Information Centre in Istanbul, which has provided me with hard-to-track
journals; Debra Zimmerman for letting me find treasures at Women Make
Movies in New York, with films made by, for and about women.
There are so many friends (in the UK, US and Turkey) who have given
their hearts, time and insightful comments to shed light on my path in this
journey who deserve more than a ‘thank you’. Thanks to Özlem Köksal for
all the long academic conversations we had as we discovered new insights into
the cinema of Turkey. Behzat Kocavardar and Nuran Sayman, the comrades,
kindly granted me interviews at very short notice and shared their fascinating
experiences as political activists in the late 1970s. Thanks also to little Tabitha
Jayne Wren Holmes for bringing sunshine and happiness to my life. Thanks
to Ernie and Bert and Tatlim for cheering me up exactly when needed. I am
grateful for the existence of my dearest friend Kevin McCarthy who has
 Acknowledgements ix
always been there for me; and Kristopher Glover whose love, patience and
positivity kept me on track.
To thank my parents Gülnihal and Nabi Atakav, words are not enough.
I know your hearts beat for my health, happiness and success. My mother’s
extensive knowledge of films and my father’s experiences as a political activist
in the late 1970s have been my map at times when I felt lost.
Finally, to grandma, Jale Gümüş, to whose memory this book is dedicated –
the first person to take and introduce me to the pictures, whose writings,
songs and beauty still live in my heart and brighten my life, and from whom
I learnt how to be an independent woman.

Eylem Atakav
April 2012
Introduction

Following a decade of increased and violent polarisation between Left and

Right in Turkish politics, traditionally perceived to be the guardian of the Turkish
state and constitution, the army decided to intervene to put an end to what
appeared to be incipient civil war. The military intervention of 12 September,
1980 repressed both the radical Left as well as the radical Right in Turkey
whilst aiming towards a period of depoliticisation in society. It crushed all
political parties and particularly leftist organisations, while temporarily sus-
pending democracy and thereby bringing normal political life to a complete
halt. The coup attempted a systematic depoliticisation of the masses.
Since 2000, there has been a considerable effort in Turkish cinema to come
to terms with this national trauma, and it has resulted in an outpouring of
cinematic texts. Babam ve Oǧlum (My Father and My Son) (Çaǧan Irmak,
2005) is one such text. It is a melodrama about a left-wing activist journalist’s
story after the loss of his wife while giving birth to their son on the night of the
coup. In the powerful opening sequence of the film, Aysu (Tuba Büyüküstün),
who is ready to deliver the baby, is seen with her husband Sadık (Fikret
Kuşkan) in the emptied streets of the city, unaware of the curfew. His panic is
highlighted by the fast tilts and shaky moves of a hand-held camera. His yell
for help mingles with his wife’s screams of pain as they realise they cannot go
any further. The couple is shown in a long shot as Sadık helps his wife lie
down on the grass in the park alongside the motorway. He removes his shirt
to assist the birth; his nakedness highlighting his vulnerability. The sound-
track is funereal, tragic and like a requiem with forceful rhythmic, almost
martial underpinnings. It suggests death, symbolising not only the impending
death of Sadık’s wife, but also the death of the republic and democracy as a
result of the coup. The previously darkened screen, followed by a scream,
opens to the morning. The camera pans through the still empty and silent
streets and finds the blurred image of Sadık sitting naked on the grass with a
baby in his arms and the bloody body of his wife behind him. As the camera
closes in on him we see the blood on his face and body. From his point of
view, in a misty image, we see an approaching military vehicle. This gloomi-
ness implies his state of shock. A soldier comes out of the vehicle, hesitatingly
walks towards Sadık asking if there has been an accident. From the point of
2 Introduction
view of the soldier, he is shown looking unfocused and finding it hard to
create sentences: ‘My wife is dead … The baby is born … So much blood …
No one was here … ’ He stops after each sentence and finally with a cry in his
eyes and tone of voice he asks: ‘Where is everyone?’ The soldier replies in an
alarming manner as his voice sounds slow and echoes as it mixes with the
dramatic music used earlier: ‘There’s been a coup!’ The camera slowly pans
around Sadık and closes in on the baby’s face. The baby is alive; his eyes
are open.
The unsettling image on the screen moved me as it offered an experience
of the coup. I listened to many similar real stories about the birth of my own
friends, the birth of others. This time its presentation to me on the big screen
reminded me that it could have been me had I been born a few months
before. This led me to thinking: what did it mean to be born in Turkey in the
early 1980s? My interest in answering this question cannot only be explained
by the wish to examine the immense shifts that started taking place in this
decade in Turkey, but is also informed politically by my personal background.
Atıl Eylem is an extremely politically resonant name, which literally means
‘go for action’ and has an overt link with the leftist political activism that
both my parents were involved in until the coup. The story behind my name
does not only refer to the name of one of the left-wing journals (Atılım) that
had to be published clandestinely, but also assigns me the role and pride of
carrying the keywords of the left-wing activists who fought, and at times were
either killed or went through serious physical and mental torture, for their
ideas. I was born a year after my father lost his comrade (arkadaş) who was
shot while being carried wounded in his arms (still trying to voice his ideas);
and after my mother and father had cried for their books which died in the
cold damp cellar of a friend’s house, while being hidden from the police who
were inspecting every house to find censored books. Whoever had a copy of
Das Kapital was to be stamped as leftist, and hence needed to be under strict
scrutiny by the police. These books full of ‘dangerous’ ideas should be burnt.
Those who had managed to read them did so by covering them with gazette
papers or hiding them behind the covers of other non-dangerous books. I was born
on a day when no newspapers were published because it was a religious
holiday. This personal background informs my initial interest in analysing this
decade’s political, social and cultural environment from a critical perspective.
In the repressive and depoliticised atmosphere of the post-coup period,
the first social movement that emerged and articulated its demands was the
women’s movement. It was also the first democratic opposition to the military
regime. Moreover, it expanded the scope of pluralism and democracy in Turkey
through different concerns communicated by women in the public realm.
Although feminist ideology is overtly political, in this period of depoliticisation
the movement was only able to exist because its activists sought to free them-
selves from both the Right and the Left and any other clearly partisan political
label, and they did not found any institutions to increase women’s political
representation. Following the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923
 Introduction 3
women had been given rights by the state through what is often termed state
feminism. In the 1980s women were, for the first time, raising their own
independent voices through campaigns, festivals, demonstrations, publications
of journals and the formation of consciousness-raising groups. Although they
contributed significantly to the formation of a liberal, democratic polity,
they were unable to transform patriarchal society.
Profoundly affected by the social and political milieu, Turkish cinema went
through a period of change in the 1980s. Overtly political or social realist
films were censored, banned or destroyed as a result of forcible depoliticisation in
the aftermath of the coup. In other words, cultural representation was under
pressure to change in consequence. Depoliticisation, then, can be seen as a
key factor in the renewed focus on the individual during this period of film-
making. In their attempt to avoid the ‘political’, filmmakers chose to focus on
women, and this occurred in parallel to the emergence of the women’s move-
ment. The entrance of sophisticated characters and a focus on the individual
informed the shift in representations of women in cinema. This shift was from
one-dimensional and artificial to multi-dimensional characters. Until this
point, ‘good and bad’ qualities were never found together within a single
character. Despite sporadic early attempts it is really only from the 1980s that
film characters were freed from simple binary oppositions and allowed to
move from superficiality to a greater degree of depth and complexity. Hence,
the cinema began to liberate itself from the portrayal of conventional female
characters and started concentrating on the human woman.
Women’s lives and issues became prominent in Turkish cinema and this led
to the production of an extensive body of women’s films. Throughout the
book I use the term ‘women’s films’ to refer to films that offer the narrative
point of view of a female character and focus on women’s issues. In this study
I argue that despite profound shifts in narrative and representation of
character, the overall cinematic style, codes and conventions remained over-
whelmingly traditional. As I show in my case studies, despite occasional
appearances to the contrary, films continued to objectify women; to present
them as having a necessarily limited range of choices in a patriarchal society;
and to remain ambivalent about whether women are ultimately capable of
exercising independent agency.
There has been very little scholarly work done on the representation of
women in Turkish cinema in the 1980s. The existing resources – as I will
demonstrate in the review of literature later in this Introduction – not only
ignore shifts in the representation of women within a socio-political context,
but they marginalise any investigation of the link between feminism and
cinema. This is either because they adopt a broad overview perspective or
because they were written and published too close in time to the events they
analyse and describe. I redress this neglect and examine the changes in the
cultural, social and political while linking feminism and cinema. Further-
more, in existing resources there is no sustained focus on the mise-en-scène of
the films. This is why it is apposite to signal the need for textual analysis to
4 Introduction
understand the relationship between the socio-political and the cultural. That
said, this does of course have its methodological limitations and the wider
limitations of a primarily text-based approach have long since been debated in
screen studies. Although it would be fascinating to consider the cultural and
critical reception of these films, their intertexts (such as marketing materials),
as well as questions of production, authorship and audiences, these avenues
are not explored here. The book is interested in examining the links between
feminism and film at a textual level in a particularly depoliticised period, as
set against a particular historical and political background.
Throughout the chapters I examine the relationship between feminism and
cinema while focusing on the women’s movement and women’s films of the
1980s. In thinking about the nature and implications of the representation of
women constructed in Turkish cinema and the issues addressed by the women’s
movement, I argue that there are connections to be made on a historical,
analytical and theoretical level between the two sets of practices. I concentrate
on a critique of the socially constructed nature of representations of women.
In doing so, I ultimately argue that the enforced depoliticisation introduced
after the coup by the incoming military government is responsible for uniting
feminism and film in 1980s’ Turkey. The feminist movement was able to
flourish precisely because it was not perceived as political or politically sig-
nificant. In a parallel move, in the films of the 1980s there was an increased
tendency to focus on the individual, on women’s issues and lives, in order to
avoid the overtly political.

Chapter Outline
Analysing the field of visual representation requires an understanding of the
political and the social. It is for this reason that Chapter 1 provides a political
and social framework to the study of 1980s’ Turkey, the women’s movement
and cinema. It starts with an examination of feminism in Turkey in relation to
politics and religion since 1923, and it then examines the social and political
milieu of the 1980s vis-à-vis the women’s movement. It also identifies the
different strategies that feminism employed in order to survive as a political
movement in a period of strict depoliticisation. The chapter concludes with a
discussion of the effects of the movement on the democratisation of society
thereby illuminating the conditions under which feminism operated in Turkey
in the 1980s and the nature of its responses.
Chapter 2 historically contextualises the representation of women in Turkish
cinema by considering a range of representative examples. The questions
that frame my analysis in this chapter are: What is the link between the
women’s movement and representation of women in Turkish cinema in
the 1980s? Were cinema and the women’s movement both affected in the
same way in the post-coup political milieu? Were films affected by the move-
ment or were they simply marginalising political issues by focusing on
women’s lives?
 Introduction 5
In Chapters 3 to 6 I analyse case-study films in depth by employing textual
analysis. In this I consider (as appropriate) cinematic characteristics including
composition of the cinematic image, lighting, editing and camera movement.
I examine the operation of cinematic signifiers and elements of plot, char-
acterisation and narrative structure in four films: Dünden Sonra Yarından
Önce (After Yesterday Before Tomorrow) (Nisan Akman, 1987), Mine (Atıf
Yılmaz, 1982), Asiye Nasıl Kurtulur? (How can Asiye Survive?) (Atıf Yılmaz,
1986) and Kurbaǧalar (The Frogs) (Şerif Gören, 1985). All four films deal
with different women’s lives and issues.
The kernel of this volume is the analysis of these films, through which I
identify the nature and ideological character of the representation of women
in the 1980s. My concern, therefore, is to contextualise these film texts in
political, social and cultural terms. In analysing them I concentrate on film
form and structure: narrative, character, image, framing, camera position and
movement, metaphors and point of view. I relate the specificity of each film to
a theoretical framework of feminism and feminist film theory. This structure
enables me to couple the discussion of a particular film with a critical evaluation
of a theoretical discourse informed by feminism. The case study films are –
particularly with regard to their themes but also numerically – representative
of the corpus of women’s films of the 1980s. Yet it is important to acknowledge a
methodological and historical limitation here: some of the films referred to in
Chapter 2 (particularly those films from the early 1920s) rely on synopses and
secondary sources and description of film historians as these films are hard to
find due to the lack of film archiving in Turkey.
In introducing a socio-cultural dimension to the film texts, I critically explore
the tension that arises from the way in which patriarchy is structured into film
form and permeates filmic language, and how women are represented in the films
of the 1980s. While illustrating the claims put forward in Chapters 1 and 2,
Chapter 3 provides an analysis of Dünden Sonra Yarından Önce which explores
the paradox caused by the conflict between career and marriage while present-
ing a diverse way of representing female subjectivity. It presents this division as
an ‘either/or dichotomy’ through the female protagonist while considering the
situation of a career woman who sacrifices her career in favour of the tradi-
tional virtues of marriage, at the request of her husband. It explores how the
power dynamics of a marriage are constructed and negotiated, and through
which mechanism these dynamics are maintained, reinforced and challenged. The
film is also important for its overt reference to the feminist movement of 1980s’
Turkey as well as to women’s rights.
Chapter 4 elaborates on the discussion around the entrance of individualism
as well as the new understanding of (women’s) sexuality in 1980s’ Turkish cinema
through an analysis of Mine. The film focuses on the female experience in a
patriarchal society despite the discrepancy between the destruction and con-
struction of female subjectivity.
Chapter 5 examines Asiye Nasıl Kurtulur? and its representation of a
woman who ‘falls’ into prostitution, particularly in drawing attention to and
6 Introduction
questioning the reasons that lead women to prostitution. The film is illustrative
of the ways in which patriarchal relations operate in society for women who
do not have any financial, educational or social support.
Chapter 6 provides a discussion of Kurbaǧalar, which analyses women’s
subordination in Turkey whilst identifying obstacles posed by patriarchy to
women’s emancipation. In its attempt to propose an exploration of changing
forms of male dominance in rural Turkey, it explores how womanhood is
produced in the absence of the male and the kind of pressures that shape
female identity as well as the means available to women to resist oppression.
Chapter 7 critically reflects upon and provides an overview of the tendencies
in the representation of women in Turkish cinema since the 1990s. This
chapter also serves as a conclusion and outlines the main arguments as well
as the limitations of the volume.
In summary, women’s films of the 1980s do not merely reflect some unitary
patriarchal logic but are also sites of power relations and political processes
through which gender hierarchies are both created and contested. These films
empower women by representing them as strong and rebellious characters, and
by dealing with women’s issues, but at the same time they marginalise and objec-
tify women with their cinematic style. Turkish cinema, in this sense, reveals
powerful cross-currents producing complex and often contradictory effects,
acting both to reinforce and to alleviate the manifestations of male dominance in
different narratives and contexts. However, despite these complexities, gender
asymmetry in Turkish society is produced, represented and reproduced
through filmic texts.
While providing an extended analysis of what little work has been done on the
topic of the representation of women in Turkish cinema in the 1980s and inter-
linking this to an examination of the women’s movement that emerged in the
same decade, I identify three key areas. These are the women’s movement in
the 1980s in Turkey vis-à-vis the social and political milieu at the time, the
representation of women in Turkish cinema in the 1980s, and feminist film theory.

The women’s movement in Turkey in the 1980s

It is useful to understand the social dynamics of the women’s movement,
which has an important place in the Turkish political spectrum, and the social
forces that the women’s movement has kindled in the society. There is a rela-
tively substantial body of work in English on this topic, most of which is
translated from Turkish.1
One of the earliest academic discussions of the movement was Şirin Tekeli’s
1986 article, ‘Emergence of the Feminist Movement in Turkey’ which con-
sidered the meaningfulness of feminist ideology from the point of view of
Turkish society. Yet, as she acknowledged in her article, 1986 was ‘too early
to speculate about the movement’s impact or evaluate its activities, modes of
organization’ as ‘the ideology is still in the process of being formulated’.2 The
importance of this piece was that it allowed a discussion of the change in the
 Introduction 7
status and specific life conditions of women within the context of historical
transformation in Turkey. Tekeli was the first scholar to explain how the 1980
coup closed down the leftist organisations as well as all other political parties,
and how this produced an emancipatory effect on women. In other words, she
explicated why feminist ideology and the women’s movement were not per-
ceived as political at the time. The ban on politics and the ruling of the new
military regime led to an awakening of interest in political problems that used
to be regarded as marginal, and the issue of women’s oppression was suddenly
placed at the head of a series of problems including the status of the indivi-
dual in politics and the relationship between art and politics.3 The demands
of women for ‘equality, freedom, solidarity brought the feminist point of view
naturally to the forefront of the fight for democracy’.4 Tekeli’s article assumes
a crucial place in the writings on the women’s movement in Turkey since it
laid the groundwork for the appearance and structure of later analyses. For
instance, Deniz Kandiyoti’s essay, ‘Emancipated but Unliberated? Reflections
on the Turkish Case’, in which she poses the question of whether Turkish
women were emancipated but unliberated, followed Tekeli’s work and was
groundbreaking in taking the issue back to the early years of the Republic,
when women were given rights rather than fighting for their own rights. In
discussing this, Kandiyoti looks at the relationship between emancipation and
liberation. She asserts that the changes in Turkey in the early 1920s ‘left the
most crucial areas of gender relations untouched’, hence, it is tempting to
describe Turkish women as ‘emancipated but unliberated, because signs of
significant political activity by women to remedy this state of affairs have
been largely absent.’5 Kandiyoti, in concurrence with Tekeli’s argument,
highlights that the 1980s’ movement was unique in the sense that it was the
first time when women in Turkey started getting involved in feminist activity.
I draw upon this argument, while claiming that the women’s liberation
movement that emerged in the 1980s could only have come into being because
women had previously been emancipated. In other words, it would not have
been possible for Turkish women to assert their concerns in the 1980s unless
they had been given rights in the early 1920s with Kemalist reforms.
Yeşim Arat joined the discussion in the early 1990s with her article,
‘Women’s Movement of the 1980s in Turkey: Radical Outcome of Liberal
Kemalism?’ which questions whether the women’s movement is a radical
outcome of liberal Kemalism. Arat focuses on the difference between the
women’s movement of the 1980s and the Kemalist tradition (state feminism)
in Turkey. Throughout her analysis she argues that the women’s movement
was a ‘conscious challenge to Kemalist reforms of women’s status’, but that it
‘unwillingly helped promote the Kemalist vision of a Westernised (namely
liberal, democratic and secular) Turkey’.6 Moving from this argument, she
traces how the feminist movement promoted liberalism and how feminist
activism contributed to democratise society. With regards to whether the
movement reached its goals, Arat argues that to the extent that a liberal,
democratic and secular polity is a precondition for the transformation of a
8 Introduction
patriarchal polity, the movement has been successful. Her article is a pioneer
work in specifically addressing the nature of the movement in an extended
and scholarly manner. Her argument develops the idea that a considerable
amount of feminist consciousness emerged in urban circles, and ‘helped
strengthen a pluralist polity rather than animate a feminist one’.7
Scholarly interest in the movement developed in the 1990s. Şirin Tekeli’s
edited collection (published in 1990 in Turkish, and in 1995 in English) was
the first (and only) volume to focus mainly on Turkish women in the 1980s,
under the title of Women in Turkey in the 1980s: A Woman’s Perspective.
The book brings together different authors around the same theme (Turkish
women) but from different perspectives, and provides an analysis of the
changing structures and culture in Turkish society during the 1980s. In an
attempt to answer questions (including what changed in Turkish society in the
1980s to lead women to begin to question more and more vigorously their
gender status and their traditional identity, and what kind of a society has
Turkey become during this decade) this collection of essays provides an ana-
lysis of women’s lives. The themes are highly diversified and each article deals
with a different group of women – peasants, tribal women, working-class
women, urban women, students, politicians, women living in the West and the
East of the country – hence the ‘mosaic-like structure of the society’ is well
reflected in the book.8 Some of the topics included in the volume are women
and Islam in Turkey; fashion and women’s clothing; changing forms of
women’s labour in the urban economy; shifts in women’s activities both inside
and outside the private sphere in the 1980s; gender hierarchy in rural Turkey;
women and education; women in the media in the context of journals (this
article does not deal with the media in general); women’s participation in
politics; women and the Turkish Left; women and their sexual problems; and
the family and the discourse of patriarchy. Indeed, despite the effort in scho-
larly writing on women in Turkey and the women’s movement of the 1980s,
an interest in the representation of women in Turkish cinema in that decade is
absent. However, Tekeli’s work proves significant in its analysis of the trends
of social and cultural change that affected women’s lives. She identifies the
women’s movement as ‘the first democratic opposition to the military rule’.9
In ‘The Project of Modernity and Women in Turkey’, Yeşim Arat emphasises
the centrality of women’s position in the discussion of modernity in Turkey.
She compares the earlier construct of the Kemalist woman with a 1980s’
feminist critique of its construct, and draws on the shift from women being
objects of paternalistic Republican reforms that granted them their rights, to
women claiming subjectivity in their own lives. This approach has been par-
ticularly useful in highlighting the distinguishing features of the women’s
movement of the 1980s, in which women were no given voices but they were
actively making their own voices heard. Yet, as Arat argues, it would be wrong
to cast these two in oppositional terms because ‘the feminist activism of the
1980s’ is ‘the testimony to the strength of the Republican project of modernity’.10
 Introduction 9
Arat’s interest in the women’s movement is also apparent in her article
‘Democracy and Women in Turkey’, in which she examines how women have
contributed to the process of democratisation since 1980. She also explores
how women expanded the boundaries of democratic participation as they
demanded substantive rather than formal democracy. Her argument becomes
vital for my purposes here, particularly when she claims that ‘within the
political vacuum that had been created by the military government, the fem-
inist initiatives were deemed politically insignificant’.11 This argument is of
central importance to the key argument throughout this volume: what links
feminism and film was the enforced ‘depoliticisation’ introduced after the
coup by the incoming military government: the feminist movement was able
to come into being precisely because it was not perceived as politically sig-
nificant, and in films of the 1980s there was a tendency to focus on women’s
issues and lives, which were again not deemed as politically significant.
Aksu Bora and Asena Günal’s book, 90’larda Türkiye’de Feminizm (Feminism
in Turkey in the 1990s), is a more recent work. Despite having a title that
suggests a particular focus on the 1990s, the volume concentrates mainly on
the first-hand accounts of the authors as activists who took part in the fem-
inist movement. The essays include primary data comprising press cuttings
and anecdotes of women who initiated the movement. Yet their notes also
suggest that the movement of the 1980s tended to be elitist and did not reach
those women who did not belong to intellectual urban circles, but lived in
rural areas of Turkey. The book introduces the 1980s as ‘a new era for women
in Turkey’.12 According to Bora and Günal, the period between 1980 and
1990 was one throughout which gender and women’s issues were discussed
thoroughly, and about which it has become clear: ‘it was the time of con-
sciousness raising’.13 The book focuses mainly on the activities of women in
Ankara (the Ankara Circle) and the topics discussed include violence towards
women in the private sphere; women’s journals; women’s organisations (including
Kader and the Flying Broom – these were established in the 1990s); Women’s
Library and Information Centre; Kurdish women and their journals; the
politics of virginity and sexuality. This influential book is yet to be translated
into English to provide more widespread insight into Turkish women’s story.

Representation of women in Turkish cinema in the 1980s

To fill the gap in knowledge and explain the changes in the cultural, the
social, as well as the political while linking feminism and cinema, I focus here
on the very little scholarly work that has been done on the representation of
women in Turkish cinema in the 1980s.
The earliest discussion of this precise topic is Faruk Kalkan and Ragıp Taranç’s
book entitled 1980 Sonrası Türk Sinemasında Kadın (Women in Turkish
Cinema after 1980).14 The first section of the book concentrates on the topic
of women and sexuality on the Turkish screen between 1917 and 1980; and its
second part examines the shifts in Turkish cinema in the 1980s. The main
10 Introduction
focus of the book is the representation of female sexuality, yet it does not
provide textual analysis of films.
Kalkan and Taranç’s work is an attempt to catalogue the topics of films by
focusing only on their storylines rather than analysing them in detail (in terms
of cinematography, for example). The volume is significant for its identifica-
tion and categorisation of the characteristics of the representation of women
in Turkish cinema in the 1980s. The authors consider these films under the titles
of: relationships between men and women and women and society; love and
marriage; and sexuality and independent woman. Under these titles there are
subtitles which help to understand the representation of women. These sec-
tions are: women seen as commodity; single women; fallen women; women
and oppressive environment; unloved women, impossible love affairs; unhappy
marriages; female sexuality and independent women. These titles all attest to
the interest in women’s issues in Turkish cinema at the time.
Fetay Soykan’s thesis entitled Türk Sinemasında Kadın (Women in Turkish
Cinema) written in 1990, is a work with a much broader aim.15 It includes
chapters focusing on women (both at the representational level as well as at
the level of industry) in different periods. These include the Ottoman period
and hence the thesis provides a broad rather than focused analysis. In its final
chapter, the author examines how women are represented in Turkish cinema
in the 1980s under the title of ‘Cinema and the modern woman’. Her method
in analysing the decade is to make a distinction between the approaches of
male and female directors towards the representation of women. Soykan’s
work can also be seen as a sociological study as it uses statistics from real life,
including the figures of married and divorced men and women between 1980
and 1985, which is helpful in revealing the condition of women in Turkish
society at the time.16
Feyzan Nizam, in her dissertation, 1980’li yıllarda Türk Sinemasında Kadın
ve Toplumsal Dayanakları (Women and their Social Support in Turkish
Cinema in the 1980s), paints with a broad brush as she starts with the history
of feminist movements in the West and then focuses on the story of feminist
movements in Turkey.17 The study looks at the representation of women in
the media in general, then moves on to the topic of women in the media
in Turkey. The book focuses on the idea of women and film in the 1980s in
Turkey only in the final (relatively short) chapter. Nizam categorises films as
village films, youth films, films about prostitution, arabesque films and films
about rural areas, and looks at how each category of film represents . women.
Hilmi Maktav’s thesis, 1980 Sonrasında Türkiye’de Yaşanan Ideolojik ve
Kültürel Dönüşümlerin Türk Sinemasına Yansımaları (Reflections of Ideological
and Cultural Changes in Turkey post-1980 on Turkish Cinema), is another
resource that focuses on 1980s’ Turkish cinema. This dissertation looks at the
representation of women in one of its chapters and is the first work to make a
link between the feminist movement and cinema in the 1980s. Maktav uses
the categories of marriage and women; women and sexuality; oppressive
environments; fallen women; and the sisterhood of women. The strength of
 Introduction 11
the thesis derives from the way it provides the reader with valuable social,
historical and political background.18
Şükran Esen’s book 80’ler Türkiyesi’nde Sinema (Turkish Cinema in the 1980s)
starts with a broad discussion of what cinema, art, society and a social event is.19
In the first part of the book, Esen focuses on women in Turkish cinema in
the 1980s. She introduces the changes in Turkish cinema and changes in the
representation of women in films by analysing women in Turkish cinema
before and after 1980. She identifies two aspects: the conventional way of
representing women and the representation of women as powerful and
sophisticated characters. She then gives three examples from films for each
year between 1980 and 1989, with particular attention to their storylines.
In New Turkish Cinema: Belonging, Identity and Memory, Asuman Suner
signals the need to focus on women with the chapter entitled ‘The Absent
Women of New Turkish Cinema’. This chapter engages in an overall discussion
of the relationship between gender and new Turkish cinema, and problematises
the absence of women on screen. Suner argues that women in new wave films
are represented not as active subjects, but as objects of male desire. She refers to
a ‘certain ambivalence’ regarding the representation of women in new wave
films: ‘On the one hand, these films subordinate women to men and deny
them agency … [o]n the other hand, we can also detect a positive element in
this masculinist picture, in the sense that new wave films sometimes include a
critical self-awareness of their own complicity with patriarchal culture’.20
Suner provides close analysis of Adı Vasfiye (Her Name is Vasfiye) (Atıf
Yılmaz, 1985) and argues it is possible to detect an attitude similar to the one
in this film from the 1980s when looking at the representation of women in
new Turkish cinema. This clearly demonstrates the significance of 1980s’ films
in understanding new Turkish cinema.

Feminist film theory

It is beyond the scope of this volume to provide an overview of everything
that has been written around feminist film criticism, and so here I outline
some of the developments in feminist film theory I consider most signi-
ficant for the purposes of this volume. The debate on women’s cinema, its
politics and its language is articulated within Anglo-American film theory in
the early 1970s in relation to feminist politics and the women’s movement,
and to women’s filmmaking. My intention here is to use the notions intro-
duced to Film Studies by feminism. My analysis of films in the following
chapters is inflected by feminist theory and not necessarily psychoanalytical
theory.
Feminist film theory has explored gender in cinema through detailed ana-
lysis of filmic texts, focusing on elements such as modes of narrative address,
structuring principles of vision and patterns of identification. In ‘Rethinking
Women’s Cinema: Aesthetics and Feminist Theory’, Teresa de Lauretis points
out that the accounts of feminist film culture produced in the mid to late
12 Introduction
1970s tended to emphasise a dichotomy between two concerns of the women’s
movement, and in her words:

[ … ] two types of film work that seemed to be at odds with each other:
one called for immediate documentation for purposes of political activism,
consciousness-raising, self-expression, or the search for ‘positive images’
of woman; the other insisted on rigorous, formal work on the medium –
or, better, the cinematic apparatus, understood as a social technology
embedded in representation.21

This split influenced and shaped theoretical and critical debate around
women’s cinema with the contribution of ideology, semiotics and psycho-
analysis, which had developed in the wake of structural linguistics, and the
development of new disciplines including Film Studies and Women’s Studies.
Central among these debates were the relations of the gaze, the ideological
implications of narrative forms, and the effects of spectator positioning on
subject construction.
Beginning with Laura Mulvey and Claire Johnston’s groundbreaking ques-
tions about women’s positive or negative, realistic or distorted representation,
feminist film theory was grounded in a paradigm of sexual difference in which
the gaze of spectatorial pleasure was linked with masculinity, and the female
within mainstream cinema was assigned the position of object and spectacle,
connoting, in Mulvey’s words, an exemplary ‘to be looked-at-ness’.22
Feminist film theorists have critiqued this paradigm and described the male
gaze within the context and vocabulary of psychoanalysis, which was based
on the terminology of psychoanalytic theorists Jacques Lacan and Freud.
According to E. Ann Kaplan’s Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera,
notions of scopophilia, voyeurism, fetishism and narcissism were the modalities
of a controlling, punishing, self-regarding look, which functioned to assuage
the male subject’s castration anxiety at the expense of the feminine.23 Mulvey
used Lacanian and Freudian interpretation of the visual objectification of
women to argue that, if the female is iconicised, then this threatens the male
(castration anxiety), and that classic Hollywood cinema has developed various
devices and structures to give the male hero.24
Moreover, following Freud, the organisation of sexual difference in the
cinema was understood in terms of the equation of activity with masculinity
and passivity with femininity. Narrative systems were analysed in the light of
structuralist work by employing the terminology of Roland Barthes. According
to the notion of narrative codes, it was concluded that in linear narrative
‘woman’ operates conventionally to signify an obstacle or prize for a male
protagonist and, by implication, a male or masculinised spectator.25
As Kaplan notes, the eroticisation of women on the screen comes
about through the way the cinema is structured around three explicitly male
looks or gazes. Firstly, there is the look of the camera in the situation being
filmed, called the pro-filmic event, which is inherently voyeuristic and usually
 Introduction 13
male in the sense that a man is generally doing the filming. Secondly, there is
the look of the men within the narrative, which is structured so as to make
women objects of their gaze. Finally, there is the look of the male spectator.26
In ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Mulvey describes visual pleasure
in the cinema as rooted in a hierarchical system, whereby the male is the bearer
of the look and the woman is the object of the look. Moreover, she states that
woman stands in patriarchal culture as a signifier for the male other, bound
by a symbolic order in which man lives out his fantasies and obsessions
through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman
still tied to her place as bearer, not maker of the meaning.27
The other major theorist of the 1970s, Claire Johnston argues, in her 1973
pamphlet Notes on Women’s Cinema, that ‘it has been at the level of the
image that the violence of sexism and capitalism has been experienced.’28 In
other words, as Annette Kuhn highlights in ‘The Textual Politics’, the image
constructs a specific set of signifiers for constructing the world views of a
society which is both patriarchal and bourgeois.29 Johnston, also, has critiqued
the image of woman in male cinema and finds her to be signifier, referring to
psychoanalysis, of an absence rather than any presence. Similarly, Mulvey has
analysed the nature of the cinematic spectator and finds evidence in cinematic
voyeurism, in the nature of the camera look, of the exclusively male spectator
as a production assumption.
Feminist film analyses of the 1970s have shown that the codes of the insti-
tutional narrative cinema have established the spectator as passive consumer
of the film spectacle, or that narrative flow has been governed by a male defined
system of gazes, and that woman has existed in cinema as the projection of
male fears and fantasies. The account of feminist film theory offered above is
indicating a core of ideas which feminist theorists engaged with.
Overall, many theorists rallied to the cause of a feminist counter-cinema,
although their conceptions of what this would involve varied considerably. In
‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, for instance, Mulvey presents her
polemic against mainstream narrative film by advocating the creation of a
new language of desire to ‘free the look of the camera into its materiality in time
and space and the look of the audience into dialectics, passionate detachment’.30
Also in ‘Film, Feminism and the Avant-garde’, Mulvey addresses the question
of feminist aesthetics more directly, as she argues against attempting to infer a
tradition from the fragmentary history of women’s cultural work under
patriarchy.31
In Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema, Teresa de Lauretis has refined
and developed the critical tradition and argues that the concept of women’s
cinema meets the theoretical challenges and cultural changes of the 1980s and
1990s. Yet, she proposes an approach that is reconstructive rather than
deconstructive:

The present task of women’s cinema may not be destruction of narrative

and visual pleasure, but rather the construction of another frame of
14 Introduction
reference, one in which the measure of desire is no longer just the male
subject.32

De Lauretis’s definition of women’s cinema crosses the boundaries between

avant-garde and narrative cinema, independent and mainstream. This aspect
of de Lauretis’s thinking has been extended by Anneke Smelik, in And the
Mirror Cracked: Feminist Cinema and Film Theory, where she defines feminist
cinema in terms of the centrality it grants to female subjectivity (of authors
and spectators), conceived as a position in ‘a network of a major constitutive
factor along with others like race, class, sexual preference and age’.33
Counter-cinema, in this sense, may be defined as film practice that works
against and challenges dominant cinema, usually at the level of both signifiers and
signifieds. According to Kuhn, as textual practice, counter-cinema attempts to
challenge and subvert the operations of dominant cinema as an ideological
operation. The question of how this ideological operation works in cinema
may be dealt with by considering how codes in dominant cinema work to
construct certain kinds of spectator–text relationships.34
Exploring the debates around the notion of women’s cinema in this
context is of crucial importance for this volume. In fact, women’s cinema is a
difficult concept to define. As Butler points out, it suggests (without clarity)
films that might be made by, addressed to, or concerned with women, or
all three:

[i]t is neither a genre nor a movement in film history. It has no single

lineage of its own, no national boundaries; no filmic or aesthetic specificity
but traverses and negotiates cinematic and cultural tradition and critical
and political debates.35

Indeed, a female filmmaker’s body of work might intersect with women’s

cinema on occasion, but not necessarily consistently.
Furthermore, women’s cinema is a complex critical, theoretical and insti-
tutional construction, brought into existence with a baffling variety of definitions.
Indeed, in highlighting the debates on women’s cinema, notions of woman’s
film and women’s films assume considerable importance. In the first instance,
it is appropriate to refer to Judith Mayne’s The Woman at the Keyhole:
Feminism and Women’s Cinema, in which she explains the difference between
the woman’s film and women’s films. Mayne prefers to retain the term
‘women’s cinema’ in an ambiguous sense, and while she suggests that the very
phrase is expressive of this ambiguity, this is not exactly or altogether the
case, for it is the singular – the woman’s film – which is used more frequently
to refer to the Hollywood product, and the plural – women’s films – to refer to
work by women directors. The difference in number, she writes, is not incon-
sequential, for the woman’s film does indeed presume a unified set of traits to
be ascribed to appropriately feminine behaviour or subjectivity, while women’s
films can also be used to suggest a kind of uniformity which, while obviously
 Introduction 15
different from the femininity legitimated by the classical cinema, is rigid in its
own way.36
De Lauretis, describes the informing tension of virtually all feminist
intervention – the opposition between woman and women – as:

Represented as the negative term of sexual differentiation, spectacle –

fetish or specular image, in any case obscene, woman is constituted as the
ground of representation, the looking-glass held up to man. But as historical
individual, the female viewer is also positioned in the films of classical
cinema as spectator-subject; she is thus doubly bound to that very repre-
sentation which calls on her directly, engages her desire, elicits her pleasure,
frames her identification, and makes her complicit in the production of
(her) woman-ness.37

As de Lauretis’s strategic posing of the tension between woman and women

suggests, the perspectives of women, as ‘real historical subjects’, may not be
reducible to the images of woman projected within patriarchy.
In Women’s Cinema: The Contested Screen, Alison Butler emphasises the
term woman’s film in relation to Hollywood in the studio era, whilst men-
tioning that in this era Hollywood managed the problem of accommodating a
massive share of the audience, despite its non-representation in most of the
key roles played by the creative workforce, by developing specialised generics
and modes of address.38
Woman’s film is also seen as an escapist entertainment for women. Further
to this idea, in A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930–1960,
Jeanine Basinger notes that woman’s film operated out of a paradox, by both
holding women in social bondage and releasing them into a dream potency
and freedom. In Basinger’s words:

If it is true, as many suggest, that Hollywood films repressed women and

sought to teach them what they ought to do, then it is equally clear that,
in order to achieve this, the movies first had to bring to life the opposite
of their own morality. To convince women that marriage and motherhood
were the right path, movies had to show women making the mistake of
doing something else … In asking the question, ‘what should a woman do
with her life?’ they created the possibility of an answer different from the
one they intended to provide at the end of the movie.39

Yet, since the mid-1970s a number of Hollywood films have been made which
Kuhn calls ‘new women’s cinema’ in her ‘Hollywood and New Women’s Cinema’.
In these films, the central characters are women, and often women who are
not attractive or glamorous in the conventional sense. Moreover, narratives
are frequently organised around the process of a woman’s self-discovery and
growing independence – instances for this genre include Alice Doesn’t Live Here
Anymore (1974), An Unmarried Woman (1977) and Starting Over (1979).
16 Introduction
Indeed, the existence of this ‘new women’s cinema’ might be explained in
terms of direct determination: that it simply reflects the growth and influence
of the woman’s movement. In Kuhn’s words, ‘the new women’s film addresses
itself in particular to women, even to women with some degree of feminist
consciousness, while other film genres will be directed at quite different
audiences.’40
In her article ‘Women’s Genres’, Kuhn acknowledges that on one level soap
opera and women’s melodramas address themselves to a social audience of
women. But they may at the same time be regarded as speaking to a female
or a feminine spectator. If soaps and melodramas inscribe femininity in their
address, women – as well as being already formed for such representations –
are in a sense also formed by them.41 In addition, in ‘Melodrama and the
Woman’s Picture’, Pam Cook argues that the woman’s picture is differentiated
from the rest of cinema by virtue of its construction of a female point of view,
which motivates and dominates the narrative, with the fact that it specifically
addresses a female audience.42
According to Molly Haskell in ‘The Woman’s Film’, the woman’s film
carries the implication that women and thus women’s emotional problems are
of major significance. In Haskell’s point of view, a film that focuses on male
relationships is not pejoratively dubbed a man’s film, but a ‘psychological
drama’. In woman’s film the woman – a woman – is at the centre of the universe,
and dominates the narrative:

the tailoring of the genre for a female audience means that it must give
voice not only to women’s avowed obligations, but also to their uncon-
scious resistance, the repressed anger and guilt which is corollary to the
insistence that a woman find fulfilment in institutions – marriage,
motherhood – which end her independent identity.43

This idea of Haskell’s concurs with the definition of Maria La Place

(in ‘Producing and Consuming the Woman’s Film: Discursive Struggle
in New Voyager’) as she defines the heroine’s text as a story of a woman’s
personal triumph over adversity.44 Furthermore, the central protagonist
in these films may be a successful career woman, a grieving character, an
emerging individual or a self-abnegating woman who demands nothing. In
creating a world in which female strength can be valued, the woman’s film,
like the romance, she writes, sets up the possibility of a different kind of
society.
Women’s film is a difficult concept to define. It suggests films made by,
addressed to, or concerned with women, or all three. I use the term women’s
films to refer mainly to the films that focus on women’s issues and women’s lives
in their narratives. In the 1980s one can argue that it became a genre in Turkish
cinema. In the context of the discussion of women’s film, there is another
important book that deserves consideration: this is Women’s Cinema: the
Contested Screen.45 This book characterises women’s cinema as minor cinema.
 Introduction 17
Although this is an important and influential work, and prima facie helpful to
the development and structuring of this volume, its approach represents a
path I have deliberately chosen not to take. To explain why not, I shall say
something about how Butler characterises the notion of minor cinema and
then outline my reasons for not following that line.
In her book, Butler asserts that women’s cinema now seems minor rather
than oppositional. The idea of the minor comes from Gilles Deleuze and
Félix Guattari’s concept of minor literature.46 A minor literature is not like a
literary genre or period, nor is a classification as minor an artistic evaluation.
It is rather the literature of a minority or marginalised group, written not in a
minor language but in a major one. Applying this to cinema, Butler suggests
that since a minor cinema is one that politicises everything, women’s cinema
qualifies as minor cinema as it generally finds struggle in all aspects of life,
and value in confronting it. In this sense, the boundaries of women’s cinema –
who practices, who does not; who identifies, who does not; who watches,
who does not; where its content begins and ends – can be left open. Butler
points out that the distinctiveness of women’s filmmaking is not based
on an essentialist understanding of gendered subjectivity, but on the position –
or positions – of women in contemporary culture. Therefore, to call
women’s cinema a minor cinema is to free it from the binarisms (popular/
elitist, avant-garde/mainstream, positive/negative) which result from it as an
oppositional cinema.47
Despite the attractions of this characterisation of women’s cinema, I saw no
compelling reason to frame my account of the representation of women in
this way. It is not clear that to have done so would have added anything to my
analysis, and, possibly, on the contrary, it would have drawn me into an extensive
discussion of Deleuze and Guattari, thereby detracting from the close historical
and textual analysis I have chosen to pursue. In addition, setting boundaries
to the representation of women in Turkish cinema in the 1980s is not appro-
priate. It is neither counter cinema nor minor cinema: it was a cinema that
was changing and not yet fully in one form or another. Although it would be
possible to dub some films as minor cinema as they marginalise women, it
would certainly be false to characterise the films of the 1980s as either minor
or oppositional cinema.
Annette Kuhn’s introduction to her book Women’s Pictures: Feminism and
Cinema is considered a text most useful in dicsussing the link between feminism
and film. This section reflects and adopts parts of her analysis. Feminism is
a political practice, or set of practices, with its own history and forms of
organisation, with its own bodies of theory constructed in that history and
organisation.48 Cinema, on the other hand, which also has its own history,
appears at first sight more concrete. Kuhn defines feminism broadly as a set
of political practices founded in analyses of the social/historical position of
women as subordinated, oppressed or exploited either within dominant
modes of production (such as capitalism) and/or by the social relations of
patriarchy or male domination.49
18 Introduction
In linking cinema with feminism, it is assumed that a relationship of some
kind is there to be explored, explicated or constructed. This assumption in
turn implies the acceptance of some form of cultural politics; in other words,
in which the ‘cultural’ (images, representations, meanings, ideologies) is a
legitimate and important area of analysis and intervention for feminists. In
this context, it is possible to assert that everything that might come under the
heading of the ideological – a society’s representations of itself within and
for itself and the ways in which people both live out and produce these
representations – may be seen as a vital, pervasive and active element in the
construction of social structures and formations.50
This review has shown that the questions pertaining to the relationship
between feminism and film in the 1980s (which are central to an understanding
of patriarchy) have so far escaped a systematic form of scrutiny. In providing an
extended analysis of the existing resources, I have sought not only to indicate
their contents and relevance, but also to subject them to a degree of critical
scrutiny. Finally, in reflecting on them, I situated my own work in relation to
the women’s movement in the 1980s in Turkey vis-à-vis the social and political
milieu at the time, the representation of women in Turkish cinema in the
1980s, and feminist film theory.
1 Women of Turkey
Feminism and the 1980s’ Women’s
Movement

[ … ] history is not concerned with ‘events’ but with ‘processes’ … ‘processes’

are things which do not begin and end but turn into one another … There are
in history no beginnings and no endings.
R. G. Collingwood1

The precondition to understanding the filmic representation of women in

Turkish cinema in the 1980s is to decipher the link between the existing social
and political milieu of the decade. I, therefore, aim to provide an account that
relates earlier eras to the 1980s thereby laying foundations to the issues that were
foregrounded in this era.
Since it is important to understand Turkish culture and the role of women
within it before looking at the representation of women in Turkish cinema, a
historical overview of feminism in Turkey in relation to politics and religion
post-1923 is essential. Here, I examine the social and political milieu of the
1980s with regards to the emergence of the women’s movement.2 In addition,
I focus on the discussions around whether state-feminism was undermined or
revived throughout the women’s movement of the 1980s. I will examine the
different strategies that the movement used in order to survive as a political
movement in a period of depoliticisation, as well as the activities of the
movement from consciousness-raising groups to publications and then to
institutionalisation.3 I also delve into how the movement was conducive to
democratisation of society in the post-coup period and concentrates on its
after effects.

Politics, religion and feminism in Turkey

Here I aim to explore the relationship between politics, religion and feminism
in the context of Turkish women’s experience through the evolution of mod-
ernisation whilst providing an overview of the history of feminism and the
history of women in Turkey. This offers the opportunity to explore, articulate
and share the experiences and reflections of women’s change in Turkey. This
chapter also recognises that Turkey has been experiencing an evolutionary
feminist movement within its modernisation project. Before exploring these
20 Women of Turkey
themes, it is necessary to outline initially the understanding of women in
Islam. This will serve to situate Turkish women within its structure. Simone
de Beauvoir wrote:

There is a justification, a supreme compensation, which society is ever

wont to bestow upon woman: that is, religion … Man enjoys the greatest
advantage of having a God endorse the codes he writes; and since man
exercises a sovereign authority over women, it is especially fortunate that
this authority has been vested in him by the Supreme Being [ … ] For the
Jews, Muslims, Christians, among others, man is master by divine right;
the fear of God, therefore, will repress any impulse towards revolt in the
downtrodden female.4

Through these words de Beauvoir illustrates why Mary Astell asks the question:
‘If all men are born free, how is that all women are born slaves?’5
Focusing on Islam, it is relevant to mention that feminist interpretations of
the Qur’an are sparser than feminist interpretations of the Bible. Nevertheless,
they often include a discussion of a passage that has frequently been interpreted
as a justification of male domination in Islam. The text in question (Surah 4:
An Nisa’: 34) reads:

Men are the managers of the affairs of women because Allah made the
one superior to the other and because men spread their wealth on women.
Virtuous women are, therefore, obedient … As for those women whose
defiance you have to cause to fear, admonish them and keep them apart
from your beds and beat them.6

One of the few Muslim feminist scholars of Islam, Riffat Hassan, argued that the
passage should not be interpreted to signify that men have complete power
over women. Punishments referred to in the text are permissible only in the case
of a full-scale revolt by Muslim women against their childbearing role.7 Clearly,
feminist scriptural interpretation shows that much of a text’s meaning is in the
eyes of the beholder. Hence, the meaning received depends on whether the
reader is wearing androcentric or androgynous lenses. What Hassan has
shown is that popular Muslim views justifying male dominance are not found
in the Qur’an at all, but came about through androcentric interpretations of
the biblical creation stories, already well known in Arabia when Islam began.8
At this point, it is vital to raise the topic of the construction of a new
Muslim woman. This integrates the study of a more informed and sensitive
understanding of the complexity of women’s lives. Haideh Moghissi stresses that
most feminist interpretations of Islam do not focus on (often exaggerated)
domination exercised by men over women within Muslim culture. Rather
than their victimisation, they emphasise women’s irrepressible strengths and
struggles. Thus this does not mystify their life experiences under patriarchal
Islamic legal and cultural traditions and institutions.9
 Women of Turkey 21
At one end of the spectrum, some scholars locate Muslim women in history
as social and political agents because of Islam, not despite it. According to this
group, Muslim women are not aware that their Islamic rights have been violated
by the patriarchal societies in which they live. Thus, women’s urgent task is to
deconstruct gendered Islamic discourses, and to challenge the monolithic
interpretational power.10 At the other end of the spectrum, some scholars stress
the historical articulation of Islam with classical-type patriarchy. This is
grounded in distinct material, social, political and cultural factors. These deter-
mine the degree of women’s access to education, employment and political
participation in different societies.11 Therefore, there is a need to deconstruct
the categories of Islam, modernity and women. This will begin a more fruitful
discussion of the changing lives of women of different classes, ethnic groups
and regions.12
Turkish culture under Ottoman rule has been characterised as a ‘traditional
Islamic culture’, experiencing very little change for centuries. What change did
occur has typically been attributed to Western contact. Turkish culture was
believed to have been transformed into a new entity after the establishment of the
Republic of Turkey. This belief has also been the official line of the Republican
regime: a widely accepted characterisation of social change in Turkey.13
The Ottoman Empire dissolved after the First World War and was replaced
by a self-consciously modern and Westernised Turkish Republic in 1923. Through
this process, new doors were also opened to women. The Republican state
itself evolved into what later scholars called a ‘feminist state’. Although it
continued to be a male-dominated state, it made women’s equality in the
public sphere a national policy. The new government radically changed laws.
It encouraged women to unveil, enter the universities and professions, become
airplane pilots and even run for parliament – an opportunity which at that
time had yet to be introduced in other European societies. However, these
state reforms represented the vision of only a single charismatic leader. The
founder of the Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, represented the values and
interests of a small group of urban, middle-class citizens.14
The Republican state determined the characteristics of the ideal woman. It
established a monopolistic system to propagate this ideal in a population that
often held quite different values and perceptions of the ideal woman’s beha-
viour. At this point, I would like to recover the dialogue of Atatürk and a
female teacher candidate for a 1925 teacher training school for girls. This is
documented in Zehra Arat’s introduction to her book Deconstructing Images
of the ‘Turkish Woman’: ‘What should the Turkish woman be like?’ asks the
female candidate. Atatürk answers:

The Turkish woman should be the most enlightened, most virtuous, and most
reserved woman of the world … The duty of the Turkish woman is raising
generations that are capable of preserving and protecting the Turk with
his mentality, strength and determination. The woman who is the source
and social foundation of the nation can fulfil her duty if she is virtuous.15
22 Women of Turkey
This dialogue is a rare example of the use of the expression ‘the Turkish
woman’. The example is significant not simply because it demonstrates the
attempt to push women into an idealised prototype, but because it also shows
the willingness of women to accept and participate in the construction of their
gender. As Arat notes, it also reflects prevalent power relations.16
Since the new Republican woman represented the modern, secular, Westernised
state, she was expected to behave and dress in what the state defined as a
modern, secular, Western manner. Women who felt that their religious beliefs
required them to dress modestly and cover their heads, and women who
maintained older customs, were excluded from this Republican sisterhood.
White observes: ‘poverty and rural origin hindered women from “obeying”
the injunction to leave the private sphere, become educated, and contribute
to the Republic’s professional life, [thus] social and urban/rural differences
were implicit in the differentiation of the Republican woman from the
“reactionary” woman’.17
However, this was not the first time women were becoming visible in the
public sphere. Even reformists of the late Ottoman period were concerned
with striking a balance between Islam and modernisation. Indeed, women
became more visible in public after the 1908 revolution. As Jenny White notes,
elite women had long been active in the public sphere through publications in
which they had demanded expanded roles. In the nineteenth century, they
formed women’s associations and issued publications educating women. Their
concerns included child care, the family and household, and women’s legal
rights – rights they later gained under the Turkish Republic. Women’s
demands had centred on education, employment and electoral rights. While
Ottoman women closely followed women’s movements around the world,
nevertheless they argued that living in an Islamic society required different
solutions. These solutions followed one another.
Between 1920 and 1938, ten per cent of all university graduates were women.
A secular civil code replaced Islamic law in 1926, giving women equal civil
rights. Religious and polygamous marriages were no longer recognised and
women could initiate divorce. Under Islamic law, a woman’s inheritance was
half the share of a man whereas under the new laws, men and women inher-
ited equally. Nevertheless, under the civil law men were still, for instance,
officially heads of households and women needed their permission to travel
abroad, and to work outside the home, as was the case in many European
countries at the time. In 1930, women were given the vote in local elections,
and the first female judges were appointed. In 1934, women were given full
suffrage. In 1935, 18 women were elected to the Turkish Parliament of around
400 members.18
It is important to note here that in 1935, the Turkish Women’s Union,
which played the role of a bridge between the Ottoman women’s movement
and the Republican women, was asked to shut down. The government
claimed that as women had full equal rights with men, there was no need for
a woman’s organisation such as the Turkish Women’s Union. Şirin Tekeli
 Women of Turkey 23
writes about this unfortunate decision: ‘That was the end of [the] women’s
movement for 40 years to come.’19
Despite the enormous changes and new opportunities for women, Turkish
society was socially conformist. In spite of many efforts, the public domain
continued to be seen as man’s domain. Accordingly, it continued to be defined
in masculine terms. Atatürk’s modernisation preserved the culture that per-
ceived women as the symbol of honour for family and nation alike. The ideal
Republican woman was a ‘citizen woman’: urban and urbane; socially pro-
gressive. Beyond this, however, state feminism did not concern itself with what
happened in the private sphere. It was not until the 1980s that a new, liberal
feminist movement reclaimed women’s sexuality and desires outside of family
duty. This movement opened shelters for battered women, and also provided a
women’s library. Indeed, it was not until the feminist movement of the 1980s
that Turkey’s state feminism was challenged by women. Feminist criticism
developed in parallel to the women’s movement in the 1980s. It was critical of
the state feminism of the Republican period, emphasising the symbolic sig-
nificance of modernised images of women. These presented state feminism as
representative of a ‘civilised nation’; and the new Republic as a democratic
state emulating the West.20 Feminists discussed the meaning of Republican
reforms for women. They argued that these reforms did not achieve women’s
liberation. Reforms continued to define women essentially as breeders and
educators of new generations. Kemalist modernisation projects – introducing
and increasing state control over marriage, divorce, inheritance, etc. – were
seen as problematising precisely what was private.
Kemalist feminists, adopting the legalist approach, emphasised the protection
and expansion of what was already granted in Kemalist reforms. They struggled
against the Islamists who threatened women’s continued gains. Islamist fem-
inists embraced the Muslim identity and attempted to reform the family using
this religious framework. The feminist groups that emerged in the 1980s
insisted on their autonomy from the state. The 1990s crystallised the diversity
of women’s movements. Islamist, Kemalist, socialist, liberal and radical fem-
inists all shared a single objective. Not only did they demand women’s right
to work; they all emphasised the need to gain and sustain an independent
identity.21
Arat suggests that the emergence of new feminist groups is characterised by
changes in women’s agendas. These may be interpreted as a reaction to the
limitations, unfulfilled promises or the marginalising effect of Kemalist
reforms.22 Today, a younger generation of women have acquired power as
corporate executives. Nevertheless, even they remain concerned with preserving
their privileged positions. They refrain from social controversies, content with
their economic privilege.
In 2002, representatives of 26 non-governmental organisations (including
activists, jurists and academics) joined together under the ‘Women’s Platform
on the Turkish Penal Code’. Their reforms identified remaining gender dis-
criminatory provisions. These related to the Local Public Administration
24 Women of Turkey
Law, which threatened the status of women’s shelters and community centres.
Similarly, they requested equality between the sexes. This recognised affirmative
action legislation, as practised by the rest of Europe. These reforms are con-
sidered the most important legislative changes for the Turkish Parliament’s
agenda. They also represent a major opportunity for Turkey to take a significant
step forward in eliminating discrimination against women. This would signify
Turkey’s advance from previous patriarchal understandings of gender.
It is obvious that Turkey is witnessing major legislative shifts. These are end-
orsed by both Women for Women’s Human Rights and other non-governmental
organisations. This new legislation coincides with Turkey’s continuing bid to
qualify for European Union membership. Turkey’s entry depends upon the
harmonisation of their domestic laws . with the judicial practices of existing
EU member-states. However, Pınar Ilkkaracan and Liz Amado Erçevik argue
that the new legislation was not a result of Turkey’s EU candidacy and that
the reform of the civil code was actually a result of decades of lobbying by the
women’s movement.23 The introduction of the Turkish Penal Code process
began in the Turkish Parliament in 2002. The women’s movement had already
been leading an intensive campaign for the ‘Reform of the Turkish Penal
Code from a Gender Perspective’.
Nonetheless, Turkey’s fourth and fifth combined periodic report given to
the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women confirms
the retention of crucial discriminatory provisions.24 Honour killings remain a
major women’s human rights violation in Turkey, as does the continuing
practice of virginity testing. This is performed in various public institutions,
and even employed by families. The absence of an unmarried woman’s virginity
may cause their suicide; or, they may even be killed by their own families in
the name of honour.
In summary, given the historical background, it can be argued that, to put
it ironically, feminism is still being ‘digested’ in Turkey. Yet, Turkey is one of
the most important success stories of women’s empowerment. Indeed, Turkey
is unique among societies where Islam is the dominant religion, regarding
women’s rights; it is a country that has made the first and perhaps the most
comprehensive reforms in the status of women and has accepted secularism as
the founding principle of the state. Nevertheless, the seemingly bright picture
of Turkey as a modern, democratic, secular state that also secures women’s
rights is misleading in many ways. As Meltem Müftüler-Bac argues, this per-
ception is more harmful than outright oppression because it shakes the
ground for women’s rights movements by suggesting that they are unnecessary.25
To illustrate this point, consider this thought-provoking dialogue, which
took place in an interview I conducted with a 68-year-old woman.26

I asked her, ‘Why did you wait such a long time to start learning how to read
and write?’
She replied, ‘Oh, my father! He did not let me go to school.’
‘But, when you got a bit older, what happened?’ I said.
 Women of Turkey 25
She answered, ‘My brother did not let me learn.’
‘Didn’t you get married?’ I asked.
‘I did,’ she said, ‘but then, my husband did not let me learn how to read and write.’
I was amazed by her answers and I could not help but ask: ‘How come you
managed to come to these classes now, then?’
She answered, with tears cascading from her eyes: ‘All three are dead now!’

Here, it is worth identifying what is of crucial importance for the success of

women in Turkey and women’s movements in Turkey: it is making change
real; a realisation from theory to political and social practice.
During the 1970s, in Turkey, political polarisation and radicalisation led to
a social and political milieu that resembled civil war. The two main groupings
involved were numerous paramilitary rightist groups and organisations on the
one side, and radical extra-parliamentary leftist groups and organisations on
the other. The latter had been influenced by the spread of Marxism and the
student revolt of 1968.27
The 1970s were a period when left-wing political groups became effective28
in defining the political agenda of the country with the arrival of concepts such
as economic development, imperialism, economic and social injustice, inequality
and class exploitation. Since women’s exploitation and oppression were also
issues of inequality and injustice, during the 1970s the Turkish Left started
focusing on women’s rights as part of a systemic social transformation.
As women were included in the leftist movements as comrades and asexual
beings,29 a new analysis developed among intellectuals which defined the issue
of women as the woman question. This was a phrase used to refer to the issues of
women. Yet, as Tekeli notes, this idea of the ‘woman question’, was fundamentally
anti-feminist:

To end the ‘woman question’ in Turkey we were invited to fight against

class exploitation side by side with socialist men. Thus, many young women
students, academics who were potential supporters of the new feminist
ideology developing in Western countries, became active in small, ultra-leftist
groups, fighting each other on many issues – except the ‘woman question’,
where they united on the same sectarian anti-feminist approach. Thus we
have lost more than ten years in discovering the new feminism.30

It is possible to claim, in this context, that the very idea of feminism was inter-
twined with the milieu of political polarisation and radicalisation. Interestingly,
women themselves were involved in this process of political polarisation
(taking side with the Left) as they realised that women’s oppression was based
on a patriarchal structure which could neither be reduced to class structure
nor explained by it, and that it would still be effective after a socialist revolu-
tion. It is for this reason that although the woman question initially revitalised
women’s issues, it could not have developed into an independent, influential
and democratic women’s movement until the 1980s. Ramazan Gülendam’s
26 Women of Turkey
observation that there were two reasons for the socialist movement’s anti-
feminist approach seems accurate. ‘Firstly,’ he argues, ‘it was completely
absorbed by the left as a means of anti-capitalist propaganda.’ Secondly, he
claims that socialist ideology is ‘deeply anti-feminist’ as it simply ‘denies that
women are oppressed because of their gender and because they are women in
a patriarchal society’, thereby removing the very ground on which feminism is
based.31 According to Gülendam, socialism denied the necessity of an autono-
mous feminist ideology and feminist movement. This is to suggest that feminist
thinking has to free itself from socialist ideology so that it can develop into an
autonomous movement in order to become an influential, powerful feminist
ideology, which would start dealing with and focusing on the roots of
women’s oppression in Turkey.
The following explores how this became possible while attempting to answer
questions including: What were the strategies of the women’s movement? Did
the movement emerge as political or non-political? How did feminism operate
in 1980s’ Turkey? What has changed in Turkish society in the years since
women have begun to question their gender status more vigorously?

Social and political milieu of the 1980s

The military intervention of 12 September, 1980 repressed both the radical
Right as well as the radical Left in Turkey whilst aiming to depoliticise society. It
crushed all political parties and particularly leftist organisations, and tem-
porarily suspended democracy thus bringing political life to a complete halt.
The coup was an anti-democratic event which proscribed all publicly as well
as privately organised political activities; imprisoned both political leaders and
people who were actively involved in politics; dissolved the Parliament and
suspended the constitution. It suppressed all kinds of political opposition by
force and applied a systematic depoliticisation of the masses.
In this atmosphere of repression, the first social movement that demonstrated
the courage to be in opposition and to articulate its demands was the women’s
movement. In thinking about the women’s movement of the 1980s in Turkey,
it is apposite to ask questions including: How did feminism operate in this
depoliticised space as a political movement? Did the movement seek to
appear political or non-political? Did the movement emerge as non-political
intentionally or unintentionally? Or, was it simply not perceived as political?
The attempts to answer these questions create a considerable amount of debate.
On the one hand are scholars, like Tekeli, Gülendam and Ayşe Gelgeç-Gürpınar,
who claim that feminism could only have come to the forefront after the 1980
military coup.32 In other words, they believe that if the leftist movement had
not been hit so severely by the coup, women would not have been able to
question the hegemony of the male leaders. On the other hand, some argue
that if the left-wing movements had not been crushed, the women involved
in them would have discovered women’s oppression anyway, as Western
feminists did.
 Women of Turkey 27
Despite those who blame feminism for being a child of the military coup,
labelling it a ‘Septembrist ideology’, starting from the early formations of the
women’s movement, it was the first democratic opposition to the military
rule.33 Among those scholars who link the emergence of the movement to the
coup is Gülendam. He stresses that the ban on all political activities created a
vacuum, which focused on issues including democracy, the value of the indi-
vidual and his/her status in society and politics, and women’s rights. He then
goes on to claim that the coup freed the ideas behind the woman question of
the 1970s, and for the first time created an atmosphere for women ‘to talk
about themselves, for themselves as individuals’.34 In line with this argument
Gelgeç-Gürpınar states that, in the 1980s, besides the oppressive side of the
military coup, space opened up in the political arena as a result of the elim-
ination of both leftist and rightist ideologies. She argues that the oppression
of these political factions made it possible to think about new ideologies, thus
it became convenient for women to come forward and start a new movement.35
She not only claims the aforementioned, but also shares the idea with other
scholars that women were able to start a new women’s movement with the
background provided by the Kemalist reforms.36 Her statement makes it clear
that the feminism of the 1980s differentiates itself from state feminism by
proposing a different structure, which would eliminate the oppressive, patriarchal
side of the state. She asserts:

According to these women the state and its various organs were validating
women’s subordination. Because the organs of the government helped
maintain the continuity of its patriarchal structure, they needed to be
transformed … The policy of the state offered equality between the sexes,
but it left women alone in the private sphere. Therefore, the gap between
the private and public spheres needed to be eliminated, and women
needed to acquire security and freedom of choice in their private lives.37

In the context of the military regime of the 1980s, women were privileged in
the sense that other groups, including labour, students, civil servants and
political parties were suppressed, yet women were able to engage in politics.
Whether it was because women’s groups and their activism were thought to
be insignificant or because the vague concept of women’s rights could root its
legitimacy in Kemalist reforms, women were able to raise their voice. In
accordance with this claim, Arat points out that during a period when poli-
tical will was curtailed these women were able to exercise their political will.38
By doing so, they underlined the significance of becoming politicised; and as
a consequence they directly contributed to the process of re-democratisation.
Indeed, the movement stood against the authoritarian state, protesting
against restricted civil rights and liberties regarding women.39 In other words,
while women’s groups were able to survive in the political framework of the
1980s, they challenged the state tradition as well as the patriarchal system.
Therefore, as opposed to expecting the state to liberate women, major
28 Women of Turkey
activities of the movement were organised against state policies, laws and the
regime itself. This was, in itself, a significant contribution to the process of
democratisation.
Nevertheless, it is important to note here that the women’s movement
shouldered a different democratic function in the 1980s. Arat refers to this
distinction while asserting that the movement was not democratic merely
because a small group of women assumed an active democratic role in politics.
Women’s activism played its role in the transition from authoritarianism
to democracy.40 Arat argues that the emergence of the movement was due to
the process of Westernisation, and that ‘the increasingly intensifying links
with the Western world allowed a second wave of feminism to trickle into the
country’.41
A women’s movement represented the inevitable extension of Kemalist
tradition, as it was part of the process of Westernisation and raised the pos-
sibilities created by Kemalist reforms. Yet, according to Zuhal Yeşilyurt-Gündüz,
‘the movement’ at the same time ‘transcended the Kemalist tradition dialectically
as it endorsed a radical change’.42 The movement was indeed different since it
was the first time that women were not given rights by the male authorities,
but fought for their own rights in their own voices.
The Left and the Right had been crushed by the 1980 coup. With the
‘political vacuum’43 that had been created by the military government, feminist
initiatives were deemed politically insignificant. In fact, the things that were
called political were ‘apparently irreconcilably dissociated’44 from the personal.
The women’s movement (as a political movement) could exist because it
freed itself from what was considered the political at the time: the Right and
the Left. The women of 1980s’ Turkey began organising when it was illegal to
organise politically in any form. They were important because they ventured
into the public arena in their own name to seek legitimacy for women’s indi-
vidualistic claims. Unless women gained the recognition they deserved as
individuals, they would not have the means to articulate various visions of better
lives or pursue a common good.45 The next section will discuss who these
women were, and how and where they organised. In summary, the movement was
careful to remain independent of formally organised political parties. Moreover,
it sought independence of social class; that is to say, no matter which social
class, ethnic origin, level of education and profession, all women were welcome
to participate. The movement was loosely organised and decentralisation was
the basic principle. Women’s rights came to the forefront of debates and
actions, and women began to discuss personal topics such as the use of vio-
lence against women in the domestic sphere, rape and sexual harassment. In a
similar way to the Western feminist movement, women in Turkey claimed
that the state had to respect the private sphere as well as the decisions of
women while protecting them from abuse and violence.
In the mid-1980s, self-declared feminists46 started to emerge on the political
scene, insisting on speaking in their own name, with their own voice, rather than
being spoken about by state officials. Subsequently, the Kemalist concepts of
 Women of Turkey 29
equality were being challenged from several perspectives. In this context,
before focusing on the striking organisational features and the building of the
movement, it is relevant to look at the underlying social dynamics of this
struggle while emphasising the paradoxical character of women’s emancipation
in Turkey, in the following section.

State feminism versus the women’s movement of the 1980s

In answering the question of what the reforms of the 1920s bequeathed to the
1980s, this section explores how women of one generation, who owed their
rights to Kemalist reforms, came to be challenged by a younger generation
that radically criticised the idea behind those reforms. In other words, this
section investigates the answers to the following question: Did the feminists
of the 1980s, who criticised the Kemalist reforms, undermine or revive the
project of modernity these reforms initiated?
Until the 1980s, there was a consensus in Turkish society that Kemalism
had emancipated women, and as Arat rightly points out ‘this fact could
not be contested’.47 In the 1980s, a younger generation of educated female
professionals who introduced themselves as feminists, challenged the tradition
during their search for new cultural identities, and the consensus broke
down. Indeed, until the 1980s, Turkey prided itself on the women’s ema-
ncipation that the Kemalist reforms had delivered. Even so, women of
this period became critical of the project of modernity and its effects on
women.48
While questioning the relationship between emancipation and liberation in
her article ‘Emancipated but Unliberated?’, Kandiyoti remarks on the reforms
of the 1920s:

The changes in Turkey have left the most crucial areas of gender relations,
such as the double standard of sexuality and a primarily domestic defi-
nition of the female role, virtually untouched. In that sense, it is tempting
to describe Turkish women as emancipated but unliberated, because signs
of significant political activity by women to remedy this state of affairs
have been largely absent.49

The status of women has been an issue of much controversy in the process of
modernisation. According to Müftüler-Bac, the emancipation of women
became ‘the barometer of Turkish modernisation’, and Turkish women suf-
fered mostly from being ‘the focal point of intense debate among groups with
conflicting political interests’ but what most groups agreed on was ‘the
necessary continuation of the patriarchal domination of men over women’.50
At this point it is vital to refer to an apparent contradiction: if the women of
Turkey were emancipated by the efforts of modernisation and legal changes
of the early reforms of the 1920s, why was it that they were still oppressed by
the patriarchal system in the 1980s?
30 Women of Turkey
In fact, the feminist perspective of the 1980s was radically different from
the Republican modernist one in the sense that when it articulated the pro-
blems women had due to being a woman, feminists discovered that within the
Republican project of modernity their private lives were repressed under the public
expectations that they had to live up to. As Arat notes, repression of sexuality,
faith in professionalism (or education) and respect for the community over the
individual demarcated women’s space in the Republican project of moder-
nity.51 In the early years of the Republic, the hierarchical nature of the state
and its subordinate institutions such as the family, the education system and
the media was constantly being reaffirmed. Feminist criticism of the modernity
project was radical in the sense that feminists shifted the perspective from
which women’s issues were addressed. Until the 1980s, the ‘woman question’
was part of the populist project. Feminists did not address ‘the woman question’
per se. By contrast, women articulated, in their own voices, the problems they
themselves experienced because they were women, in initially private and then
public spheres. It was a move from the personal to the political; from what
concerned them individually (the private) to what they might share in
common with other women (the public). While women were given both civil
and political rights equal to men in the 1920s and 1930s, they remained
confined by communal norms and customs. By the 1980s and thereafter, the
younger generation of women demanded liberation while they sought autonomy
from tradition and the right to speak up as individuals.
Despite many improvements that the Kemalist reforms brought to women’s
rights in Turkey, the basics of male domination stayed intact, and longstanding
custom prevented women’s full expression. Women’s demands for the extension
of their rights, against domestic violence or merely for self expression, meant
that, as Arat puts it, ‘the concept of the common good defined by the trans-
cendental state was challenged’ in this period.52 That is to say, the idea that
women’s rights are given and protected by the state for the common good was
contested. Yet it is essential to recognise that women who raised their voices
during the 1980s were able to do so because, along with other factors, they
had utilised the opportunity, the space created for them, by Kemalist reforms.
To conclude, feminist activism in Turkey attests to the strength of the
Republican project of modernity in Turkey. In understanding women’s struggle
to have their own voices heard, it would be misleading to consider Kemalist
reformers and feminists of the 1980s in oppositional terms. Besides, in their
search for autonomy, women contributed to a liberal, secular, democratising
polity, which is what the Kemalist reforms of the modernisation project stood for.

Building the women’s movement of the 1980s

Women in Turkey organised in small groups, initially by meeting in their homes,
at universities and in public, within a politically decentralised and federative
structure. These small groups included educated women whose initial objec-
tives were to form consciousness-raising groups and to carry out ideological
 Women of Turkey 31
struggle. This was done primarily through the publication of journal and
newspaper articles, flyers and posters and the holding of public meetings.
The movement was careful to remain independent of political parties.
Decentralisation was the basic principle and different groups were free to
decide on the specific mode of organisation and actions: ad hoc committees,
topic-based campaigns, associations and journals provided opportunities for
events such as protest walks and petition campaigns. Despite the small number
of activists, the movement was able to mobilise a broad women’s movement in
society. Tekeli argues that:

The success of the movement can only be explained if one assumes that
feminism proposes a correct analysis of the objective conditions of a
particular historical conjuncture: all women were oppressed in Turkey in
the 1980s – despite differences of social class, ethnic origin, level of edu-
cation, profession, etc. – by patriarchal relations which are not only
deeply rooted in traditional institutions such as the family, but are also
reproduced continually by other so-called modern institutions as well.53

Indeed, women’s groups were democratic and federal; their informal meetings
produced consciousness-raising discussions. The movement commenced with
the emergence of small, informal consciousness-raising groups (in which
women talked about their issues including domestic violence, abortions and
careers) and various projects which elaborated upon the distinctive issues of
women.54 Then came the publications and involvement with the public and
the media.
In 1982, the non-feminist, non-profit-oriented publishing company YAZKO
offered women .(who until that time were only gathering in private houses,
particularly in Istanbul and Ankara) their first opportunity to produce spe-
cialised publications by and about women. The project, which intended to
bring the new feminist way of thinking into the open. while addressing the
public, invited the French feminist Giselle Halimi to Istanbul to give a talk
(under the title of ‘Woman and Women’s Issues’) to women in Turkey and to
encourage them in their struggle.55 Soon after this meeting YAZKO offered
women the opportunity to write a column (and have a page of their own) in
the weekly literary journal Somut.56 Women were then able to encourage other
women to address salient concerns including abortion, domestic violence and
Turkish women’s customary roles.
On 4 February, 1983, Şule Torun addressed the readers of the journal Somut
with the following argument:

The meanings of the words woman and man are socially constructed and
thus do not simply reflect anatomical differences. Besides, these constructed
differences create gender hierarchy. Accordingly, men exploit and women
are exploited. It is this particular division that feminists and feminist
movements all over the world protest … Henceforward, in this column,
32 Women of Turkey
on this page, we shall explore the history of feminism; the new radical
standpoint, and opportunities it offers in life. Hello.57

This short greeting introduced feminism to Turkish society in the early 1980s.
Consciousness-raising groups, petition campaigns, protest walks, articles,
publications in journals and the foundation of institutions such as the Women’s
Library and Information Centre followed this very greeting, defining the
contours of the women’s movement in Turkey.
Those involved in the movement followed feminist activism abroad and
developed feminist perspectives on women’s issues in Turkey. Later in 1983,
some of these women organised a publishing service and . consultancy firm
called Kadın Çevresi (Women’s Circle). It was located in Istanbul and aimed
at ‘upholding women’s labour within or outside the household’.58 Moreover, a
book club was formed, which translated feminist classics into Turkish and
discussed both feminist works and issues. The same year, abortion was lega-
lised in Turkey with the Abortion Act. It is with the petition campaign that
took place in 1986 (in order to implement the 1985 UN Convention on the
Elimination of All. Forms of Discrimination against Women) that women’s
groups both from Istanbul and Ankara initiated collective public activism for
the first time. In 1987, a massive campaign against wife-battering began and a
number of women’s shelters were opened. Women also initiated a campaign
59
against sexual harassment both in public and. private spheres.
The march of around 3,000 women in Istanbul on 17 May, 1987 was an
important step in the movement. Tekeli writes about it:

In 1987, when refusing the divorce application of a pregnant woman with

three children already, who was regularly beaten by her husband, a judge
referred to a proverb saying: ‘You should never leave a woman’s back
without a stick and her womb without a colt.’ This court decision was the
last straw and gave us a legitimate argument to organise the first street
demonstration in order to protest against the hypocrisy of both society
and the state.60

In fact, even when the movement was at its peak in terms of activism and
publications, it was not perceived as political. On 10 May, 1987 women’s groups
in Ankara organised a meeting in the streets, under the title of ‘Dayaǧa Karşı
Dayanışma Kampanyası’ (Campaign for Solidarity against Battering). Bora
writes about this event:

On Mother’s day, we planned to sell flowers and badges on which it said

‘Do not beat mothers.’ Unluckily it poured rain that day. We could not get
organised no matter how much we tried. Only a few of us women gathered
in front of the Cultural Centre of Altındaǧ Municipality. We gave out badges
to those walking past, we waved our placards. The media was there, but we
were not happy with our meeting, because we could not reach women.61
 Women of Turkey 33
The media’s response to this event was a disappointing one. Journalists used
headings including ‘Yaǧmurda Yedi Güzel’ (Seven Beauties under the Rain)
while wondering in their copy what those beautiful women were doing in the
streets, in the public sphere. The popular newspaper Hürriyet wrote about the
event with a discourse of teasing, ridiculing their attempt to stand against
battering. On 11 May, 1987, in a short paragraph it wrote:

Six feminist women gave a briefing to eight press members, arguing that ‘the
media, mosques, courts, customs, etc. they all protect men who beat’. …
The feminists of Ankara gave away badges to people while claiming ‘we do
not want to live with the threat of being beaten’, and ‘domestic violence
turns violence into an ideology’. They said there were quite a number of
feminists in Ankara, but they intentionally organised individually rather
than founding organisations. Among these women only one of them is
married, the others said they did not think of marriage as yet.62

The media’s coverage in general was similar to the above: its typical discourse
was a teasing, satirising and ridiculing approach to the movement. In the last
sentence above, the media was ironically questioning how women, most of
whom were not ‘even’ married, could understand violence and motherhood.
Moreover, it is obvious from the first line that the women activists were being
ridiculed by reference to their small numbers in comparison to their inter-
viewers. The activities of the movement were either given little space, which
led to it being under-represented, or were misrepresented or undervalued by
the use of sarcasm regarding women.
No matter how it was perceived by the media, the women’s movement
remained successful in its activities, providing the opportunity for individuals
as well as groups to stand up for women’s interests and issues. Moreover, as
noted by Arat, it is possible to claim that to the extent that liberalism is the
ideology of individualism that respects the power individuals generate inde-
pendent of the state, feminists promoted liberalism and thus individualism in
Turkey.63
In fact, feminists, in this milieu, aimed at winning respectability for women
as individuals. Their diverse activities and publications underlined how significant
it was for women to claim their voices. The women’s movement attempted to
question socially constructed gender stereotypes while challenging – again –
the culturally determined identities and role of women as well as men, and
questioning patriarchal values. As Yeşilyurt-Gündüz writes ‘the effect of the
movement, far greater than its numerical size, played a significant role in
expanding the living space of women and increasing their alternatives’.64
Women fought not only for equal rights, but also questioned the entire patri-
archal system and began to redefine themselves.
Numerous meetings, public demonstrations and political activities took place.
The women’s movement prospered as the journal feminist emerged on 8 March,
1987. Those who published the journal addressed women, encouraging them
34 Women of Turkey
to act as individuals: ‘Dear women, write to us. Write to feminist in order to
remember, to understand, to express, and to purge yourself, to build again, to
save memories and to exist.’65 Women did write in response, reflecting on the
nature of their oppression, with the courage to speak, to make their own voices
heard, believing in the argument that what is private is political. In this way,
previously unvoiced issues including violence, choosing not to have children
and lesbianism came to the forefront of the discussions and encroached upon
the political agenda.
On 25 June, 1987, the Association of Women against Discrimination
(Ayrımcılıǧa Karşı Kadın Derneǧi) was founded, signalling a new stage in the
development of the women’s movement: institutionalisation. In its briefing
it said:

We are a group of women who argue for the necessity of institutionalisation

in order to implement the UN Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination against Women and transform the patriarchal
institutions, traditions and values agreed upon institutionalisation … We
invite all women to join us who are against gender discrimination that is
experienced in all avenues of life.66

Following this, the first large-scale action of women after the military inter-
vention was the presentation of a petition on 8 March, 1988. A group of women
with a petition of 7,000 signatures demanded the implementation of the UN
Convention for the Elimination of any Form of Discrimination against
Women.67 What is striking is that when these women collected signatures for
the petition there were still bans on organised political activism. In January
1989, the Women’s Solidarity Association was founded to promote the activ-
ities of feminists in Ankara. Apart from this association, women who called
themselves the ‘Thursday Group’ (Perşembe Grubu), again established in
Ankara, were engaged in consciousness-raising. Bora, who was one of the
members of this group, expresses her view about the group as follows:

The existence of the group depended on meetings. The aim was not to say
something to other women … We were women becoming politicised with
feminism. It was not politics as we know it but we were experiencing our
problems on our own, but we thought they were the issues of all women.
That is why it was political. Yet, we were not critical towards each other;
it was rather a supportive environment. It lasted around seven years.68

In addition to bringing together consciousness-raising groups in Ankara, the

most important contribution of the Thursday Group to the movement was
that it organised (in Ankara) what was called the. ‘Feminist Weekend’ in
February 1989, and brought together feminists from Istanbul and Ankara for
the first time.69 A campaign entitled ‘No to Sexual Harassment’ (Cinsel
Tacize Son) began as a consequence of the Feminist Weekend meeting. In the
 Women of Turkey 35
spring of 1989, the Women’s Library and Information Centre was established by
a group of feminists. The library helped further institutionalise the movement.70
Women in Turkey, in the 1980s, impinged upon the public sphere that had
been monopolised by the state. They organised in order to expand their rights
and increase their opportunities, and to share and find solutions to their
problems. They demanded substantive equality beyond formal equality,
articulated their needs with regards to being in control of their own sexuality,
and protested against domestic violence. In the process they expanded the
fortified Turkey’s emerging civil society. They helped liberate the public
sphere. They were mostly a heterogeneous group of middle-aged, middle-class
professionals who were influenced by one another as they positioned and
defined themselves in relation to one another. Women of the 1980s built up a
new language of individualism and autonomy, with a feminist discourse. With its
organisational features, activities, publications and campaigns, the movement
opened new doors to women, and remained as one of the most democratic
formations in Turkey in the 1980s.
In examining the meaning of the women’s movement in Turkey in the 1980s, it
becomes obvious that women contributed significantly to the process of demo-
cratisation after the military coup. The different agendas that women articulated
in the public realm expanded the scope of pluralism and consequently
democracy in Turkey. Indeed, women’s groups, no matter whether they called
themselves feminists or not, expanded the boundaries of democratic partici-
pation while demanding substantive rather than formal democracy. In Arat’s
words, ‘women’s activism took place in the context of a representative
democracy that was struggling to liberate itself’.71 In addition to its liberalising
influence, feminist activism helped democratise society. In an atmosphere of
repression during the post-coup period, the women’s movement (with the
concepts it reintroduced to the society including individualism, solidarity
and equality) has been the first social and political movement to demonstrate
the courage to be in opposition and to articulate women’s issues. In this
context, women became able to express and enunciate their concerns and
self-understanding.
Women sought to free themselves from the Right and the Left and
accordingly they did not found an institution to increase women’s political
representation. There were no links with political parties and no concerted
effort was made with regards to being represented in the Parliament. Never-
theless, for the first time in the history of the Republic women were able to
raise their voices without being compromised by the state. If it is accepted that a
liberal, democratic and secular polity is a precondition for the transformation
of a patriarchal polity, then it is possible to claim that the movement reached
its goals. Campaigns, festivals, demonstrations and journal articles contributed
more to the establishment of a liberal, democratic and secular polity than to
transformation of patriarchal society.72
While women of the 1980s failed to transform society radically in the way
to which they aspired, they contributed to the establishment of a liberal civil
36 Women of Turkey
society where groups could raise power. Women’s contribution was significant
not only because of its impact on policies, but rather because ‘their activism
challenged the prevailing understanding of tutelary democracy at the level of
discourse’.73 Indeed, women’s political activism offered an alternative under-
standing of democracy in terms of civil rights and liberties. What remained
was to vocalise feminist demands through political channels where they could
move from paper to practice and be translated into outcomes.
In conclusion I would like to draw on the line of thoughts suggested by a
passage in R. G. Collingwood’s An Autobiography. The text helps to pinpoint the
problem facing the women’s movement of 1980s’ Turkey. It is, therefore,
worth quoting this passage at length in order to interpret it. Collingwood writes:

Suppose you find yourself in a situation of a given type S; and suppose

you want to obtain a result of a given type R, and there is a rule that in
a situation S the way to get a result of a type R is to do an action type
of A. You may know this rule, but how do you know it? Either because of
your own experience or because of someone else’s. In either case a certain
body of experience has been accumulated before the rule could be known
to anyone. This experience must have been experience of acting in situations
of the type S by persons who wanted to obtain results of the type R but
did not know the rule … And their endeavours to obtain results of type R
must often have been successful; otherwise the experience which led to
the formulation of the rule could never have accumulated. There must,
therefore, be a kind of action which is not determined according to rule,
and where the process is directly from knowledge of the situation to an
action appropriate to that situation, without passing through the stage of
formulating a rule appropriate to the situation … No rule can tell you
how to act. But you cannot refrain from acting … You must do some-
thing. Here are you, up against this situation: you must improvise as best
as you can a method of handling it.74

The given situation for women in 1980s’ Turkey was a depoliticised period
where all political activity was suppressed and even banned. The result
women were aiming for was to raise their voices in the struggle for their
rights, for the first time in the history of the Republic, in order to articulate
their concerns and demand their freedom. In relation to the quotation above,
it is possible to argue that there was no accumulated experience in Turkey
with regard to women struggling for their own rights, rather than merely
being granted them in theory by the state. That is why one can assert that
women in the 1980s did not have any rules by which to act in the given
situation, so they became the ‘rule-makers’ for the women who followed
them. It is this very action that proves to be of considerable importance for
the women of the following generations; by becoming the rule-makers,
women in 1980s’ Turkey opened new doors to their followers in the name of a
feminist struggle.
 Women of Turkey 37
The success of the women’s movement lies here. Even though women were
not successful in the radical transformation of the society, they indubitably
found the right strategies (including starting with informally organised
consciousness-raising groups and developing via publications towards institu-
tionalisation) to act in a depoliticised period with the idea of ‘what is personal
is political’, thus as politically active individuals.
Women in the 1980s were successful in initiating their own methods of
handling the existing situation they were in, hence they could not refrain from
acting; and they initiated a movement with their activities from campaigns to
publications, from walks to formation of groups. In other words, they found
themselves in a situation that they had not experienced before, and therefore
they could not recognise themselves as belonging to the previous generation
of women who had not criticised the oppression of women.
Turkish women in the 1980s could have accepted state-granted rights just
as previous generations had, but instead they decided to act to obtain and
secure their own rights, not being content with the given situation and their
oppressed condition. At the time, they were successful in opening their eyes
wider to see more clearly the situation in which they were acting. They
encapsulated their past in their present and thus attempted to turn theory into
practice. The next generation adopted and followed the rules they had created
in acting towards obtaining their desired ends.
2 Historically Framing Women
and Turkish Cinema1

The arrival of cinema to (Ottoman) Turkey came as early as 1908.2 However,

until 1923, when Muhsin Ertuǧrul decided to adapt Halide Edip Adıvar’s
novel Ateşten Gömlek (The Shirt of Fire), which told the story of a young
woman who works for the liberation of her country, Turkish women were not
allowed to act either in theatre plays or in films due to religious constraints.3
The law, censorship and even the police force were used to prevent women
from performing, in the name of protecting women’s chastity. In order to be
faithful to the novel, which focused on the Turkish National Independence War,
women characters in the film had to be Turkish. While talking about the film,
the first Turkish actress of cinema in Turkey, Bedia Muvahhit affirms:

Mr Ertuǧrul had wanted to adapt Ms Halide Edip’s novel Ateşten

Gömlek. Ms Edip had insisted on having Turkish women performing the
female characters of the novel. Muhsin Ertuǧrul was a close friend of
both Mr Muvahhit and mine; he was a close family friend. He came to
Mr Muvahhit one day and asked him if I could perform in the film. I was
very happy. I was not expecting to act in a film at the time, I accepted
and we did the movie.4

Although this is an exciting anecdote, it is possible for a critical eye to spot the
patriarchal structure hidden in her words. A male director asking permission
from the husband of the woman he wants as an actress in his film, rather than
asking her own opinion, addresses the fact that women’s appearance on the
Turkish screen had its roots in a rather patriarchal condition.
When female characters were needed in films they were chosen from those
living in Turkey who were not Muslims, including Greek, Armenian and
Russian women. Nevertheless, it is important to note here that the focus of
this section is neither on the pre-1923 period nor on the differences between
Turkish and non-Turkish actresses, but rather on providing a historical back-
ground with regards to the representation of women in Turkish films between
1923 and 1980.
In 1917, the first film to have a female character central to its narrative, and
which was also the first attempt to concentrate on a topic related to women
 Historically Framing Women and Turkish Cinema 39
(marriage and its constraints), was the adaptation of Mehmet Rauf ’s theatre
play by Sedat Simavi, Pençe (The Claw). Pençe, the first narrative film of Turkish
cinema, focuses on two ideas: on the one hand, an idea that sees marriage as
an institution that makes people fall into its clutches and becomes the cause
of all sorts of pain; and on the other hand, an idea that supports love outside
marriage. Although throughout the story free love is supported as opposed
to marriage, the film ends with the reinforcement of the idea that marriage
is good and most appropriate for women.5 According to Mahmut Tali
Öngören’s remark on this film, it is apparent even in the first narrative film of
Turkish cinema that women were the centre of attention and were exploited
on screen.6 Therefore, the film was a representation of women’s place in
society at the time, and underpinned the idea that marriage was a necessity
for women.
Mürebbiye (The Governess) (Ahmet Fehim, 1919) followed Pençe with a
female protagonist central to the narrative.7 It was one of the first long-reel
films focusing on women. Madam Kalitea, a Greek actress, was the heroine
of the film, who became the first vamp character in Turkish cinema. The
film tells the story of a French woman who seduces the members of a snob-
bish family she works for. As Nezih Erdoǧan points out, the novel that
the film was adapted from was meant to give a ‘comical illustration of the
upper classes’ infatuation with French culture’. .
8
The film, however, was
released in the context of the occupation of Istanbul by the Allied forces,
and then the focus was on the corrupt French tutor who, more or less,
represented the Western woman. The negative connotations assigned to the
tutor act as a token expression of resistance against foreign forces in, and
the occupation of, the country. The film was banned by the Allied forces
on the same grounds. Nijat Özön . concurs with the idea that the film is
‘a protest or resistance in 1919’s Istanbul’.9 In this film the female character was
used to represent the condition of society at the time – hence the woman is
reduced to a passive sign. .
In 1922, .Muhsin Ertuǧrul directed Istanbul’da Bir Facia-i Aşk (A Love
Tragedy in Istanbul ). Based on a true story, it tells of a beautiful and attractive
woman who has the power to entice all men to run after her. She uses them
sexually and at the end is killed by one of these men. As Giovanni Scognamillo
states, the film focuses on ‘the story of a femme fatale and men who suffer for
their desire towards her’.10
Turkish women started taking part in films in 1923, with Ateşten Gömlek.11
However, as noted by Agah Özgüç it is not possible, in this early period, to
recognise certain characteristics of women in film because:

[ … ] during those years, [the] topics of the films are not necessarily
constructed around female characters. Women performers are typically
insignificant characters who play in films whose male characters are dominant
[both in quantity and quality], and they cannot go beyond these archetypal
roles.12
40 Historically Framing Women and Turkish Cinema
Özgüç’s comment confirms that, compared with men, women were invariably
given insignificant roles in films, and because they were always used as tokens
they were never able to develop individual character traits.
The first film that assigned a female protagonist and a distinct description
of that female character in its narrative is Aysel: Bataklı Damın Kızı (The Girl
from the Marsh Croft) (Muhsin Ertuǧrul, 1934).13 In fact, the film became the
first film in Turkish cinema to deal with women’s issues, including topics such
as rape and marriage. The story is based on Aysel, a poor woman who works
for a wealthy family as a servant and is raped by her employer and becomes
pregnant. She gives birth to the child and applies to the court for alimony, but
the man refuses to accept that the child is his. Ali, from another village, is
concerned with her situation, and offers to help. He gives Aysel a job in his
house, despite the fact that his wife does not want her there. In the meantime,
Aysel’s previous employer is killed; Ali is found guilty of the murder and put
in jail. Aysel stands by him; he accepts her child and when he gets out of the
jail, they get married. What is being established with this film is the very idea
of marriage being the most appropriate end for a woman, particularly if the
female character is a strong character, resisting the pressure to conform to the
rules of patriarchy – in Aysel’s case, this becomes apparent in her struggle for
her rights in court. Moreover, romantic love and marriage are aligned in this
film.
Stereotypes of female characters start becoming identifiable in the 1950s.
Apart
. from Ömer Lütfi Akad’s Kanun Namına (In . the Name of Law) in 1952,
Ipsala Cinayeti/Altı Ölü Var (The Murder of Ipsala) in 1953, Öldüren Şehir
(The Fatal City) in 1954 and Beyaz Mendil (White Handkerchief) in 1955, it
is hard to claim that the films of this period represented women in an
unconventional way.
In this period, melodramas became prominent in Turkish cinema, and thus
all films focused on the story of ‘the beautiful woman and handsome man’.14
As Nilgün Abisel points out, during this decade, female characters in films
acclimatise themselves as characters with a new identity that is based on
passivity:

Yeşilçam melodrama has apparently created this [new] female identity [based
on passivity]. The female character goes through agonising experiences;
she assents to the demands of contemptible situations, destiny and customs
in order to solely be[come] an appropriate, a good wife.15

Indeed, in the films of the 1950s, female characters are gifted with marriage
unless they resisted obeying the rules of patriarchy. Yet, at the same time,
female characters are portrayed as the source of discontent and trouble for
the male. This idea leads to an explanation of why female characters are
punished at the end of films from the period.16 In addition, Başak Şenova
points out that in these melodramas female characters are always given the
role of a ‘servant’ as well as wife in the family:
 Historically Framing Women and Turkish Cinema 41
If the woman has to work, she must be in a position in which she can
serve the male; she is most of the time given the role of a secretary, a
nurse or a school teacher. In the narrative the woman character can only
have one single love affair and this must not have any links to the sexual
or the financial … The woman has to sacrifice and go through pain in
order to win the male’s heart.17

The idea that is underlined is that family, marriage, housework and loyalty
towards the male should be the most important things for a woman. Agah
Özgüç’s comment about the representation of women during this period
proves relevant here. He stresses that women in films are portrayed as lonely
and subordinated. He uses the phrase ‘the woman of all sorts of pain’ in order
to describe the approach of films to female characters in general.18 Thus, they
face all sorts of painful experiences both physically and psychologically (from
adultery by their husbands to rape and other sorts of violence), and since they
are never allowed to be powerful enough to change their destiny, they suffer
continuously in order to make their men happy. No matter what ‘he’ does,
‘she’ obeys. This tendency is seen in most of the films of the 1950s. Some
examples that characterise this period are Akad’s Vahşi Bir Kız Sevdim
(I Loved a Ferocious Woman) (1954), Meçhul Kadın (The Mystery Woman)
(1955), Kalbimin Şarkısı (The Song of my Heart)(1956), Ana Kucaǧı (Arms of
a Mother) (1959), Atıf Yılmaz’s Kanlı Feryat (The Bloody Scream). (1951),
Hıçkırık (The Sob) (1953), Kadın Severse (If a Woman Loves) (1955), Ilk ve Son
(The First and the Last). (1955), Memduh Ün’s Yetim Yavrular (The Orphans)
(1955) and Zeynep’in Intikamı (The Revenge of Zeynep) (1956).
In fact, with all the films cited above, it is during this period that Turkish
cinema introduces a new type of woman: a woman who constantly suffers,
and who is betrayed and deserted by the male.19 Here, it is important to
consider the fact that the Turkish cinema industry was run and dominated by
the males who produced these films, which constantly repeated and reproduced
the rules of patriarchy through films.20
During the 1950s the idea of women enmeshed within a patriarchal structure
of power relations was institutionalised through the popular cultural form of
cinema. In an article examining the way women were represented in these
popular films, Abisel argues that ordinary inequalities experienced by women
in social and cultural life were made to seem natural by means of tears
and laughter. She claims that through these films the message of ‘Sorry!
Unfortunately this is how [your] life is!’ was projected, particularly to the female
audience.21 This argument suggests that these films legitimised inequalities
existing in society and patriarchal culture by affirming that they were irrevocable
and predestined.
The world constructed in and via these films, in which melodramatic features
are used repetitively, facilitates the formation of consent to the existing male
domination exercised in and by the society; to the hierarchical order that is
based upon this domination, and to the given roles of women according to
42 Historically Framing Women and Turkish Cinema
this patriarchal structure. Abisel identifies the approach of these films towards
women as:

Whatever happens to women characters in film – whether to do with

traditions, customs, or bad people, or destiny – is horrifying and intimi-
dating. It is for this reason that it is inevitable to feel for women characters.
However, the films reinforce the idea that it is this very quality (of being
able to suffer constantly and not complain about it) that makes a woman,
a woman. Unless the woman character makes a big mistake, she is presented
with ‘the crown of marriage’ as a reward for her patience and self-abnegation.
Yet, sometimes it is permissible for her to die or be killed, since she is the
source of unhappiness for the male.22

In this argument Abisel aptly points out that women characters in these
melodramas are not represented as themselves, but rather as what they represent
for the male.
In the 1960s the number of films produced increased because cinema was
the cheapest form of entertainment at the time.23 During this decade there
were a number of films that attempted to deal with issues of women, in
addition to films in which the sole purpose of the woman’s presence was sexual
or erotic.24
Halit Refiǧ directed Şehirdeki Yabancı (Stranger in the City) (1962), Evcilik
Oyunu (The Family Game) (1964) and Kırık Hayatlar (Broken Lives) (1965),
in which he looked at woman’s place in society and focused on the relation-
ship of women to society.25 For instance, the 1964 film by Refiǧ, Gurbet Kuşları
(Birds of Exile) focuses on the relationship between woman and urban life.
The film tells the story of a family of six – parents, three
. sons and a daughter –
who migrate from a small town to the big city of Istanbul. The new set of
values brought to. them by their choice of living in the city end in tragedy.
After arriving in Istanbul with a dream of conquering the city and attaining a
high standard of living, the family falls apart. In addition to other economic
and social problems, an overwhelming amount of pressure is put on the
daughter by the family members, who are protecting her honour and chastity.
This becomes important when compared with the sons, who have the freedom to
experience whatever they wish. According to Scognamillo, the film provides
the audience with ‘an exhibition of woman characters’ while telling the tragic
story of the family.26 Indeed, as is the case for most of Refiǧ’s films, this film
proves significant in its representation of women. The daughter of the family
starts the journey with the hope of gaining a university education. Falling
into the traps of urban life (which are new to her) she ends up as a prostitute.
Throughout the film sexual desire is consistently given greater emphasis than
a romantic love affair. Once the family finds out that the daughter has
become a prostitute, she is killed in the name of protecting the family’s honour.
In this way the film reaffirms the idea that if a woman’s chastity is seen to be
compromised, punishment becomes a fitting end for the woman.
 Historically Framing Women and Turkish Cinema 43
In 1968 Metin Erksan directed Kuyu (The Well), which focused on the
unrequited love of a man towards a woman, both of whom lived in a small
village. Throughout the film the woman tries to escape from his advances and
struggles for her freedom. By using her struggle in gaining independence from
the male as a metaphor, the film refers to the despair of women in society.
The young man kidnaps the woman and takes her away into the mountains.
One day he gets caught and is put into jail for kidnapping her, and she goes
back to the village. People there treat her as someone who has lost her dignity
and ‘virginity’ by running away with the man. No matter what she does, she
cannot convince anyone in the village that she is ‘clean’. Even her own mother
believes that she is ‘dirtied’. The only solution left for her, then, is to marry
the rich, old man from the village. Since she feels trapped in this marriage she
runs away and meets a young gentleman who becomes her ‘saviour’ and with
whom she falls in love, both romantically and sexually. Just when she thinks
she is safe, the man is killed. She returns to the village but discovers that the
man who had previously kidnapped her has also returned after being released
from jail. He attempts to kidnap her again, but this time she kills him. At the
end, she hangs herself in the village well.
Like other films of the decade, this film’s approach to the female character’s
story does not aim at raising consciousness about women’s place in society,
but is rather concerned with arousing pity for her.27 Thus the film lectures the
audience on what it is (and what it should be) to be a woman in a patriarchal
society, rather than letting the audience approach women’s issues from a cri-
tical perspective. The film, like other films of the 1960s, takes a superficial
approach to women.
Again, it was in the 1960s that specific stars started to be associated with
the characters they portrayed. This, in a way, imprisoned the actresses of the
period into certain roles. In fact, it is possible to identify binary oppositions
with regard to female characters in films: good woman/bad woman and rich
woman/poor woman. In this context, Hülya Koçyiǧit, the female star who
commenced her career in cinema in the 1960s declared:

I have come to realise that I was put in one single form. I am either his
‘sister’ or ‘sister-in-law’. I am never his wife; if I am his wife, I am never
his girlfriend. He is responsible for protecting my honour and chastity …
When he talks about Hülya Koçyiǧit, he respects me; but at the same
time he can murder others in order to protect my cleanness. But he never
regards me as a ‘woman’, he never thinks of me as a ‘woman’. He erased
my identity in his mind.28

With her comment Koçyiǧit points out that the films, for which the star is
subordinated to the director, permitted her no invention, no advances in
creative activity hence she creates nothing new. Someone else exploits what
she is. Given the male domination of the Turkish cinema industry, women are
represented not as themselves with their own identities, but rather as what
44 Historically Framing Women and Turkish Cinema
they mean for men. Films thereby lock actresses into certain forms and roles,
and in this way create stereotypes. This also underlines the inferior position of
women both in Turkish society and cinema; and along these lines the woman
on the screen turns into an object framed by patriarchal discourse. In this
context, it is not possible to suggest that there was a significant change in the
representations of women in the 1960s, even though women characters were
more than merely complementary figures to men, particularly when compared
to the films of the 1950s.29
In the 1970s, there were two main tendencies seen in Turkish cinema, which
contradicted one another: pornographic films and films dealing with social
issues. Political polarisation (between the Left and Right) during the 1970s
resulted in a social and political situation resembling civil war. At this time, not
only the increasing tension on the streets of Turkey, but also the introduction
of television in 1974, led to a decrease in the size of cinema audiences. This
decrease was particularly marked amongst women and families. On the one
side were those actively involved in politics, who had taken their political
‘fight’ to the streets; on the other side were those who preferred to stay outside
political activity, and who chose to stay indoors enjoying the new and much
cheaper form of entertainment, television. When the cinema industry started
struggling financially with the arrival of television and the high cost of pro-
ducing colour films, it targeted those who were neither at home nor involved in
political activities – the unemployed, uneducated, sexually unfulfilled younger
generation of men.30 From this time men became the target audience, with
programmes of sex films to attract them. Consequently during the 1970s,
picture houses started showing ‘three films in a row’, including sex comedies
and cheap porn productions, which exploited women and their bodies on
screen in order to satisfy male desire.
According to Abisel, this was a period in Turkish cinema when things were
‘all going wrong’:

It is in these years when the decline in the number of cinema audiences

was strongly felt. The cinema houses in towns started closing down
slowly one after another. Cinemas in the big cities followed these … The
closure of these picture-houses, in return, led to a loss in the number of
cinemagoers … Fewer films are made. Management of those cinemas,
which showed cheap productions and bad films, by considering the
poor quality of the audience at the time, did not bother to refurbish these
buildings. Consequently, cinemas turned into cold, dirty spaces with broken
seats and faulty projection machines, in which ‘certain’ groups of audience
were fulfilling their ‘certain’ needs.31

In this way, picture houses became places where a young generation of men
spent their days, satisfying their sexual needs by watching cheap productions.
In accordance with this argument, Esen notes that in this period filmmakers
changed their target audience from women and the family unit to a male
 Historically Framing Women and Turkish Cinema 45
audience; and unknown actresses who were willing to be paid poorly were
used in pornographic films.32
These films, with no aesthetic or cinematographic concerns, aimed only at
earning money through the exploitation of women’s bodies. Even though it
was obvious from their titles and posters to see that they were sex comedies
and pornographic films, it is hard to explain how they managed to avoid
being censored.33 These films included Parçala Behçet (Tear Me off Behçet),
Beş Tavuk Bir Horoz (Five Chicks and a Cock), Kıvrıl ama Kırılma (Bend but
don’t Break), Kazıma Bak Kazıma (Look at Kazım), Ah Mualla Oh Ne Ala
(Oh Mualla Wow How Nice), Anahtarı Bendedir (I’ve got the Key), Bana Beş
Avrat Yetmez (Five Women is not Enough for Me) and Çikolata Tarlası
(Chocolate Field). Most of these films were sex comedies with sadistic
male characters dominating the storylines. Kalkan and Taranç describe these
male roles as ‘meaningless, artificial, and frivolous’, acting in an atmosphere
of a cartoon, with a vulgar approach to sexuality.34
The primary aim of these films was to satisfy the male (both the character
in films and the male audience) throughout the story, which was centred on
the female body. Women in these films were represented as beautiful creatures
with no sexual identity of their own, but merely as bodies, as objects of desire.
In all of these films the female body was never shown in its entirety but only
as isolated parts, thus women were objectified. In this way, male domination
over the female was emphasised and was shown as natural, and the idea of
women’s bodies being managed and used by men like objects was reinforced.
It is thought-provoking to note how the actors and actresses in these films
differed in the way in which they continued with their lives after this period.
Some actresses changed their names to continue with their real lives, as in the
cases of Yaprak Alkan/Banu Alkan and Tuǧba Çetin/Ahu Tuǧba. Some of
them got married and used their husbands’ surnames, in addition to changing
their maiden names and never working for the film industry again, as in the
cases of Ceyda Karahan and Melek Görgün. Some of them, for example
Seher Şeniz, committed suicide because they were unable to bear society’s
prejudiced view of them as ‘dirty and bad’ women. Some of them found their
way into the music industry or became businesswomen, as in the cases of Nükhet
Duru, Seyyal Taner and Zerrin Doǧan. While this is the case for actresses,
actors in these films, by contrast, were able to continue their careers in cinema
and theatre because as men their dignity was not sullied, as in the cases of
Rüştü Asyalı, Ali Poyrazoǧlu and Hadi Çaman.35
The second trend in Turkish cinema during the 1970s was the emergence of
films dealing with social issues. Although one might have expected sex films
to have attracted a greater degree of censorship, in fact, the contrary was the
case and films dealing with social and political issues were subjected to the most
censorship. What is important is the way these films bring an unconventional
approach to the representation of women by not conforming to limited and easy
stereotypes; however, despite this they still employed patriarchal discourse in
their narrative.
46 Historically Framing Women and Turkish Cinema
As Abisel explains, despite the positive image of woman in these films, ‘for
various reasons and in various ways they abandon their desires, wants, needs and
wealth’ because they are not powerful enough or simply are not given the
opportunity of deciding and planning their own lives.36 Besides, their expecta-
tions always operate within the narrow confines of ‘being saved by a male or
getting married’. Sometimes, if they cannot be saved or get married, they
choose to commit suicide.37
Some of the films of this period are Ömer Lütfi Akad’s trilogy Gelin (The
Bride) (1973), Düǧün (The Wedding) (1973), Diyet (Blood Money) (1974),
Ömer Kavur’s Yatık Emine (Leaning Emine) (1974), Yılmaz Güney’s Arkadaş
(Friend) (1974), Süreyya Duru’s Bedrana (Bedrana) (1974), Türkan Şoray’s
Dönüş (The Return) (1972), Atıf Yılmaz’s Selvi Boylum Al Yazmalım (The
Girl with the Red Scarf) (1978) and Zeki Ökten’s Sürü (The Herd) (1978).
Almost all these films deal with and criticise the negative impact of the strict
social traditions of Turkish society on both men and women.
Akad’s trilogy of Gelin,. Düǧün and Diyet deals with the theme of migration
from Eastern Turkey to Istanbul (the big city). All three . films depict the struggles
of a rural family to adapt to and survive in urban Istanbul, and in so doing
they portray the migrant mentality. In all three films, female characters
(Meryem, Zeliha, Hacer) are represented as those who have the power to keep
the families together. In Gelin, for the female character to work in a factory is
regarded as bad, reaffirming the idea that women do not work outside the
private sphere. In Düǧün the daughter of the family rejects the idea of an
arranged marriage and tries to protect her sisters from being sold in exchange
for money. In Diyet the female protagonist joins the union to fight for
employment rights at the factory where she works. Her reason for working is
to provide for her children.
Ömer Kavur’s Yatık Emine is an adaptation of a novel of the same name,
and tells the story of a prostitute, who is deported to a conservative village during
the First World War, and whose life turns into hell because of the prejudice of
village people towards her. Süreyya Duru’s Bedrana tells the story of a woman
from a rural part of Turkey, and how she suffers as a result of strict customs.
As Öngören notes, ‘the film shows the hopelessness not only of the female but
also of the male in fighting against strict traditions of rural life.’38
Another film with a female protagonist from rural Turkey is Türkan Şoray’s
Dönüş. Şoray, as both the actress and director of the film, tells the story of a
woman whose husband goes to work in Germany. He leaves his wife behind
in the village, and even though he is married, he finds another woman in
Germany and also marries her. The men of the village do not leave her alone,
knowing that her husband is away. They sexually harass her both verbally and
physically. Rumours about her grow and the husband finds out about how she
is – supposedly – ‘flirting’ with every man in the village. The husband returns
to save his family honour by killing his wife. The film questions the values
of a male-dominated society that puts women in such a subordinate and
inferior position.
 Historically Framing Women and Turkish Cinema 47
Yılmaz Güney’s Arkadaş brings new female characters to Turkish cinema –
revolutionary, intellectual women thinking about social problems. The film
deals with class and gender issues through the character of a wealthy young
girl who starts questioning the prevalent norms of bourgeois society.
Zeki Ökten’s film Sürü is identified as the film with ‘the most interesting
female character in Turkish cinema’:

Throughout the film Berivan never says a word. Why doesn’t she say a
word? Why doesn’t she say anything to all that torture? The most inter-
esting female character in Turkish cinema … Doesn’t she talk because
she is subordinated? Or, is her a silence a form of resistance … ? Is there
any other film that depicts the position [subordination] of women in this
disordered life so effectively?39

Indeed, it is possible to suggest that she determined her own identity through
silence; in other words, by choosing to keep silent.
Atıf Yılmaz, who is known as ‘the director of women’s films’ of the 1980s,
deals with issues of women in his film Selvi Boylum Al Yazmalım. However, it is
not possible to say that the film goes beyond the conventional representation
of women. The film focuses on the love . and relationship triangle between
young and beautiful
. Asya, truck driver I lyas and the old widowed
. man Cemşit.
Asya marries Ilyas and has a child by him. After a while Ilyas becomes an
alcoholic and betrays Asya with another woman. Cemşit becomes the saviour
of Asya and helps her out throughout this difficult period of time. Asya chooses
to be with Cemşit at the end of the film, thereby connoting an independent
choice by a woman.
In most of the films of the 1970s women characters wait to be saved by men.
They can only survive through love and marriage, that is, through dependence
on the male. The films discussed above are only one per cent of nearly 2,000
films produced within this decade.40 Yet the importance of these few films, no
matter how conventional in their representation of women, in creating the
conditions for the possibility of 1980s’ women’s films cannot (and must not)
be underestimated.
Accordingly, women are central to the narratives of the films of this period,
both in sex films and films dealing with social issues. On the one hand, there
are films that represent women through the exploitation of their bodies in
order to serve the pleasure of the male; on the other hand, there are films
looking at women who are entrapped by the strict rules of male domination
and traditions, while dealing with social issues. It is difficult to say that there
were any films approaching women’s issues consciously until the 1980s. In the
films of the 1970s, women or women’s issues were generally taken into con-
sideration in order to reflect the problems arising out of customs in rural
Turkey. Therefore, until the 1980s, women characters in Turkish cinema were
represented through the binary opposition of the morally good and the
morally bad woman.
48 Historically Framing Women and Turkish Cinema
On the one hand, women characters were good and virtuous. The virtuous
woman was a good wife to her husband, and obeyed his rules; was a good
mother to her children; constantly forgave all slights, insults and betrayals;
did not resist even though she felt subordinated; knew how to cry on the inside
and never to show her sorrow on the outside (to avoid punishment); and was
responsible for keeping the family together and happy. On the other hand,
there were women characters who were bad. Such a character was the exact
opposite. She was someone who thought of nothing else but her sexuality;
was unfaithful; was an enemy of those who have happy marriages; and was
typically a femme fatale. Esen adds a third type of woman to this dichotomy,
that is, female characters with no particular purpose within the storyline of the
film.. They are seen on the screen but are unimportant to the action.41 As noted
by Ibrahim Altınsay, the representation of women as pure good or pure
bad was a reflection of feudal ideology, through which male domination is
constantly reaffirmed, and which is deeply patriarchal.42 The importance of
the shift in 1980s’ cinema is that films freed themselves and their female
characters from this binary opposition.

‘Depoliticising’ the cinema: the 1980s

As one of the directors of this decade, Bilge Olgaç, appositely puts it, ‘in the
1980s Turkish cinema changed; it came out of its shell and formed a new one’.43
The cinema was affected by the coup, and I would argue, due to depolitici-
sation, filmmakers started dealing with topics that they had not critically
dealt with until then. The main tendency was to focus on the individual. Not
only were the sex films of the 1970s banned, but also films of the previous
decade dealing with social and political issues faced strict censorship and were
even destroyed because of ‘political concerns’.
In her article examining aesthetics and ideology in Turkish cinema in the
1980s, Necla Algan asserts that ‘80s cinema provided virgin territory offering
new possibilities. There was nothing that would link the filmmakers to the past.
The political was dangerous and was in jail … Filmmakers were as free as
birds to do anything they wanted, as long as they stayed away from the poli-
tical.’44 Indeed, Turkish cinema was profoundly affected by the coup and its
aftermath. Filmmakers could not present overtly political material and were
driven to a greater degree of subtlety in articulating their political viewpoints
and positions.
Prominent among the film trends of the 1980s were films dealing with the coup’s
psychological effects on individuals (especially intellectuals) and women’s
films (in parallel with the rise of feminism in Turkey) with their depiction of
female characters engaged in a search for identity and independence. With the
entrance of ‘the individual’ to Turkish cinema, one issue that was dealt with in
films was the individuality of the female identity. With the films of the 1980s,
Turkish cinema started focusing on the ‘human woman’ by freeing itself from
the previously dominant binary opposition of the good and the bad woman.
 Historically Framing Women and Turkish Cinema 49
The motif of the independent woman was new to Turkish cinema. As pre-
viously discussed, representations of women (in melodrama in particular)
were typically based on the binary opposition of the good and the bad. The
good woman was one who served the male and who obeyed the traditional
roles to which she had been assigned. The bad woman, on the other hand,
was the femme fatale character who could kiss, have sex and commit adultery
on the screen. Since the 1980s, however, there has been a significant and
discernible change in the representation of women from stereotypical ‘good
and bad’ to independent women whose characters are represented with their
complexities. It is interesting to refer to Zeynep Avcı’s comment here regard-
ing the shifts in the depiction of women in this period in an article throughout
which she attempts to answer the question, ‘Does Turkish cinema look at
women?’

Turkish cinema on the whole does not intend to concentrate on women

or women’s issues. Whenever it is in trouble, it takes as its topics those
ideas which are fashionable and reflects them on the silver screen; it does
whatever is needed to increase the box office figures.45

Although Avcı refers to the financial concerns of the cinema industry as a

reason to focus on women’s issues, it is not clear in her argument whether she
assumes a link between the shifts in cinema and the women’s movement.
Unlike Avcı, Soykan underlines this link while writing about the social chan-
ges at the time:

After 1980, economic conditions, television, the atmosphere of democra-

tisation and freedom, the emergence of women’s issues in the public sphere
and thus the women’s movement affect social and cultural life. Consequently,
a noticeable increase in the number of films dealing with women and
women’s issues becomes evident.46

In this context, I argue that the feminist movement of the 1980s, which seeks
for equality between men and women, is the most prominent factor
in the emergence of films that focus on women’s issues and women’s place in
society. Social roles and conventions that hitherto had been imposed upon
women by means of popular films were challenged and deconstructed by
these new films.
It is important to classify the films of the 1980s as women’s films, films
dealing with the effects of the coup on the individual (psychological films),
and films that deal with the issue of migration (arabesque films,47 which deal
with the tragedy of migrants’ lives).48 It is not a coincidence that women
became the centre of attention within this period in films. Directors sought to
stay away from the political by focusing on women’s issues (which were not
perceived as politically either left or right), but this approach proved to be
problematic since women’s issues are intrinsically political.
50 Historically Framing Women and Turkish Cinema
Shifts in the representation of women in 1980s’ cinema
Perhaps, in 1968, one would have agreed with Orhan Kemal when he declared
that ‘there is no real human being in Turkish cinema’.49 However, from 1980
onwards, with the entrance of sophisticated characters and a focus on the
individual, Turkish cinema started using complex and unconventional char-
acters in films. These films include Mine, Dünden Sonra Yarından Önce, Kur-
baǧalar and Asiye Nasıl Kurtulur?, and are discussed in the following chapters in
detail. This shift is from a one-dimensional and artificial character to a multi-
dimensional one. Until then, good and bad could not be seen together within
a single character.50 As Altınsay points out, the reason why one-dimensional
characters are preferred in films up to the 1980s can be found in the link with
social structures and traditions:

The approach of feudal culture (that searches for the good seven layers up;
and the bad components and fears of the society in the bad, seven layers
down, and conventionalises these) to human beings is reflected and printed
in all types of narratives (including tales, epic stories and myths).51

This is a shrewd and accurate judgement. Indisputably, it is with the 1980s

that film characters are freed from binary oppositions and allowed to move
from superficiality to sophistication. These conventional roles were left aside
and a new type of character was introduced into Turkish cinema, one that
displayed both good and bad traits, and is represented in its full complexity.
This shift is to be explained not only by the increased tendency to focus on
the individual, but also by literary people’s entrance into the film industry.
With their film scripts and scenarios they portrayed detailed complex char-
acters, social status and identity, psychological backgrounds, and different
behaviours as if they were using these characters in their novels.52
As an outcome of the rise of individuality within the cinema, together
with the feminist movement and its effects on the emergence of women’s films,
notions of female identity and woman’s individuality became popular in films.
The convention of ‘the good’ and ‘the bad’ woman is left aside and cinema
freed itself from this binary opposition and started to concentrate on ‘the
human woman’ (to use Altınsay’s term). This term refers to a new type of
woman character with both good and bad qualities gathered in one person.
Hence, the phrase ‘human woman’ refers to the new way of representing
female characters in a way that is more complex than artificial.
Moreover, this new, independent woman character introduced to the screen
is conscious of her rights, sexuality and identity, as opposed to the conven-
tional representation
. of women.. The pioneer film in this respect is Ah
Güzel Istanbul (Oh Beautiful Istanbul) (Ömer Kavur, 1981) with Müjde Ar
in the leading role. Subsequently, Türkan Şoray plays the role of an indepen-
dent woman following her female desire freely in Mine (Mine) (1982).
Later comes Hülya Koçyiǧit as the female protagonist of Firar (The Escape)
 Historically Framing Women and Turkish Cinema 51
(Şerif Gören, 1984), which details the struggles of a woman’s sexual frustra-
tions. These, and many other films focusing on women’s lives and issues, became
prominent in the cinema: for example, the films of Atıf Yılmaz, Şerif Gören,
Bilge Olgaç, Feyzi Tuna, Ömer Kavur and Türkan Şoray. It is also in this
period that the number of films by women directors focusing on women’s
issues increased: for example, those of Türkan Şoray, Bilge Olgaç, Mahinur
Ergun, Nisan Akman, Fürizan, Işıl Özgentürk and Canan Gerede.53 Women’s
films of the 1980s looked at issues such as family structure and women’s place
in society through representation of the new, independent woman.
Individualism’s effect on cinema in this period led to unconventional
representation of women characters through a focus on women’s issues, female
subjectivity, sexuality and desire. These were topics that were not previously
dealt with in detail. What I will argue, however, is that despite the shifts in the
narratives of the films the cinematic style remained the same – the classical
Yeşilçam melodrama style (characterised by excessive mise-en-scène) – and
continued to objectify women in some of the films, at different levels.
The role of the cinema changed accordingly, I would argue, in the sense that it
moved from being a ‘storyteller’ with stereotypical characters to a cultural form
with complex characters and issues. This, in turn, changed the position of the
cinema audience from passive to active. In this way, the audience started
empathising with the characters on the screen, thereby sharing the concerns
they were representing. The audience started seeing itself on the screen and
began questioning what was on the screen compared with the reality of their
own ordinary lives. This is the very process that turned cinema into a tool
where representation became a critique of the status quo. Women characters
in films who were one-dimensional, artificial and only used as a means of
telling tales, created passivity in the audience, whereas new many-dimensional
characters with sophisticated qualities, led to the creation of genuine and cri-
tical empathy on the part of the now active audience.54 Here, I use ‘active’ to
refer to films that actively challenge the audience to be active as opposed to
films before the 1980s which invited passivity. Therefore, this idea of an active
audience is based on critical inference from the form of the film texts. Altınsay
writes in support of this claim in his comment on Mine:

One empathises with Mine (who suffers from an unloving husband, and
who is in a dilemma about whether to break the moral rules imposed on
her by the society) and reaches a stage when one starts questioning one’s
own position in society through looking at the impasse that she is in.55

Through the use of complex and sophisticated characters in films the cinema
audience is given the opportunity to empathise with the characters’ situations
and experiences. It is in this period that films’ approach to the representation
of women changed and there was a considerable increase in the number of
films that dealt with women’s issues. The audience then becomes able to
empathise with the character on the screen. In this way, the audience starts
52 Historically Framing Women and Turkish Cinema
identifying with women’s issues and, consequently, through cinema’s depiction
of women and women’s issues, consciousness is raised in the audience in
relation to these topics.
This proves to be one of the links between the feminist movement and the
cinema – hence the link between the political and the cultural. The cinema is
affected by and affects the feminist movement. This highlights my argument,
which is that what links feminism and film was the enforced ‘depoliticisation’
introduced after the 1980 coup and that the feminist movement was able to
come into being precisely because it was not perceived as politically sig-
nificant. In a parallel movement in cinema there was a tendency to focus on
women’s issues and lives in order to avoid the political.
The feminist consciousness, established upon the exposition of the operating
power relations between men and women, opened up a route for women to
become social actors. In her influential book Modern Mahrem (The Forbidden
Modern), Nilüfer Göle points out that:

The overflow of the private sphere into the public sphere by deconstructing
the walls of privacy is a process that puts its own stamp on all societies.
Moreover, even the most powerful side of the public sphere that is politics
is affected by the movements of individualisation and obligatory trans-
parency. Gender is also politicised while the topics of the private sphere
(including abortion, beating and veiling) are constantly moved to the
public sphere and to the streets.56

Not only Göle’s idea of ‘the overflow of the private sphere into the public
sphere’, but also the link between feminism and film, became evident in Turkey
during the 1980s, particularly with the feminist statement ‘the personal is
political’. In this sense, it is possible to argue that cinema acted as a political
tool representing the issues dealt with within feminism. When the camera was
turned to the private sphere; that is to say, to the private by focusing on the
individual (the personal), the personal became political and thus public. This
confirms the bond between these two different sets of practices: feminism and
cinema.
In answering the question of how Turkish cinema turned the camera onto
the private sphere, it is possible to suggest that it did so through a new
understanding of sexuality. According to Burçak Evren, ‘when the stars went
to bed on the screen too, the idea of the angel and devil woman in our cinema
disappeared; the woman with her flesh started performing the real woman’.57
What Evren refers to here as ‘stars’ are those actresses whose characters in
film have been associated with the idea of a ‘good woman’ until then.
The visible and popular form of this shift, from one-dimensional female
characters to the multi-dimensional, is through the use of ‘the good woman’:
performed by stars such as Hülya Koçyiǧit, Türkan Şoray and Müjde Ar.
Female sexuality and desire became prominent topics dealt with in films.
Müjde Ar (who played ‘the good woman’ in all her previous roles) with her
 Historically Framing Women and Turkish Cinema 53
.
performances in Delikan (The Juvenile), Ah Güzel Istanbul (Oh Beautiful
Istanbul) and Göl (The Lake) legitimised the idea of a new, independent
woman, and demonstrated that kissing, following one’s own desires, having
sex and experiencing sexuality freely do not make a woman a ‘bad woman’.
Türkan Şoray’s characters in Mine and Seni Seviyorum (I Love You) rein-
forced the idea that a woman can and is allowed to experience sexuality and
have sex, without thereby losing her integrity and becoming a ‘bad woman’.
When these female characters started being represented as experiencing
sexuality freely in films, these films were contributing to the feminist movement’s
fight in representing the constraints of patriarchal ideology. These women
characters/film personas who were previously the symbols of good, honourable
women who consented to the domination of the male, and who were never given
the right to experience their sexuality (in the name of protecting their chastity
and honour), were now given the chance to live freely, following their desires.
Yet again, this was not a coincidence, but rather the outcome of the feminist
struggle and its effect on the representation of women in film.
As Dorsay notes, the notion of sexuality is a prominent issue dealt with in films
in this period. Consequently, what was previously considered as mahrem (pri-
vate) and thus not dealt with at all, or dealt with covertly, was now depicted
overtly. In his words:

A new woman character is seen on the screens; one that does not only sense
her own sexuality but also is not afraid to actually follow her own desires
freely and fearlessly … Those women who did not have the opportunity
to experience sexuality and their femininity, and who were not considered
as an equal to men on the screen previously, are now being represented as
independent women in our new films (which deal with sexuality and
gender from a new perspective). I believe this new type of independent
woman is one of the biggest changes in our cinema.58

It is, in this sense, possible to argue that the feminist movement of the period
has claimed its place in the cinema with this new approach to sexuality in
particular and women, as individuals with rights, in general.
Here, it is important to note the effect of television on cinema in relation to
this new form of sexuality, and to consider especially the foreign soap operas
broadcast on television at the time. As Altınsay points out, the television
audience that kept watching ‘the Sue Ellens and the Pamelas passionately
kissing men on the television screen, got used to the idea of Türkan Şoray’s
kissing on the cinema screen’.59 Although it is beyond the scope of this thesis
to explain how these television programmes managed to remain uncensored,
it is important to note that since these soap operas were Western, they were
instantly related to the modern and were regarded as instances of what it
means to be a modern, Westernised woman or man.
In addition, modernisation in Turkey has always been considered as
Westernisation. In other words, it is conceptualised as and/or characterised
54 Historically Framing Women and Turkish Cinema
and understood as Westernisation. Moving from this link, one can argue that
Turkish society became used to seeing women experiencing their sexuality
freely on the television screen through the soap operas of the West from both
Europe and America. If Western women were kissing on the screen, then in
order to become a modern society, Turkish society needed to consent to
Türkan Şoray, Müjde Ar and Hülya Koçyiǧit performing as their Western
counterparts did. Therefore, it is important to note here that it is also with the
effect of television that the new approach to women’s representation in cinema
became possible; and a new understanding of female sexuality was embraced.
This chapter provided the historical background for the representation of
women in Turkish cinema from its beginnings, in order to clarify the changes
in the perception of women’s position in society. I argue that there is a strong
link between the two sets of practices (cinema and feminism) in the context of
Turkish cinema and the feminist movement of the 1980s. What links feminism
and film is the enforced ‘depoliticisation’ introduced after the coup by the
incoming military government: the feminist movement of the 1980s was able
to come into being precisely because it was not perceived as politically sig-
nificant, and in films of the 1980s there was a tendency to focus on women’s
issues and lives in order to avoid the political.
3 Representing Career Women

The arrival of the woman character that is able to say ‘I must do the job I love,
otherwise I cannot freely exist!’ to our cinema, and perhaps to our society, is
so late.1

Working women stories are one of the recurring themes for women’s films of
the decade. In this chapter I examine Dünden Sonra Yarından Önce (After
Tomorrow Before Yesterday) as a case study through the application of textual
analysis to see how working women narratives of the 1980s approach their
subject. As I have stated in Chapter 2 some of these films have been made by
women, some by men, but apparently with women as the audience in mind. It
is clear from the narratives of these films that their point of reference is
society outside film. With career women as their heroines, these films represent
aspects of everyday happenings with realistic characters thereby opening
space to the audience for identification.
Atıf Yılmaz’s Aaah Belinda! (Oh Belinda!) (1986), a comedy about a young
working woman who has her own apartment and a wealthy boyfriend, is a
case in point. She decides to appear in a commercial for a shampoo called
‘Belinda’. During filming of the advert – like a reverse fantasy – she hallucinates
and finds herself in a world where she does not feel she belongs; she finds
herself in the life offered by the advert, as a housewife and a mother to two
children. The film switches between her real and illusory lives. As her con-
scious mind resists these roles, she enters into a dream state for the duration
of the advertisement, returning to her self only with the last shot and the
resumption of her real life.
Asiye Nasıl Kurtulur? is another example. It proved significant in its
representation of working women, mainly prostitutes. Indeed, in this period
Turkish cinema became highly interested in the lives of prostitutes; how-
ever, this interest never relied on the perception of prostitutes as working
women. Moreover, there was a general tendency in films with prostitutes as
their main characters to reinforce the idea that prostitutes can never marry,
which leads to the idea that they can never ‘survive’. Thus, on the one hand
there were female characters who could claim a divorce due to their financial
and sexual independence, on the other hand there were prostitute characters
56 Representing Career Women
whose income was not regarded as a means of independence. The films
tended to blame destiny for their becoming ‘fallen women’ and ending up as
prostitutes. Yet in almost all cases, they found themselves in difficult condi-
tions because of the men who raped them; social pressures, running away
from arranged marriages and strict traditions adversely affecting women in
patriarchal cultures.
In Hayallerim, Aşkım ve Sen (My Dreams, My Love and You) (Atıf Yılmaz,
1987), a film star’s life becomes the focus. Through the story of a film star’s
career, the film refers to the changes in the cinema industry, with the shift
from the binary opposition of ‘the good and the bad woman’ to the portrayal
of a sophisticated, independent woman character. In most cases, although
working women are represented as independent-minded characters, they
either face harassment in the workplace, fail to continue their relationships or
completely give up work in order to save their relationships.
One of the most remarkable films in representing working women is
Dünden Sonra Yarından Önce which mainly deals with the lack of communica-
tion between a married couple. What makes this film unconventional in terms
of its representation of women is that the film does not endorse the solution
of women leaving their jobs (and becoming good housewives) for the sake of
keeping a happy marriage. On the contrary, it proposes an alternative with a
protagonist, Gül (Zuhal Olcay), who claims that she needs to work in order
to be independent. In her chapter on Turkish female directors of the period,
Feyzan Nizam writes:

Focusing on Gül’s problems, the film is concerned about reaching to the

female audience, with its overtly feminist message. Women’s rights,
women’s platform and feminism itself, all these ideas are passed on to the
audience with the new and unconventional approach of the film towards
feminist issues.2

Indeed, the film engages with issues that arise from the feminist movement of
the period. It explores the paradoxes inherent in simultaneously being a
career woman and a wife through the story of Gül, a successful film director
at the peak of her career. According to Ruken Öztürk, this is ‘the first film’ in
Turkish cinema, by a female filmmaker, ‘to represent the duel between work
and marriage in a truthful and clear way’.3 The film also proves important
with its overt reference to the feminist movement of 1980s’ Turkey as well as
its exploration of women’s rights.
In exploring a conflict experienced by urban women, that is, career versus
family, the film represents professional woman and wife as two distinct and
disconnected options, presented as an ‘either/or’ dichotomy. The focus here is
on the patterns of marital negotiation in an urban, high-class marriage in
which the wife has a demanding job and hence does not seem to devote herself
to her home and husband, even though she is in love with him. In addition,
there is an exploration of how the power dynamics of an urban marriage are
 Representing Career Women 57
constructed and negotiated, and through which mechanism these dynamics
are maintained, reinforced and challenged. Furthermore, women’s chances of
successfully combining career and family are scrutinised in the film.
The film transforms and challenges traditional patterns of narrative pleasure
by using a strategy and thereby formulating the means for a feminist dis-
course and a critique of patriarchal culture. This strategy can be explained
with the use of a structuralist approach to narrative.4 All stories begin with a
state of equilibrium, where any potentially opposing forces are in balance.
This is disrupted by some event (disequilibrium) and finally the story closes
with a different or new equilibrium. If the theory is applied to this film, it
becomes clear that there is an unconventional narrative structure in play.
To clarify: the film does not start with a happily married housewife (equili-
brium – patriarchal relations in place), who decides to leave the private sphere
to start a career; who throughout the film struggles to keep her marriage and
job together (disequilibrium – challenging traditional norms that usually ends
in the punishment of the woman who transgresses rules of patriarchy); and, at
the end, either celebrates her success as a consequence of her resistance and
fight or gets punished for violating traditional norms of marriage imposed
upon her, by failing to meet her responsibilities as a wife (a new equilibrium).
The equilibrium presented at the beginning of this film assumes an equal
relationship between man and woman. So, the equilibrium provided by the
film is based on the equality between a husband and a wife, who love each
other and their jobs at the same time. The narrative, however, changes into a
state of disequilibrium when Gül decides to quit her job in order to devote
herself to her marriage in order to not lose her husband either to another
woman or via divorce. After a period of loss of self-confidence, jealousy
attacks followed by discomfort, unhappiness and fights between the couple,
Gül decides to leave her husband and direct a documentary about the lives of
women who are battered by their husbands; thus a new equilibrium is estab-
lished. Yet, now she has to continue her life as a single but independent
woman, and let another woman ‘win’ her husband; hence she exchanges her
freedom and career for him. An analysis of the film within the context of
these three stages helps to illuminate how it opens a possibility for a feminist
discourse, yet, still in a conventional manner, punishes the woman for her
choices. Because I employ narrative analysis in my examination of the film
I follow a rather chronological order. In doing so, I aim to understand the
effects of shifting a woman to the centre of the narrative and to indicate
the strategies used to engage the audience and to highlight women’s issues.
The opening scene of the film takes place in an editing studio. In this first scene,
the film establishes an equal relationship between male and female colleagues
as Gül comments on the pictures, gives orders to her colleagues while at the
same time asking their opinion about the film. This image introduces her as a
strong, confident film director who is kind to her colleagues, serious about her
job and has a busy working life. She stands up in this narrow room while
others are seated, checks the paperwork on the desk and talks about schedules
58 Representing Career Women
to her colleagues. She looks confident in her moves. This is highlighted in a
scene in which she is shown walking fast while reading the notes in her hand.
The soundtrack is dominated by the decisive sound of her footsteps in heels
signifying her self-confidence. A male colleague approaches her from the
opposite direction and starts walking next to her in harmony with her fast pace
while asking questions about filming schedules. She answers his questions
kindly, but does not look at him as she keeps reading the documents. The
camera moves backwards quickly to catch up with her rhythm.
In the scene with credits running, we are in Gül’s car as she drives away.
The theme song of the film accompanies the image. The lyrics of the song in
the background provide an idea as to the film’s main concern (marriage
versus career) thereby giving a voice to her silent but thoughtful image: ‘Even
if you are in love, if you cannot live freely, all happiness comes to an end.’
Interestingly the actress who portrays Gül in the film, Zuhal Olcay, is a singer
and this song is sung by her. During her drive through the city, the camera is
positioned in the car either next to or behind her. This suggests that the
audience is in her car – hence is invited to watch her story. This composition
introduces the protagonist as a modern, urban woman with a powerful posi-
tion at work and a busy lifestyle and (through the song) as a woman who will
find herself in a predicament with regards to work and marriage. It also offers
the possibility of identification with the character for the audience.
Bülent (Eris Akman) is Gül’s husband. He is introduced in an early scene
also as a director, working in the stressful environment of a set. He is asser-
tive, aggressive and dominant in his workplace. As Gül visits him at the
studio, we are introduced to the threat to their marriage in Bülent’s female
assistant Pelin (Sedef Ecer) who gazes at Gül from afar. Bülent informs Gül
that she ‘will have to play the widow again’ as he is obliged to work all night;
Gül tells him she will be travelling for filming the next day. The dialogue is
captured in a standard reverse shot pattern while closing in on each character
to stress the tension between them with regards to their clashing schedules.
As the tension increases the shot is bisected by turned-off spotlight in the
background visually suggesting how their jobs come between them.
The couple does not have any children. They are both successful directors,
earning good money. They have a car and an apartment, and even a daily
servant. The camera offers us the details of the apartment space, which is
elegantly decorated with antiques and art pieces. The décor is worth noting
here since it plays an important part in indirectly reflecting the ‘either/or’
dichotomy between marriage and career: the colours used in the house are
mainly black and white. This highlights the predicament Gül is in whenever
she is filmed at home, in the private sphere. Considering that the couple are
never shown having a quarrel outside their house, it is important to note that
these contrasting colours are also used on the four large paintings hung on
the walls of the house to refer to the conflict and tension between the two
characters. Their bedroom is painted in grey-blue tones and this serves as
evidence of the coldness of the relationship.
 Representing Career Women 59
Despite their phone conversations (while they are apart) full of words of
love, Bülent’s discomfort becomes obvious in his talk to a close family friend,
Selda (Güzin Özyaǧcılar) (an antiquarian who has been happily married for
26 years). His discomfort is particularly clear when he tells her: ‘I can’t say
I’m happy. I feel neither married nor single.’ In this stage of the film, with its
initial equilibrium, there is a couple under focus who love each other and who
both seem to love their jobs, despite the concerns of the husband related to
his wife’s career. What is of crucial importance is the representation of a new,
independent career woman character married to a man who is used to seeing
her as his equal. Therefore the equilibrium presents an equal relationship
between the man and the woman. The narrative goes against a tradition of
the woman being suppressed and domesticated within the private sphere. The
film, through its narrative, questions the traditional role of the heroine at the
level not only of content but also of experiencing the tensions embedded
within the work-marriage dichotomy.
During a sequence in which the couple has lunch at an expensive restaurant,
Bülent talks about his concerns, wants and needs regarding their marriage.
He makes a list of complaints (about how he thinks he sometimes has to remind
Gül that they are married or his claim that her work comes before their
marriage) and wishes (to find her at home when he gets back from work, ‘to
talk to her, to eat with her, to sleep and wake up with her, and finally to have
a child’). During his speech, while capturing Gül’s responses in her gestures,
in addition to the use of close-ups, the camera also slowly turns around the table
in a circular movement that creates a sense of vertigo, a feeling of dizziness
and discomfort.
Bülent’s discourse insists on restoring the nuclear family and on sub-
ordinating the discourse of the independent woman to that of the housewife.
He tries to convince her to meet her responsibilities as a wife, and suggests that
she has a job she can do as a ‘hobby’ (perhaps open an antiques shop like
Selda) so that ‘he can be with her whenever he wishes’. At the end, he threatens
her by saying that ‘they may as well be divorced’ if she is to continue
neglecting her marriage. There is a conservative emphasis on the return of the
woman to the role of the housewife, and thus the reconstruction (or
improvement) of the conventional nuclear family. Hence, the suggestion of a
transition between being a successful career woman with her own economic
independence, to accepting traditional gender roles and identifying with them
as the only source of personal happiness, becomes problematic for Gül.
The impasse Gül finds herself in does not seem to allow her any agency, since
she seems to be left without options even though she has two obvious choices:
giving up her job or divorce. She visits Selda to talk about her concerns, fears
and her opinion on motherhood and giving up a career. The scene is domi-
nated by close-ups of Gül’s thoughtful and indecisive face. Selda’s ideas about
divorce play a considerable role not only in reminding Gül what it means to
be a divorced woman in a patriarchal society, but also in convincing her to
give up her career: ‘I was once separated from Selim, it was hell without him.
60 Representing Career Women
It’s unbearable to sleep alone, to eat alone and not to have him around when
you need him most. Not to mention the lack of love and affection.’
This scene of women sharing their experiences and issues about marriage,
motherhood and career and consulting each other not only refers to the friend-
ship between the two women but (more importantly) can be seen as representative
of urban women talking to each other about their shared concerns. The scene
becomes representative of what the organisational structure of the feminist
movement looked like on a rather small scale. Worth underlining here also is
that this talk in the film is between urban women. Furthermore, there are no
similar scenes in films about rural women; rather they are alone and they cannot
escape strict traditions and customs. This signals the difference between the
lives and conditions of urban and rural women at a representational level.
Yet, this difference (as previously discussed in relation to the elitist quality of
the women’s movement) was apparent in 1980s Turkish society. Towards the
end, the film further brings this issue to the fore when it focuses on the servant at
Gül’s house who represents a rural woman living in the city.
The film offers, similar to the Hollywood narratives studied by Jeanine
Basinger, an example of ‘contradiction and covert liberation, with the usual
formulaic dismal ending in which the woman puts the apron back on and
gives everything up for her man’.5 In the scene in which Gül announces her
resignation Bülent is in the living room of the house (standing in front of the
two big black paintings in contrast to white sofas), showing his excitement
and contentment. This composition in the house not only signals a contrast in
Gül’s choice of marriage over career, but also suggests a residual inner conflict
she has despite her apparent contentment. Bülent responds delightedly: ‘This
is wonderful news! I will be able to see you whenever I want.’ His words put
Gül in a subordinate position in her marriage; she becomes an object that the
husband has the freedom to see ‘whenever he wants’. This also corresponds
with the idea, noted by sociologist Margaret Adams, that a woman’s primary
and most valuable social function is ‘to provide the tender and compassionate
components of life’ and that ‘through the exercise of these particular traits,
women have set themselves up as the exclusive model for protecting, nurturing
and fostering the growth of others’.6 Having sacrificed her career, Gül is set to
become the unhappy nurturer, while Bülent becomes the happy and nurtured man.
The disequilibrium in the narrative and the shift in the power relations
between the couple in their marriage will result in a depressed woman subject
to jealousy attacks, loss of self-confidence and finally immense fights between
the two. Soon Gül’s anger at her new social circumstance turns into (and is
displayed as) the personal depression of a woman who sacrificed her ideals
about work and independence for the sake of happiness in her marriage, or,
conceivably, due to the fear of living the single life of a divorced woman. In
her condition, having given up her career, there is no possibility of her trying
to combine work and marriage successfully. Throughout this stage of dis-
equilibrium, during which Gül is a housewife, she uses the vocabulary of an
insecure woman. This is further highlighted in a scene in which she meets
 Representing Career Women 61
Selda for lunch, during which she talks about the possibility of an affair
between Bülent and Pelin as well as sharing her concern about not feeling like
her old self and not being able to bear the change. She opens a shop of her
own and goes to work whenever she wishes to. This way she thinks she will
be available for her husband all the time, but Bülent does not seem to be
interested in anything other than his own filming schedules.
In a scene where Gül is in her shop, three of her ex-colleagues (including
her employer) come to visit her. The employer informs Gül that there is an
opportunity for her to work freelance. A close-up on Gül reveals her excitement
and happiness regarding the news. Still in close-up, she describes her existing
job as unsatisfying and ‘not a real’ job. The mise-en-scène here assigns power
to her as she is sitting on a higher chair and in the middle of her colleagues.
She is still regarded and respected as an important film director. She tells
them it is not even a possibility for her to start making a film. This scene is
cut to her image at home kissing Bülent as she sends him to work in the
morning. The fast cut, and hence the contrast between these two scenes,
reveal Gül’s dilemma more clearly: being a good wife and staying at home
versus returning to a successful career in which she is respected. As Bülent
leaves and she closes the front door, the camera tracks along with her to the
window. From her point of view, a bright red car is shown in the grey street.
The red here connotes vibrancy and danger and hence a threat to Gül’s mar-
riage. The car waits for Bülent to get in. Pelin starts picking him up from
home each morning to go to work together.
A pivotal moment in the film is when Gül talks to her servant, with the
camera focusing on the distressed and bruised face of Mübeccel (Uǧur Kıvılcım).
Having seen her bruised on more than one occasion, Gül asks her to share
her problem. At the end of the film Gül will use Mübeccel’s experience as a
case study and make a film about battered (rural) women living in the suburbs
of the city as she returns to her career. The dialogue between Gül and
Mübeccel is vital since it not only addresses the difference between rural and
urban women, but also brings out overtly feminist issues while displaying how
the power relations between the genders change according to class. Gül finds
out that Mübeccel’s husband is jobless, and that the breadwinner in their
house is Mübeccel herself. Hale Cihan Bolak highlights the contrast between
the rural and urban woman in her discussion of marriage and working
women in Turkey, and claims that women who are major breadwinners in
their families are more assertive in their demands on their husbands.7 In
addition, it becomes clear that marital power in Mübeccel’s marriage is con-
structed through the complex interplay between a damaged male authority
(trying to be regained by use of physical violence; in other words, the repla-
cement of the damaged authority with physical strength) and female respect
(that has difficulty in subscribing to the norm of obedience to male authority
as the breadwinner). Mübeccel talks about how her husband drinks alcohol
and gets furious for being jobless and for receiving his pocket money from his
wife, and thus beats her ‘to death’. This incites anger in Gül, who at the end
62 Representing Career Women
calls Mübeccel’s husband to her house one morning and tries to ‘teach him a
lesson’ by asking him ‘if he was not ashamed of himself for beating his wife’.
This makes it clear that Gül is acting out her own anger at her husband and
transposing it all onto the rural working-class couple.
In one scene, Gül spots Mübeccel coming to work with her husband;
quickly opening the window, she asks her to bring her husband upstairs with
her. This image of the husband walking the wife to work is the exact opposite
of the image that introduced Gül at the beginning of the film, when she came
out of the studio late at night and drove alone in the big city. The reason why
Mübeccel’s husband walks with her every morning is related to the idea of a
woman signifying the ‘honour’ of the family, particularly as internalised by rural
people. The city connotes danger for the woman and she must not be left alone.
The couple stands in the middle of the living room in front of her. This
positioning of the characters is a reference to class difference as well as the
difference between the urban and the rural. The man looks embarrassed and
does not talk at all. Gül starts questioning the man. Her angry-sounding
voice dominates the discomfited image of him: ‘This woman works hard,
gives all her money for you to buy cigarettes and alcohol and you beat her? Is
this human?’ A sudden close-up on Gül stresses her anger; she leans towards
him from where she sits and stares angrily at him. This image of an urban
woman telling off the husband of a rural woman refers to the levels of dif-
ferent issues women face. It suggests that despite being distinct, both urban
and rural women suffer from gender inequalities. In this case the film raises
two of these concerns: marriage versus career (at the urban level) and
domestic violence (at the rural level).
The film does not stop focusing on the issue of battered women and moves
it to the next scene in which Gül is late to a meeting with Selda. She comes to the
shop apologising for being late and explains that ‘it was for a good reason’.
Selda’s discourse in her response is worth scrutinising here: ‘Come on! Don’t
you have anything else to do? Most married women in Turkey are beaten by
their husbands. You cannot change it; it has been and will continue to be like
this.’ Here, once again, the tension created by the duel of the traditional
woman against her independent-minded sister is highlighted. This suggests
that there is a communality of female oppression, regardless of class.8 Selda
here represents the elite women who internalize the ‘rules’ of patriarchy and
upholds them just as firmly as the men, and who have a stake in it as they
share the wealth of the capitalist elite.
Gül finds Selda’s response unacceptable and questions how as an educated,
intellectual woman she can think this way: ‘if you think this way,’ she asks,
‘how can the uneducated women deal with it?’ Selda offers to stop talking
about this topic, before Gül decides to make a film out of it. Gül decides to
go back to filmmaking to make a feminist documentary film about the bat-
tering of women. The film operates with an awareness about the women’s
issues and offers a point of view on the question of what it means to be a
woman in Turkey.
 Representing Career Women 63
What informs Gül’s decision to leave her husband and go back to work is a
quarrel she has with Bülent when she wishes him to stay at home to spend
time with her whereas he wants to go to work. For Gül, if her husband goes
to work, it means he will go after Pelin. For Bülent, it is a matter of respect
for his job. Bülent raises his voice as the camera slowly tracks closer to Gül’s
face to stress her thoughtful and sad image. Bülent says: ‘I must do the job I
want to do, the job I love; otherwise I can’t freely exist! Nobody can exist!’ It
is interesting here that his words reverberate with her previous words. The
discussion of the need to work awakens Gül’s consciousness to her own crea-
tivity. This implies that she starts questioning her own condition, and marks
the beginning of the new equilibrium in the narrative.
Gül decides to make a documentary film on domestic violence against
women. Her return to work signals the end of her marriage. This is empha-
sised in the scene when Bülent comes home from work and finds all the lights
of the house turned off apart from Gül’s study. He walks through the dark
corridor, and as he reaches the room, stands silently in front of his wife’s desk,
trying to understand what she is doing. Gül informs him that her film project
has been accepted and she will have to start filming the next day. Bülent
becomes furious and in a close-up says, ‘I thought we were living together.’
Gül, who is still sitting at her desk smiles and explains to him: ‘You said it.
You were right. I have to do the job I love, otherwise I cannot freely exist.
Nobody can exist.’
In the new equilibrium, every night Bülent is shown coming home to an empty
house, not finding anything to eat, but finding a note from Gül informing him
that she will be late. Communication between the couple comes to an end.
This is illustrated in a scene in which Gül comes homes very late. A broader
angle reveals Gül quickly changing and getting into bed without disturbing
Bülent. As she gets in and turns the light off on her side, he opens his eyes
and turns the other light off.
Gül is shown working: shooting scenes, interviewing women living in the
suburbs of the city and filming her documentary. Throughout the filming
process, Gül’s happiness, success, dynamism and energy are indicated by the
music accompanying these images. There are no dialogues or words in these
scenes, but Gül is shown cheered by a bunch of women from the suburbs who
carry placards saying, ‘All women are free. No to battering! Together against
battering!’9 We do not hear the voices of the women sharing their concerns –
hence we are not given the opportunity to hear what their issues are. The
composition in these images of filming the rural women addresses these
women as both the object and subject of an urban woman’s film. Moreover,
during the test screening of the film there are no women in the room apart
from Gül herself. This suggests that none of the women who were interviewed
get the opportunity to see the outcome. This is crucial because the audience
for the film qua film, then, is not primarily those who were filmed. Moreover,
the only indication that Gül’s film is a success is the happy image of her being
applauded by her colleagues. Apart from the applause, there is no image or
64 Representing Career Women
dialogue about her success. The film does not indicate what difference Gül’s
film makes, what happens to it or whether it gets screened
. on television.
Here, it is apposite to refer to Emine Onaran Incirlioǧlu, who makes a
point in her article on images of rural women in Turkey about how gender
hierarchy in society subordinates these women:

What stands out in the images of villagers and women is their sub-
ordinate positions. There is a structural similarity between the images.
The representations of women and villagers may not be so surprising
once we recognise the power relations between the subjects who record
these images with authority on the one hand, and the objects of these
recorded images on the other. After all neither women nor peasants wrote
about themselves, using their own theories. Thus, the village woman is
objectified twice – once by men and again by the urban elite, both men
and women.10

A similar case is in play here with regards to the representation of rural

women in the city in the film. Instead of Gül (and her film) becoming a
means to give voice to the women who face violence in the private sphere, the
film prefers to cover women’s voices with music in the soundtrack. This
excludes the possibility of representing a truthful picture of battered women in
the film within the film, as well as disrupting a possible feminist discourse.
Besides, these women become the object of the film rather than subjects
articulating their own shared concerns in their own voices. Even though this
could have been done easily by not imposing non-diegetic music over the
images, the film chooses to understate the feminist discourse. Therefore,
Akman’s film succeeds in empowering the elite urban career woman, yet
through the female protagonist the film disempowers . the rural woman, who
lives in the suburbs of the same city Gül lives in. As Incirlioǧlu suggests, these
women are not only objectified by and within patriarchal relations, but also
objectified through a gender hierarchy which favours urban elite women
as opposed to uneducated women of the suburbs. The film, then, creates two
distinct images: ‘the underdeveloped, uneducated, religious, traditional women
oppressed and repressed at different levels’, and ‘the Westernised, educated,
secular, modern, city women whose situation is categorically different’.11
Through Gül’s film women who are battered do come together, but since they
are not given any voice (apart from a couple of messages written on placards)
they are portrayed as powerless, helpless
. (in need of the help to be given by
Gül) and subordinate. To paraphrase Incirlioǧlu, emphasising women’s power
and disregarding inequalities is detrimental.12 Consequently, silencing these
women by creating images of them cannot be justified as a feminist approach.
Yet, perhaps this is problematic and rather typical of middle-class feminism.
In this new equilibrium the film uses a discourse that suggests how far women
are from achieving their aim of linking work and marriage successfully and
comfortably. Gül carefully packs a suitcase full of Bülent’s clothes and takes it
 Representing Career Women 65
to Pelin’s house where he is. This suggests that she is ‘giving’ him to Pelin as
though he was an object to be exchanged. As Pelin opens the door, Gül hands
her the suitcase and says: ‘Bülent is yours now.’ At this moment, the film
demonstrates a pattern of backlash with the idea of an independent career
woman who has to give up her marriage for the sake of freedom and her job.
Gül slowly turns back and slowly walks down the stairs. This slow walk
highlights that she knows what she is doing, and that she is not bluffing. It is
at this point when, in a close-up, Pelin asks: ‘Have I won?’ In a reverse shot,
Gül instantly turns back and replies: ‘You have won, indeed. But what exactly
have you won?’ With this dialogue the film’s feminist agenda is revealed once
again, since what is defined a ‘punishment’ in a patriarchal discourse is the
keyword for independence in a feminist one. When Pelin replies, ‘I proved
that I am better than you’, Gül stops, looks back at Pelin and says, ‘Are you
better than me?’ The close-up on Gül is followed by a thoughtful image of
Pelin. The camera tracks along with Gül as she walks down the stairs and
leaves, and this confirms the audience in its identification with her.
The film does not allow any room for a backlash in its discourse which
favours the independent-minded woman. Hence, it becomes possible to inter-
pret the film as the triumph of the independent woman over the traditionally-
minded one. Yet, in this way, the aim of women’s togetherness for their shared
issues and concerns is damaged, and women are shown as set against each
other.
In the final scene, Gül is shown walking alone in the dark at night, between
the street lights. The high camera angle from afar underlines her loneliness
and singleness as well as her independence. The song used at the beginning of
the film is played again while Gül disappears into the darkness: ‘Even if you
are in love, if you cannot live freely, all happiness comes to an end.’
As Öztürk points out, a feminist discourse is foreign to Turkish cinema,
and yet violation of traditional norms does not seem to result in the heroine
being punished by being left alone as a single woman who lost her husband to
another woman.13
In her interview with Öztürk, the film’s director, Akman asserts that:

The woman always has to win her economic independence, and she has
to struggle to become an equal to the man. Also, the man must know
that the woman chooses her job herself. The most important thing for a
woman is her independence and being powerful.14

Akman’s message in the film is in concurrence with her above statement.

Through a focus on sexual politics Dünden Sonra Yarından Önce makes a link
between the personal and political as well as making an overt link between
itself and the 1980s’ feminist movement and women’s issues. It looks at how
female identity is constructed; it represents the elite, urban career woman as
someone who cannot distance herself from independence and who cannot be
convinced that her life should be focused around marriage and family.
66 Representing Career Women
Moreover, the film provides a critique of the class differences between women
as well as looking at the urban versus rural woman. However, it still fails to give
voice to the women in the documentary film that its main character directs.
Overall, it tells a story about the resurgence of the need for a woman to make
a choice. It proves to be subversive, with its at times feminist discourse,
because it assigns subjectivity to the female by letting her question the validity of
her choice, not just of a man, but of a direction in her life.
4 Representing Female Desire and
Subjectivity

In all levels of society women were in a search of an identity. This issue has
been resolved in the West, but Turkish society is going through a transition.
Mine was the beginning of this search. It came out parallel to the feminist
movement of the 1980s and was very successful. A cinema in Anatolia, with a
capacity of 200 seats, had to be closed to men, when 190 women showed up.1

Stories about women who are caught in the clutches of strict customs and
patriarchal traditions are prominent in the films of the 1980s. For instance,
Ömer Kavur’s 1981 production Kırık Bir Aşk Hikayesi (The Story of a
Broken Love) tells of a relationship that comes to an end due to the pressures
of living in a strictly patriarchal neighbourhood. Fuat is forced into an
arranged marriage with a rich girl to save his family from poverty. However,
he is in love with Aysel, but the attitudes of the people in the village do not
allow them to be together. At the end, Aysel has to leave the village and Fuat
has to marry the other girl. The film does not directly aim at women’s issues,
but it brings a critical approach to strict traditions and arranged marriage.
Another film that uses the theme of oppressive environments is Yusuf
Kurçenli’s Ve Recep Ve Zehra Ve Ayşe (And Recep And Zehra And Ayşe)
(1983). The film tells the story of the relationship between a husband and
wife, Recep and Zehra, and two young girls Selma and Ayşe who have trouble
in reconciling the conflict between traditional and modern life. Ayşe wants to
go to the university but her father does not permit it, so she stays in the
village. She then falls in love with the married Recep and runs away with him.
Once the villagers discover this forbidden love affair, they pursue the couple
and accuse Recep of raping Ayşe. Recep goes to jail, and Ayşe is immediately
viewed as a fallen woman who has lost her chastity. Dorsay notes that the
film is a story that takes place in a small village in Western Turkey, which
works out ‘the contradiction between traditions, customs and conservative
understandings of male-female relationships and freedom of love’.2 Indeed,
the film criticises the harshness of repressive traditions and social pressures by
the use of a lead female character who resists and challenges these norms.
Bir Kadın Bir Hayat (One Woman One Life) (Feyzi Tuna, 1985) focuses
on the same theme. The film tells the story of a woman who feels trapped in a
68 Representing Female Desire and Subjectivity
marriage that has become routine. Her husband commits adultery and brings
another woman home one day, and consequently they divorce. After the
divorce the woman returns to the firm she used to work for before she got
married. The film deals with the pressures that are imposed upon her by
society, particularly when she has an affair with a married man.
Bir Yudum Sevgi (A Sip of Love) (Atıf Yılmaz, 1984) is another example
of a film that deals with women in problematic relationships and unhappy
marriages. Both Aygül and Cemal are married, but they fall in love and have
an affair. The film focuses on unaffectionate, forced marriages and the struggle
of both protagonists to escape from their unhappy lives. The heroine of the film,
Aygül, is portrayed as a strong, independent woman who follows her desires
despite the social pressures on her.
In Ölü Bir Deniz (A Dead Sea) (Atıf Yılmaz, 1989) the female protagonist,
a businesswoman, feels suffocated by her marriage in which she is constantly
serving her husband and son as if she was their slave. She takes a journey to a
village in Southern Turkey in an attempt to escape from her husband and his
friends. Here, she falls in love with a man with whom she has a sexual affair.
What she realises at the end, as she becomes aware of the negative change in
the man when he ‘has’ her (this refers to the male’s treatment of the female as
an object to be used and then discarded), is that all the men in her life are the
same. In the end, she unwillingly goes back to her old life. The film, the script
of which is written by a woman filmmaker (Mahinur Ergun), does open a
door to the female character to experience her sexuality and have a space of
her own, but fails to offer a solution for her, apart from taking her back to her
life in the city where she is a ‘slave’ of the patriarchal structure. The narrative
of this film follows the order of problematic marriage – forbidden love affair
with another person – back to the problematic marriage.
This pattern is also seen in Feyzi Tuna’s Seni Kalbime Gömdüm (I Buried
You in My Heart) (1982). The film tells the story of a woman who is bored of
her marriage and job, and who decides to go on holiday. While there she falls
in love with a man, and claims a divorce from her husband in order to marry him.
In the meantime, however, her lover prefers to cultivate his bourgeois milieu
and business connections, leaving her alone. The woman can do nothing but
go back to her husband and her ‘real’ life.
Another film from the same director, which deals with a similar theme, is
Bir Kadın Bir Hayat (One Woman One Life), which focuses on another
woman in a routine marriage. Nuran’s husband has lost his desire for her and
looks for sex outside the marriage. This hurts Nuran, but she starts a new life
with a new job, and fights against the pressures put on her by society since
becoming a single woman. According to Soykan, the film ‘seems able to but
cannot overtly refer to women’s rights’, but manages to give the message of
‘how women can be divorced and be independent of a man, and still be
powerful and live a happy life’.3 However, the happy ending when the family
gets together again reinforces the idea of the importance and necessity of
marriage in a woman’s life.
 Representing Female Desire and Subjectivity 69
One of the films that seem to criticise marriage in a rather unconventional
way is Süreyya Duru’s Fatmagül’ün Suçu Ne? (What is Fatmagül’s Mistake?)
(1986). Several young men (including one man from the village and others
from the city) rape a young and beautiful woman in a village where they are
on holiday. When this is discovered, the village boy is accused, and in order
to protect her honour the girl is forced to marry him. The others are found
innocent since they are rich and from the city. The girl thinks she will be saved by
this marriage, but it becomes a real punishment for her. Both the neighbour-
hood and her husband see her as a ‘dirtied, fallen woman’ and she loses her
baby because her husband beats her. The film not only makes a point about
class difference between the poor and the rich, but also criticises the relationship
between marriage and chastity in a male-dominated society. It thus affirms
that sometimes marriage is not the most appropriate solution to the destiny of
woman.
It is interesting to focus on the narratives of these films, which present
marriage as a solution and as a necessary institution for women. The idea
that ‘even if a woman runs away from her marriage, claims a divorce and
starts a new life, she will eventually need another man, or will have to go
back to her husband’ is ubiquitous in these films. No matter how critical and
unconventional they can be in their representations of women, the films tend
to reinforce the idea that whenever a woman leaves her husband and tries to
remain independent, bad and unfortunate things will happen to her (even
becoming a fallen woman) and she will not be able to protect herself from the
pressures of society. In other words, no matter how independent she is in fol-
lowing her desires, financial or sexual, it does not take long for her to turn
into a vulnerable and powerless woman. In this way, even though feminist
issues are raised in the films, the impossibility of escaping the clutches of
patriarchy is reinforced.
Şerif Gören’s Gizli Duygular (Hidden Emotions) (1984) tells the story of
Ayşe, who is bored with her routine of job, house, television and romance
novels. She secretly watches her neighbour, who represents the image of an
independent woman (appearing intellectual, with many boyfriends, aware of
her sexuality, and seemingly uncaring about neighbourhood social pressures).
Inspired by her example, Ayşe decides to change her life. According to Hilmi
Maktav, even though the film calls attention to feminist issues, it does so only
symbolically through the presentation of intellectual images such as the other
woman’s possession of paintings and books.4 Kalkan and Taranç’s comment
on this film is as follows: ‘the woman Ayşe watches from her window is the
image of an independent woman … She becomes the representative image of
and for Ayşe’s desire in gaining sovereignty’.5 Another comment about the
film belongs to Alper Fidaner who claims that there is a degree of super-
ficiality in the narrative and about the characters in representing certain issues
that feminism voices: ‘the film’, he says, ‘proves so shallow that one may
end up thinking that by copying the woman she watches, Ayşe even risks
turning into a fallen woman’.6 These comments suggest that feminist issues
70 Representing Female Desire and Subjectivity
come near to defying the possibility of convincing representation, leading to
filmmakers, despite their best endeavours, failing to handle them other than
superficially.7
Another Atıf Yılmaz film Dul Bir Kadın (A Widow) (1985) is an example
of the change in the perception of female sexuality. The film’s protagonist,
Suna,
. is a wealthy woman who lost her husband two years ago, and who lives
in Istanbul with her daughter. She meets Ergun (a liberal who supports
equality between men and women) and once more becomes aware of her
femininity and sexuality. Suna is portrayed as an independent woman through
experiencing sexuality freely. Ergun, who also is a supporter of free love,
betrays Suna (with her close friend Ayla) and Suna leaves him. The film ends
with a scene where Suna, her daughter and her friend Ayla are running hap-
pily hand in hand in the fields. The film also features a character called
Gönül, who declares herself a feminist. She has had four marriages, all of
which ended in divorce. This seems to imply that feminists’ destiny is divorce.
The film ‘lectures’ on feminist issues in a rather artificial way through Gönül’s
dialogues.8
In all these examples, the idea of an independent woman at the centre of
the narrative is prominent, particularly in relation to the theme of sexual
freedom for women. This new perception of sexuality does not only involve
sexual desire towards the male, but also refers to the freedom of the female
in choosing the male she desires. Consequently, women’s films in the 1980s
construct a frame of reference in which the measure of desire is no longer
the male subject, even though the filmmakers seem to struggle to produce the
conditions of representability for a different social subject; that is the female.
Yet, it is important to remember that women characters in these films, who
represent independent women, are almost always under the scrutiny of members
of the neighbourhood.
Mine has been considered to be the pioneer film dealing with women’s
search for independence.9 It looks at the relationship between women and
society and their search for freedom from the oppressive conditions imposed
on them by strict patriarchal traditions. The film was highly significant in
making a link between the women’s movement and the cinema in Turkey
since it sought to represent the particular experience of a woman caught in
gendered power relations in a sexist environment.
In addition to contributing to a new understanding of women’s sexuality, Mine
marked the entrance of individualism in 1980s’ Turkish cinema since it dealt
with the notion of female identity. In the film, the conventional dichotomy of
‘good/bad woman’ is challenged. Mine, the name of the female protagonist
(played by Türkan Şoray), becomes the ground-breaking human woman
character of Turkish cinema. In fact, as Scognamillo aptly puts it, ‘Atıf
Yılmaz directs a new Türkan Şoray in Mine.’10 Şoray, who until then had
been portraying ‘virtuous’ woman characters is shown naked for the first time
in this film while taking a significant part in the creation of a new under-
standing of female sexuality and identity. As Dönmez-Colin puts it, ‘Şoray,
 Representing Female Desire and Subjectivity 71
the sultana of Turkish cinema, took her clothes off for the first time in the role
of Mine and became a new icon: the image of the woman as a sexual being.’11
The film tells the story of the loneliness and disillusionment of one woman
(Mine) and two men: the husband Cemil (Selçuk Uluergüven), who does not
love, listen. to or talk in the way Mine wants and/or needs; and the other man,
the lover Ilhan (Cihan Ünal) who can do all those things. Mine was forced
into an arranged marriage with Cemil, who is much older than her. She is not
loved by her husband, and she does not love him; yet she performs her
‘duties’ as a housewife including housework, serving visitors and cooking
meals. The couple lives in a small village with a tiny population, where Cemil
works as the manager of the train station. The villagers tend to gossip a lot,
and the men in the village, young and old, including the mayor, the engineer,
and the builder have a crush on the beautiful Mine. Mine, on the other hand,
is highly uncomfortable and self-conscious about their admiration. This, in
fact, is presented as one of the reasons underlying her discontent.
Indeed, throughout the film Mine is constantly ‘looked at’, and in order to
avoid these looks and harassment she tends to stay at home rather than going
out; she almost always seems self-conscious of her every single move, parti-
cularly if she is in the public sphere. The film knowingly exaggerates the
theme of being looked at to make a critique of the idea of objectification of
female
. bodies. Things, however, begin to change in the village with the arrival
of Ilhan, a novelist and intellectual, who comes to the village to visit his sister,
Perihan (Hümeyra Akbay), an independent-minded single woman who is the
village teacher and who happens to be Mine’s only friend.12
Mine is a woman who, although inherently passionate, is not understood
by those around her; neither by her . husband nor the neighbourhood. This,
however, changes with the arrival of Ilhan on the scene. Although she spends
her life with the wrong man in an unhappy marriage, at the end of the film,
Mine comes to be understood and. appreciated by a masculine yet sensitive male.
The dialogue between Mine and Ilhan leads to a tension within the village and
the closer the two get, the more gossip is produced and hence the more Mine
is desired by the men of the village. This indicates how Mine becomes an object
of desire
. for the villagers: the more they focus on the friendship between Mine
and Ilhan, the more violent and impatient they get with regards to their desire
towards Mine.
Although the film is about a woman who gains new forms of self-expression
by taking control of her sexuality, one might read the film as a narrative about a
threatened woman saved by the love of a man. In fact, as Dönmez-Colin asserts,
‘the disappointing aspect of Mine is that it presents two choices for the
woman imprisoned in her marriage: accept oppression or try another man’.13
Indeed, the film goes along with an erotic treatment of women and fails to
break down traditional forms of cinematic pleasure where the male gaze is
dominant. Consequently, the argument becomes twofold here: on the one hand,
the film can be applauded for offering women a place where their hidden
emotions can gain full expression; on the other hand, it can be condemned for
72 Representing Female Desire and Subjectivity
remaining at the level of sentiment and romantic escapism and for using these
to expiate male domination.
Mine, then, examines social patternings, the operation of rules of behaviour
in society (vis-à-vis judgement and morality), and an individual’s attempt to live
out her desires either within these rules or despite them. In this context, the
effects of representing the female experience in a patriarchal society becomes
the main concern of the film – hence the discrepancy between the destruction
and construction of female subjectivity. The film represents a microcosm of
patriarchy in which the power relations regarding gender are efficiently out-
lined from the beginning. The image of a despondent woman in an unhappy
marriage, and of a woman who is the object of desire of the males of the
entire village, are instances of this patriarchal condition.
Mine explores this condition by focusing on the mental and physical
suffering of the woman in her relationship to both her husband and neigh-
bourhood. In this way, the film points to a tension between female desire and a
society that grants no agency to the female subject. However, it can be argued
that the consistent focus on the image of Mine helps to construct her as a
subject who has desires and who tries to act on them. It is through the scenes
in which she articulates her own concerns about loneliness in her marriage
and unhappiness in a community in which she feels the centre of attention
(discussed below in detail) that Mine brings about a deep sense of sympathy
in the viewer for the plight of the female character entrapped in her isolated
and lonely world. It can, in this sense, be regarded as engaging the spectator
in an emotional and critical viewing process, both literally and figuratively.
This is important in explicating the claim that was put forward in Chapter 2
regarding the relationship between feminism and cinema: with the turn of the
camera eye to the female subject, to the personal, the personal becomes political
and public; thus, cinema gives a chance to the spectator to form empathy and
sympathy with the representation on the screen. This, in turn, gives the oppor-
tunity for cinema to make a critique of the status quo for women in Turkish
society. In fact, it is useful to remember the words of Altınsay once again here:

One empathises with Mine (who suffers from an unloving husband and
who is in a dilemma about whether to break the moral rules imposed on
her by the society, or not) and reaches a stage when one starts questioning
one’s own position in society through looking at the impasse that she is in.14

Yet, it is possible to argue that although the heroine’s emancipation is of

crucial importance in terms of recognition of her subjectivity, it is at the same
time evident (and in fact reinforced) that Mine cannot be liberated from men;
she, rather, transfers her hidden emotions from a man she cannot share them
with to another man with whom she can.
Having introduced the pertinent traits that situate the film in an important
position when considering the representation of women in 1980s’ Turkish
cinema, it is possible to analyse closely the issues that are addressed by the film.
 Representing Female Desire and Subjectivity 73
While doing so, I offer to look at the relationship between Mine and her
husband; the relationship between Mine and the villagers (neighbourhood); . the
scene in which she confronts her husband about her affection towards Ilhan;
and finally the .scenes in which Mine takes the initiative for the first sexual
encounter with Ilhan after escaping the threat of rape by a group of villagers.
As the opening credits roll we hear a man snoring on the soundtrack. The
film opens with a close-up of the upper body of a woman in a white dress, in
which her chest is bare. She is lying. The man lying next to her is not seen,
but he puts his hand over her breasts. The wedding ring on her finger is
shown in a close-up as she slowly moves his hand to the left of the frame as
the camera pans to the right to reveal her face, unhappy as well as beautiful.
She silently leaves the bedroom, walks through a corridor and goes down the
stairs to the kitchen while the camera follows her, providing evidence that this
is the house of a middle-class family. The woman takes some pills, looks
shaky, washes her face and chest and, without drying herself, she walks out-
side to the garden; she then sits on a bench while the camera watches her
from an elevated, more distant position. She looks breathless and sighs,
looking up at the full moon while the static camera keeps looking down at
her from afar. The mise-en-scène here gives a sense of entrapment. In parti-
cular, the cut from Mine in medium close-up to high above jars the audience
into seeing her isolation. This suggests that this may be the one moment of
time when Mine gets to be alone. The opening sequence, then, not only leads
to the idea of a woman who is entrapped in the private sphere, in her house,
but also in her marriage. The spectator is introduced to Mine this way: a
woman who sits in a garden in the middle of the night, looking ill, unhappy
and imprisoned in her own house.
In the following scene Mine prepares breakfast in the same garden, serving
food to her husband. It becomes obvious that she does not feel comfortable
around her husband. This is also relevant in a later scene where she serves
dinner to her husband, then elegantly refuses to sit down at the same table
with him, goes upstairs, looks out from the window (while the camera follows
her from a low angle) and leans towards the window, breathing while the
screen slowly darkens. This is a rather claustrophobic image. With the help of
these details, at the beginning of the film the idea of an unhappy woman, who
seems trapped in her marriage, is established, despite the fact that she con-
tinues to fulfil her (traditional) duties as a wife. The film sets up the tension
between Mine and the institution
. of marriage from the beginning.
In a later scene in which Ilhan is one of the visitors in her house, Mine gets
a chance to talk to him about her past. She sits on a bench in the garden,
behind
. a tree. In a medium shot she is shown telling her story without looking
at Ilhan’s eyes until her last sentence. Her words revealing that she is a victim
of an arranged marriage are completed with another sentence:

I was about to graduate from high school; my father died. My mother,

soon after that got married to a man who was much younger than her.
74 Representing Female Desire and Subjectivity
She started seeing me as superfluous. My husband was a friend of my
stepfather. One day, out of the blue, they ordered me, ‘Go make a cup of
coffee for this gentleman.’ That is the story. There are only a very few
days that a woman lives with hope.15

Analysing each sentence in this quotation provides an insight into the func-
tioning of patriarch in Mine’s life. The first sentence informs us of the death
of her father. This suggests that all the negative things that happened to her
were due to the loss of her father – hence the lack of male authority. She
suggests that she was unable to continue her studies due to this loss – hence
her love of books and reading.16 The second sentence addresses a common
issue for women: the idea that a widow (in this case, Mine’s mother) can only
be happy and live an honourable life if she is to marry again; in other words,
if she can be under another male’s authority. Thus, there seems to be no
escape (in this sentence either) from the power of the male. In the next sen-
tences it becomes clear that she does not actually respect her marriage since
rather than narrating it in a proud fashion, she remembers it as an ‘order’.
Cemil, the husband, is a vulgar, thoughtless, arrogant man who does not seem
to care about his wife, apart from as a household servant and a body who
he is responsible for. His sense of ownership of his wife’s body culminates in
his rape of her. He also remains indifferent to all the attention she gets from
the men of the village in order to be able to achieve a high status and be loved
by these men. Mine is unhappy and uncomfortable about being the object of
desire (she, unlike her husband, is always aware of this throughout the film).
Mine is also described
. by the village doctor in one of the scenes (through a
dialogue between Ilhan and Perihan): ‘There is a light in the train station.
And all of us are little flies running around that light.’ Here, Mine is intro-
duced not as a woman emblematic of the wider status of women but rather is
seen and represented as a goddess-like figure. This is highlighted by images of
her at the window of her house looking down, and the images of men walking
underneath her window waiting for her to show her face as if she were a
goddess whose beauty is to be worshipped.
Cemil and Mine are always invited to house parties thrown by the rich of
the village. Cemil thinks it is because he is loved by everyone, whereas the
reason behind these invitations is Mine. All the men know that she is unhappy in
her marriage and they all desire her: some overtly (by, for instance, proposi-
tioning her even though her husband is in the room next door) and some
covertly (by writing secret love letters and poems for her). Even though Cemil
is indifferent to the attention Mine gets from other men, he does not fail to
warn her when they are out by telling her not to look around and not to be
late home. As though obeying his words, Mine, whenever seen outside, walks
with her head down; yet the camera catches the looks she gets from both men
and women gazing at her. For instance, when Cemil takes Mine to the town
centre on his way shopping, as soon as she gets off the minibus she attracts
the attention of the men around who whistle at her or who start talking about
 Representing Female Desire and Subjectivity 75
her. Even women gossip about her beauty. She always looks down and does
not talk to anyone. In one scene, two men who walk past her talk about her
beauty and the fact that she already has ‘an owner’ and that ‘she has already
been hunted by some .other man’.
With the arrival of Ilhan, Mine’s discontent and discomfort in her marriage
comes to the surface. Cemil, who until then tolerated the attention Mine gets
from the village
. men, becomes more and more disturbed by the rumours about
Mine and Ilhan, and at points tries to catch them red-handed, but fails since
the gossip is false. The villagers are not only aware of Mine’s beauty, but also
of her boredom and unhappiness in her marriage. They exploit this by harassing
her, looking for ways to take advantage of her.
Objectification of the female and her body is apparent in many scenes,
including the scene in which Mine is raped by her husband. Cemil’s violent
access to his wife’s body confirms that rape is not impossible in marriage. The
wife here is represented as the property of the husband, who claims ownership
of her body. It is through this rape scene that men’s patriarchal right over
women (within a marriage contract) is represented.17 The sequences leading
to the scene are worth noting here in providing a detailed analysis of the
scene. Mine and Cemil. are at another house party thrown by one of the rich
people of the village. Ilhan and Perihan are also invited. When Mine gets
bored and tries. to escape from the verbally harassment of the men around
her, she finds Ilhan and Perihan and starts talking to them. Her voice con-
tains frustration and anger when she says: ‘It is as though there is no other
world apart from this village. How can one live if there is no hope?’ In the
meantime, two women, whose husbands are interested in Mine, . and who thus
are jealous of Mine’s beauty, start gossiping about her and Ilhan. They go to
Cemil and provoke him by telling him that ‘the two’ were seen together again.
Cemil becomes agitated and runs all over the garden seeking to catch them in
flagrante delicto. The women join him in his search, and just when they think
they have caught them together they . realise that Mine is not there, and that it
is Perihan who is sitting next to Ilhan. Ashamed of what he has done Cemil
apologises, but his anger leads him to drink. In the next sequence, we see
Mine carrying her husband to their house, nearly dragging him, since he is
drunk and. not able to walk properly. He furiously yells at Mine while moan-
ing about Ilhan. Mine looks disgusted, tired, sad and ashamed of what Cemil
has done. Just when she is helping him to go upstairs, Cemal touches Mine’s
body. Mine angrily asks. him to stop. He attacks her and violently rapes her
while asking: ‘If it was Ilhan you would want it though, wouldn’t you?’
The rape scene is disturbing – as is any rape scene. However, what makes
this scene particularly appalling is the complicating factor that the rape is
performed by the husband. The scene suggests that the husband’s access to
his wife’s body is limitless while the woman is depicted as physically weak,
vulnerable and traumatised. It is hard to justify why the brutal violence of
this rape scene is placed very much in the centre of the film.18 The scene is
filmed in a montage of close-ups; the camera is positioned at a low angle,
76 Representing Female Desire and Subjectivity
moving along with the husband’s body. This creates a form of brutality and
disturbance of its own. The horizontal position during the rape scene suggests
mortification and subjection. Cemil smashes Mine on the floor, using his
power against her (in fact, since he is drunk he is not that powerful, yet it
seems to add insult to injury to depict Mine as powerless despite this), and
rapes her while Mine vomits from disgust when he is penetrating. Mine’s
struggle is shown with edits from her point of view intercut with close-ups of
the two bodies. While Cemil is shown thrashing relentlessly on top of Mine
on the floor, the camera moves along his body to Mine’s agonised face. The
camera movement during this scene is abrupt, shaky and agitated, mingled
with gestures of violence and hatred. Mine is, to cite Simone de Beauvoir’s
words on rape, ‘laid hold of, swept away in a bodily struggle in which the man
is the stronger. She is no longer free to dream, to delay, to manoeuvre: she is
in his power, at his disposal’.19 However, on the screen, we are left with the
displeasure of Mine, rather than Cemil’s pleasure.
Throughout the film, considering the relationship between Mine and the
neighbourhood, it can easily be argued that the cinematic point of view is
never attached to her; on the contrary, she is constantly the one who is looked
at. This is clear in the dialogue that takes place between two villagers as they
see Mine walking by:

WOMAN 1: She is as beautiful as described in the rumours.

WOMAN 2: Such a soil needs to be well cultivated every single day; otherwise
birds will steal its seed.
WOMAN 1: Sure she will find a bird to peck her, in that case.

The dialogue is accompanied a track shot of the looks of a group of men

sitting outside a coffee house watching Mine even though her husband is
around. This suggests that the entire village, both men and women, sees Mine
as a fetishised object; in other words, the camera addresses her as the image.
The words of the two women make it apparent that the village is aware of
Mine’s unhappiness in her marriage. It also becomes clear that she is objecti-
fied by all the villagers. The metaphor of soil is chosen to covertly refer to
Mine’s sexuality and suggests that the villagers are aware of the fact that her
husband cannot satisfy her – hence a new man is a need, a must to satisfy her.
This, in a way, establishes the idea that even women in the village see her as
an object of desire (which is rather problematic since it takes away her sub-
jectivity), let alone men. Her subjectivity, then, is conquered by those around
her. This is further emphasised throughout the film by the lack of point-of-view
shots of Mine.
The film represents female experience (in a patriarchal society) but does not
undermine the male gaze, indeed it dominates the narrative, while functioning
through the depiction of Mine as both objectified and fetishised. For this
reason, it is possible to claim that the film fails to deconstruct the idea of an
objectified female. In fact, the film does not refuse to objectify or fetishise
 Representing Female Desire and Subjectivity 77
Mine until the very end of the film. In other words (as discussed in Chapter 2),
although the film is successful in its representation of the female experience, it
fails to deconstruct the conventional image of woman. Only at the very end of
the film when Mine takes up the position of the subject and struggles to
establish her agency and desire is she no longer represented as a fetishised
image.
A pivotal scene that provides a clear picture of .the looking relations that
exist between
. the villagers and Mine is when she, Ilhan and Perihan are out
shopping. Ilhan buys ice cream for everyone. When Mine sees this she looks
panicked and uncomfortable; she starts looking around to check if she is
being watched.
. So does Perihan who says that they cannot have ice cream in
public. Ilhan is surprised and asks why. Perihan responds in a hesitant tone
of voice: ‘If they see the village teacher and the wife of the train station
manager eating ice cream in public. they would think we are fallen women.’
Despite the angry looks of the men around them, shown via a row of close-
ups of five different men, with Mine’s words (‘Since I’ve come here, I haven’t
had ice cream at all, you know. You cannot believe how much I want it now’)
they start eating. People who see them look at them as though the three are
committing an immoral act in public. The ice cream here clearly has a sexual
connotation. It may be said that the experience of eating an ice cream sig-
nifies (or references) oral sex – hence both women are uncomfortable eating it
in the public sphere. On the one hand, Mine knows and is aware of the rules
imposed upon her; on the other hand, she cannot stop herself (due to her
desire to eat it) from disobeying those rules. With this scene, the film yields to
the idea of a moral conflict and brings about a question about women; that is,
how possible is it for a woman to transgress the rules of a patriarchal (and
sexist) society? The use of a metaphor (ice cream) intertwines with issues of
sexuality and female desire. This also addresses the relationship between jud-
gement and action in a situation of (moral) conflict and choice. The scene
reinforces the idea that it is the masculine values that prevail in Mine’s world.
To adopt Carol Gilligan’s words on women and psychology to explicate this:
‘Sensitivity to the needs of others and the assumption of responsibility for
taking care lead women to attend to voices other than their own and to
include in their judgement other points of view.’20 Both Mine and Perihan
know that if they are to perform the act of eating an ice cream (the physical
action that resembles oral sex) in public, they will be disobeying the rules
imposed upon them, thereby damaging their moral strength. Thus, their
concern is to do with the moral expectations
. of the village. Yet, since they
agree to eat it (perhaps by trusting Ilhan’s presence in the scene as the guar-
antor of their chastity) they seem to listen to voices of their own. In this case,
Mine allows herself or cannot stop herself from eating the ice cream, and this
signifies the change both in her and in the film as a whole.
Looking at the relationship between Mine and the villagers, it is possible to
argue that she not only defines herself in the context of a human who has
desires, but as a woman who judges herself and acts according to the thoughts
78 Representing Female Desire and Subjectivity
of others in order to protect her pride and chastity.21 This is a point well
illustrated in Gilligan’s words:

[.] the difficulty women experience in finding or speaking publicly in their

own voices emerges repeatedly in the form of qualification and self-doubt,
but also in intimations of a divided judgement, a public assessment and
private assessment which are fundamentally at odds.22

Here, Mine seems to be able to find a voice in public with her decision that
privileges her own choice rather than that of others. It is also worth noting
here how young men wait for hours underneath her window in order to be
able to see her when she looks out. The low camera angle looking up to her
window whenever there is a man around suggests that she is also seen as a
goddess-like figure who is untouchable.23 Yet, in this case, the more untouchable
and unavailable she becomes, the more tension, frustration and violence (both
physical and verbal) it invokes in the villagers.
One of the young men who is tired of waiting around her house to see her
at the window gets frustrated when he realises that there are other men wait-
ing to ‘look at’ her and says to them: ‘Don’t you dare build up your hopes
guys! I have been waiting here more than you, since the early morning and
she has not shown her face at all, not even once. Bloody dumb woman!’ Here,
the word ‘dumb’ obviously does not mean that Mine is mute. However, it
refers to the frustration her choice of not talking to them causes. Mine
ignores and avoids talking to these men. Yet, the reason why the word ‘dumb’
is chosen is worth scrutiny. Mine refuses to talk to these men; and as argued
by Suner, ‘when women speak the untranslatable to the male-dominated language
by remaining silent, silence turns into a form of expression’.24 Accordingly,
Mine determines her own identity (thus subjectivity) through silence (in
other words, by keeping silent and not talking to these men) in search of an
independent existence/identity beyond. and outside the discourse of the
males around her. Mine only . talks to Ilhan (and when necessary to Cemil).
Dialogue between Mine and Ilhan, however, results in an increasing tension
that leads .to Mine’s wish to leave the village at least for a while. Her friend-
ship with Ilhan is mistaken for a (sexual) relationship. Yet, despite an obvious
affection between the two, they choose to be friends – not lovers. Never-
theless, in an environment where everyone’s eyes are on Mine this friendship
is not tolerated and
. the variety and number of rumours increase.
Both Mine and Ilhan wish to be friends. However, in a patriarchal environment
in which the woman is not given any permission to engage in conversation
outside of her marriage, this friendship becomes problematic. Mine can neither
acquire
. social agency nor subjectivity since the film underlines that without
Ilhan’s existence Mine’s relations are not based on her individual feelings; on
the contrary ‘her individualised desire renders her ethic impure’.25 Here, de
Beauvoir refers to Hegel’s doctrine which claims that ‘a woman is not con-
cerned to establish individual relations with a chosen mate but to carry on the
 Representing Female Desire and Subjectivity 79
feminine functions in their generality; she is’, for instance, ‘to have sex pleasure
only in a specified form and not individualised’. In regard to her erotic fate,
two essential consequences follow: ‘first, she has no right to any sexual activity
apart from marriage; sexual intercourse, thus, becoming an institution, desire
26
and gratification are subordinated to the interest of society . for both sexes’.
The villagers condemn Mine for having an affair with Ilhan. Mine does not
try to prove her innocence to Cemil. There is, however, a scene in the film in
which she wishes to talk to Cemil so that she may. vindicate herself by
explaining to her husband that she is only friends with Ilhan. The monologue
allows Mine to express herself . aloud to her husband. Incited with anger
Cemil asks if she has slept with Ilhan. In a close-up which enables identifica-
tion with her, Mine gives the spectator an opportunity to think about the
objectification of the female body:

There is nothing more important to you than going to bed, right? This is
all! Because you have always seen me that way: as a waist, as two breasts,
as hips. These are what I mean to you! A piece of meat! Not even once
have you treated me like a human being. Have you ever tried to understand
me, my feelings?

Cemil tries to interrupt by claiming that her comments are all ‘stupid and
empty words’, but Mine continues while she starts crying: ‘I have never been
to bed with him. We haven’t even touched each other’s hands. We haven’t even
talked about anything as such. He never promised anything.’
The film simultaneously opens a possibility for a feminist discourse and
reinforces the norms of patriarchy in Mine’s words to her husband: ‘but I
would love to be a slave for such a man. I would love to die when he ordered
me to die. I would love to be totally his, in every sense.’ Mine’s resistance
turns into a denial of her subjectivity and hence works against her. The film
tells us, then, that true love is equal to sacrifice and servitude. It is worth
elaborating on how the film offers no other choice to the female protagonist
apart from acceptance of oppression in an unhappy marriage or being a slave
for another male.
The more Mine .refuses the attention thrust upon her by the male
. villagers, the
closer she gets to Ilhan, and this causes more tension. When Ilhan sees writing
on the wall opposite his house door one morning that says ‘Love is different
to yours in Gölköy. Go home!’, it becomes . clear that the villagers’ tension
and frustration will result in violence. Ilhan’s thoughts on these men’s atti-
tudes are expressed in his words to Mine: ‘They are scared of love; that is why
they approach us with hatred. They want to destroy and dirty everything that
is good, nice and right. I am not angry; I just pity them.’ These words, how-
ever, do not stop the men from making a plan to attack and rape Mine while
she is alone at home one night when Cemil is out drinking with the mayor. In
fact, the mayor participates in this plan by giving permission to these young
men to arrange the attack. The night before Mine is to leave the village (she
80 Representing Female Desire and Subjectivity
gets permission from Cemil to stay at her aunt’s house for a while), four
young men attempt to rape her. First, they start banging on the door, then
break it while they are arguing with each other about ‘who will do her first’.
All of them are intoxicated having drunk until very late at night while sitting
underneath Mine’s window. They break in the house and attack Mine, but she
manages
. to find Cemil’s gun .and shoot one of the men, escape and end up at
Ilhan’s house. In a close-up, Ilhan picks her up in his arms. She starts tearing
his clothes off while begging him to go to bed with her. In a state of shock,
she kisses
. him and leans on his naked body at the same time screaming:
‘Why?’ Ilhan is shown excited and shocked from her point of view. In a
reverse shot, we see Mine begging him again and again to ‘fuck her’. The two
start kissing passionately. The love-making scene lasts approximately four
minutes, the camera showing the details in close-up. We see the couple kissing
each other after making love, with a zoom to their lips, followed by a series of
close-up and reverse shots of the two looking at each other and stroking each
other’s faces. This pivotal scene is problematic as it suggests that rape works
as a catalyst for a good sexual relationship and that the men who tried to
rape her (sexually) liberated her. The semiotics of the film’s poster is worth
noting here as it focuses
. on the mixture of pain and pleasure, desire and rape.
When Mine and Ilhan start making love, the tension inherent in the abrupt
and shaky camera movements turn into slow and silent images, harmonised
with the music on the soundtrack that accompanies the kisses, touches and
loving looks between the two. Even though their voices are not heard it
becomes apparent from their gestures that they are both taking pleasure.
Again, this is questionable as this scene takes place after a rape attempt. It is
with this scene however that the ‘the good woman character’ of Turkish
cinema is shown naked. She takes off her white dress (white here being . a
signifier of purity, virginity) which she wears throughout the film, for Ilhan,
for the one she desires; rather than letting the dress be torn off violently by
the villagers.
Negated and violated, she lacks a positive experience of female subjectivity,
but also ‘basic human assets such as love, friendship and respect, that could
27
ground her sense. of self and put her sagely into a world of different meanings’.
By running to Ilhan (yet, she seems to be left no other choice) and following
her desire, she reacts against and thus transgresses. the violent discourse of the
males which entraps her. However, by begging Ilhan to sleep with her, even
though she is (throughout the film) in search of an independent existence
beyond and outside the discourse of the male, she seems to run from the
violent and bad men to the caring and loving man, which does not allow her
to be free from men. At this point, it becomes possible to argue that all she
manages to save is a ‘leftover of identity in the form of desire’28 for the love
she has never (really) received.
As de Beauvoir’s words suggest, patriarchal society dedicates women to
chastity by giving the male the sexual freedom, while the female is restricted
to marriage:
 Representing Female Desire and Subjectivity 81
[ … ] the sexual act, if not sanctified by the code, by a sacrament, is for
her a fault, a fall, a defeat, a weakness, she should defend her virtue, her
honour, if she ‘yields’, if she ‘falls’, she is scorned, whereas any blame
visited upon her conqueror is mixed with admiration.29

However, by the end of the film, through deceit and adultery she proves that
she is nobody’s chattel and gives the lie to the pretensions of the male. After
the love-making
. scene, in the morning all the men of the village gather out-
side Ilhan’s house waiting for the two to come out so that they can beat them
or throw stones at them. When the two appear, people stop stoning them;
but their judgemental looks follow each move. The camera, set at a low
angle, looks up to the two lovers, who slowly come down the stairs and
walk in between the crowd to the policemen waiting to take them to jail for
adultery. A close-up of Mine shows that her head is down, which signifies her
shame; then . slowly, the camera tilts down and with another close-up shows
Mine and Ilhan bounding strong. This is when both of them raise their heads
and start proudly walking into the midst of the villagers. They become
the lovers who defend love. It is only in this last scene that Mine’s subject-
ivity is clearly articulated in the film. Yet, since she is left with no other
option and since she decides to sleep with another man (who might possibly
love
. and understand her) rather than getting raped, it is possible to claim that
Ilhan is the one who rescues her from emptiness and loneliness by filling the
inner space.
The 1980s witnessed a radical reassessment of the role women play in the
cinema in front of the camera, which would be impossible to imagine outside
the context of feminist politics. Mine, in this sense, is considered the pioneer.
According to scholars, including Kalkan and Taranç, Mine proves to be one
of the most successful films in Turkish cinema that examines the social pres-
sures on the female character, who is forced to live in difficult circumstances
provided by a close-minded environment.30 Evren’s comment on the film is
also worth noting here:

Streets which she cannot walk alone, the uncomfortable, ungracious and
constant lustful gazes … flirtations by the men in the neighbourhood at
the friendly family meetings of the village [in front of her husband
who shows consent to this for the sake of being respected by the village
people] … All these imprison Mine into a life that she cannot escape
from, even when she is in her own house.31

Mine provides one of the most thought-provoking characters of the new,

independent woman. She wins her independence by choosing to be with the
man she loves, and is proud of it when she is handcuffed by the police for
having committed adultery. As opposed to Dilek Cindoǧlu’s argument about
how Mine goes between one man to another without being independent,
Ünsal Oskay asserts that she represents a woman ‘who is not satisfied in her
82 Representing Female Desire and Subjectivity
marriage; is conscious about her sexuality and is powerful enough to challenge
social pressures and follow her female desires’.32
Overall, the film participates in the elaboration of a new type of cinematic
pleasure for women, through an unconventional representation of woman and
female sexuality. While looking at social patterning, at the operation of rules
of behaviour in the society (vis-à-vis judgement and morality), and at an
individual’s attempt to live out her desires either within these rules or despite
them, the film focuses on the female experience in a patriarchal society
despite the discrepancy between the destruction and construction of female
subjectivity.
5 Representing Prostitution

The prostitute is a recurring figure in Turkish cinema. Archetypal tales of the

fallen woman emerged in Turkish cinema as early as 1917 with Mehmet
Rauf ’s Pençe. The protagonists of this film are prostitutes, but information
about why they have taken this path is withheld. If anything, these characters
are femmes fatales who betray their husbands purely for the sake of sexual
pleasure. Even though their profession is not prostitution, because they betray
their husbands,
. they are referred to in the film as ‘whores’. In. 1922, Muhsin
Ertuǧrul’s Istanbul’da Bir Facia-i Aşk (A Love Tragedy in Istanbul) had a
Russian actress performing as a prostitute. During the 1940s in Şehvet Kurbanı
(The Victim of Lust) (Muhsin Ertuǧrul, 1940), Cahide Sonku played a pros-
titute. In 1958, Atıf Yılmaz’s Bir Şoförün Gizli Defteri (The Secret Diary of a
Driver) similarly had a prostitute character. As Özgüç points out, little had
changed between the 1940s and 1970s in the representation of prostitutes:

They were copies of each other. No one really made a film on prostitution.
Generally, these characters were not believable, dead motifs, because neither
the actresses nor the directors had an idea about prostitution in reality. This
is also why they were not convincing. All was artificial and superficial.
Besides, strict censorship was in place.1

Lütfi Akad’s 1968 film Vesikalı Yarim (Licensed to Love) showed potential
regarding its representation of the prostitute,
. partly due to a more realist
approach, shooting in the back streets of Istanbul where real brothels were
located, much like the 1977 film Kanlı Nigar (Bloody Nigar) by Orhan
Aksoy, . which also focuses on prostitution. In 1981, in Ömer Kavur’s Ah
Güzel Istanbul, Müjde Ar performs as a prostitute, whose life is the focus of
the film, and this film became a pioneer of films that look at prostitution
within its social context.2
As discussed in Chapter 2, 1980s’ Turkish cinema saw a shift from one-
dimensional character types to unconventional and complex characters and a
greater tendency to concentrate on the individual. In this period ‘fallen
woman’ narratives were frequent, in accordance with the trend of focusing on
the lives of individual women who face difficult conditions because of rape,
84 Representing Prostitution
social pressures, arranged marriages and oppressively strict traditions. Asiye
Nasıl Kurtulur? is a significant film in its representation of a woman who falls
into prostitution, particularly in drawing attention to (and at the same time
attempting to question) the reasons why women resort to prostitution. It is
illustrative of the ways in which patriarchal relations operate for women who
do not have any financial, educational or social support.
The film is an adaptation of Vasıf Öngören’s theatre play, which was first
performed in the early 1970s. Its first screen adaptation was directed by Nejat
Saydam in 1973 with the lead role of Asiye performed by Türkan Şoray.
However, as pointed out by Özgüç, the conditions required to make this
adaptation successful, with regards to its representation of prostitutes, were
not in place. Hence, the film was:

[.] a fiasco, because Şoray simply cannot be Asiye. The mistake is to do

with ‘the Şoray Laws’. This is a constraint that does not let Asiye be
believable. Moreover, the director is not strong enough to direct such a
character, a prostitute.3

Burçak Evren agrees with Özgüç, attributing the failure of the 1973 film to
the performance by Şoray. Stardom and social prohibitions on female repre-
sentation, then, conspired to make it impossible for the film to succeed: ‘ …
the female protagonist was the symbol of health and honour’, and the 1970s
were ‘the years during which the dominating idea, in our cinema, was that
even if a woman character was to fall into a brothel, she would not be
screened kissing, having sex or getting naked. The star persona was in the
forefront; not the subject of the film’.4 However, by the 1980s, conditions had
changed.
Asiye differs significantly from previous appearances of the fallen woman
story. To begin with, the remake of the film is faithful to the original text. The
theatre curtains that appear in the animation preceding the film’s opening
sequence help to underline this. Theatre curtains help stress the idea of a story
within a story. The film is a musical. The main characters (mainly people who
work in the brothel or in the shops around it) put together a play throughout
the plot for one of the other characters: the president of the Struggle Against
Prostitution Association, Seniye Gümüşçü (Nuran Oktar), a rich, middle-aged
and snobbish woman, who decides to pay a visit to this brothel as a reply to a
letter she receives from one of the prostitutes called Asiye. However, there is
no one in the brothel with that name. The ‘actors’ of this play choose the name
Asiye in their attempt to tell the life story of a woman who falls into prosti-
tution. The narrator is Selahattin (Ali Poyrazoǧlu), who works in the brothel
and directs the play within the film.
As Esra Esenlik argues, the film is different from classical Yeşilçam films
since it questions the moral values of middle-class individuals who regard
prostitution as an illness that needs to be removed; instead it represents
prostitutes as individuals who do this job in order to earn their living rather
 Representing Prostitution 85
than turning their condition into an existential issue.5 Accordingly, the film
attempts to question why and how women fall into prostitution in Turkey. As
Evren puts it, throughout the film, ‘one cannot help but start thinking about
possible ways for Asiye’s survival, hence becoming part of this story within
a story’.6
As Russell Campbell suggests, ‘underlying the pleasures women derive from
viewing prostitute stories may be a greater capacity for empathy than men
typically experience’, and ‘a less judgemental attitude toward wrongdoers’.7
Campbell also claims that ‘the prostitute figure may appeal to women in
contrasting guises: as a victim of patriarchy, and as a rebel against it’.8 In the
first category are those representations that show the character as degraded,
trapped and oppressed, and in the second category are those that show her as
liberated from patriarchal constraints, attaining economic or sexual indepen-
dence. In the case of Asiye, there is a combination of both since Asiye’s story
involves both her descent and her survival through economic and hence
sexual independence.
There are mixed reviews about the film. For instance, Soykan claims
that the film reinforces the idea that within capitalist relations of power,
prostitutes, in fact, cannot survive. Even if they do survive, this can only be
achieved by oppressing other prostitutes and using power over the others.
Hence, this could only be the survival of the individual.9 According to
Soykan, the film offers two ideas only: that a rich and married woman cannot
be a prostitute, and that prostitution is the means of earning money for those
who are poor and vulnerable.10 In concurrence with this point, Evren asserts
that ‘those stories of fallen women (like Asiye) never change; on the contrary
they are all the same’.11 Esenlik approaches the film from a rather optimistic
perspective by claiming that it ‘investigates and attacks how patriarchal dis-
course is internalised within the social and moral values’.12 In this way, the
film proves to be an alternative to the representation of prostitution and the
fallen woman narrative in Turkish cinema.
The film not only represents aspects of the social and economic problems
that gave birth to prostitution but also links these issues with the idea of a
patriarchal and sexist society. It suggests that it is not possible for Asiye to
survive unless a solution is found to cure these conditions. As Öykü Tümer
points out, since Asiye’s survival is found in the oppression of other ‘Asiyes’
and the creation of new ones, the film becomes a mirror of how this system
repeats the mistakes it makes.13 Consequently, with the use of both the descent
and survival narratives, the film attempts to attack patriarchal culture, which
produces macho heroes and a subordinate and objectified place for women.
Moving from an individual’s experience of oppression, the film critiques and
assesses the nature of patriarchy while at the same time representing the
conditions necessary for change. In fact, the film seems to be conscious of the
idea that Christine Gledhill offers: ‘a change in the status of the real requires
a corresponding change in conception of the aesthetic practice which seeks to
represent the real’.14 Gledhill writes about film noir and examines films from
86 Representing Prostitution
different national and historical contexts, however it is apt here to apply her
argument to Asiye. Whether the film is consciously engaging with feminist
thought, or whether it is part of a developing discourse about the role of
women, is worth considering. Gledhill’s argument makes a point about how
ideological effects (such as patriarchal discourse) work:

It is arguably more important for feminist film criticism to analyse

not what a film means in terms of its ‘image of women’ – measured
against some supposedly objective reality or the critic’s personal
predilections – but rather those mediations which produce and place
that image within the total fictional structure of the film with particular
ideological effects.15

The film is part of a developing discourse that discusses the role of women in
patriarchal society. It is, at the same time, engagingly self-conscious in its
attempt to bring the private into the public. Furthermore, it uses a bio-
graphical narrative in order to relate more closely the private as well as public
worlds of women/prostitutes. The depiction of prostitution contributes to a
critique of patriarchal structures in society. Asiye is a film that exposes the
oppression and exploitation of women. Moreover, if it is accepted that one of
the projects of the patriarchal paradigm is to reduce the prostitute on screen
to an object of male desire, the film proves to be a vital feminist response
since it insists on depicting female subjectivity through the use of a bio-
graphical approach. The film, then, draws on a theme that is named and put
on the cultural agenda by feminism.
The introductory animation informs the audience that the film is about a
woman, the female body and promiscuity. It shows the silhouette of a woman
who is trapped by men. They dance around her moving their arms up and
down, which resembles the movement of big birds surrounding a piece of
flesh. The woman’s moves imply that she is panicked. Just as she tries to
escape, the men catch her. This animation prepares the audience for the story
of a woman, who after not being able to escape from men, changes immensely
and becomes a woman who tries to attract their attention.
It is important to look at how the film deconstructs the traditional patterns
of women’s representation by employing different strategies. The choice of the
musical genre for the film is one of these. Even though the narrator is a male,
prostitutes’ voices and concerns are heard throughout the film via the songs
they sing. At the beginning of the film, prostitutes introduce themselves in a
song with the following words: ‘We sell love, our flesh is our capital; our
labour is our flesh.’ Choosing the musical genre for such a topic is a remark-
able decision. By using music, songs and dance the idea of prostitution
perhaps is made to seem less like a taboo subject. The use of songs is more
effective in expressing the emotions of the characters than the spoken word or
the gesture. The diegetic music, here, helps to articulate emotions on a level
unavailable to words or the visual.
 Representing Prostitution 87
The film opens with an establishing shot of a courtyard, which allows the
reader to associate with the images of poverty around the brothel. The motif
of frames within frames continues. For instance, the canopy forms the top of
the first frame and a second frame formed by the four columns of the
entrance to the stairs (the way to the brothel). Inside the brothel the condi-
tions are equally poor: we see a bar, empty bottles and glasses left over from
the night before. The camera walks through the corridors of the brothel as
women wake up. Soon after we are introduced to this space, we move out of
the building to the courtyard as a group of male musicians appear and start
playing a song while a woman belly dances in the middle of the street. It is
made clear that the people who live in the street know each other by name
and have close relationships. The man working in the coffee house and the
owner of the kiosk as well as the barber join in the dancing, which further
highlights the close relationships between the members of the cul-de-sac. The
sexily clad women come down the stairs while singing, the camera follows
them from a short distance. As in this case, the dramatic moments in the
narrative of the film are taken over by songs (sung by the prostitutes) and
help to express intense emotions. The presence of music, then, is one of the
defining features of the film.16 The women walk down the stairs all together
singing a song about prostitutes/themselves. Just after they reach the court-
yard, the camera tilts up and captures a woman in a blue satin dress from a
long shot. She is positioned in the centre of the frame. Her blue dress catches
the eye, particularly considered in contrast to the white columns around her.
With a close-up she is seen with her hands on the side of her waist which
refers to her powerful status over the others (as the brothel madam). She
looks suspiciously at what is happening in the courtyard. From her point of
view, we see a woman walking down the street carrying a suitcase. She has
one hand in her pocket, adding confidence to her walk. The film does not
reveal who she really is until the end, even though she performs in the play as
Asiye after introducing herself as Nazlı.
One of the earlier scenes that highlight the stylised and rather Brechtian
approach of the film is when Seniye and her assistant are invited to watch the
role play. When Selahattin asks whether there is anyone whose second name is
Asiye, he walks around the room and in the corner spots the woman with the
suitcase. He asks her name, she introduces herself as Nazlı. When one of the
prostitutes asks what she is doing in the brothel, Selahattin, in a lower tone of
voice, answers: ‘She is looking for a place to stay.’ His smile and answer-
suggest that they think of her as someone who has come to the brothel to
become a prostitute.
Selahattin suggests that the two women stay and that all the women in the
brothel perform a play for them to tell the story of a prostitute. They decide
to name this prostitute Asiye, since the letter sent to Seniye inviting her to
visit this particular brothel is signed by someone who used this name. All the
prostitutes excitedly surround the sofa that Seniye is sitting on to watch the
play. Suddenly, then, the actors of the film become the audience of the play
88 Representing Prostitution
within the film. The camera captures all the women watching the role play
from behind this frame as an audience. The return of the gaze to the external
audience and women watching women within the mise-en-scene opens a space
for autonomy. Women, in the film and in the play within the film, become
both the audience and the subject.
Selahattin chooses and positions the actors of this play and directs them
without a written script (which gives the idea that all these prostitutes have
gone through similar, if not the same, sort of stories, hence they are capable of
acting it). This is an interesting point, which suggests that the situation is
interchangeable and that they are all Asiye. They use one of the rooms in the
brothel for the first scene. The room has old carpets, a make-up mirror, a bed
in the corner and a small table with two seats in the centre of the frame. In
front of the mirror, which is on the left-hand side of the frame, Selahattin
stands and puts a wig on the woman who will portray the mother. This scene
is pertinent in setting up the play within the play structure in the film.
In the meantime, Selahattin dresses Nazlı as a little girl wearing a school
uniform, and asks her to perform as Asiye. When Nazlı knocks on the door
and enters the room as Asiye, a point of view shot to the audience underpins
the frame within a frame (hence a reminder of a play within a play). When
all the others see her wearing a costume and with her hair done like a
schoolgirl they laugh, which suggests that they are enjoying the role play.
When she enters the room, the man who plays the lover leaves the house, so
Asiye (behaving and talking like a child) wonders who that man is and asks
her mother while sitting on the chair around the table. The mother takes the
other chair and tells her about the situation. She leans down towards Asiye
while the camera pans to the right and focuses on Asiye’s anger and confu-
sion with a close-up. The mother’s speech (to which Asiye does not know how
to respond until the end of the monologue) and discourse is worth analysing
here since it minimally reveals some of the issues that women face within a
patriarchal society:

You know how I earn my living. No one chooses this job willingly.
I didn’t want a life like this. Your father fell off the building while he was
working as a builder, do you remember? We had no one to look after us.
I have tried doing all sorts of jobs. Me and your father had run away
together from the village to get married. Once a woman is left alone all
men try to put her under him. I suffered a lot. Then, I married a guy,
who one day, out of the blue, went away and never came back. The only
good thing he did was to get you registered to a school. Then days of
misery and starvation restarted. After all, I had no other choice. It has
been seven years. Yet, I haven’t fallen into a brothel, I have always worked
privately, but I aged twenty years in seven.

These words stress the unbearable consequences of being abandoned or

widowed. Both of the mother’s marriages end with the male figure missing
 Representing Prostitution 89
with dire consequences for mother and child. Even though it is only one line
of the monologue, the information about ‘the escape from the village’ is likely
to refer to escape from an arranged marriage. It might well be the case that
rather than accepting arranged marriage in the village, Asiye’s mother
escaped to the city with the man she loved. This plot focuses on the practice
of forced marriage at the same time as evaluating the idea that suffering and
misery is a fitting end for a woman who falls in love and goes after her
desires. At the end of her speech, the mother gives Asiye two options:
becoming a prostitute like her mother or living alone. Just after the mother
asks for her decision, another close-up stresses her impasse. She looks down,
looks sad and asks the thought-provoking question: ‘Is there no other way
out?’ Yet, the question is answered instantly by the mother: ‘No, my dear, you
will understand that there is no other option when you grow up.’
In the case of Asiye’s mother, it is apparent that cultural traditions have
determined her destiny as a desperate, deserted single mother. Her final words
indicate that these traditions, strictly imposed upon women, have become so
deeply internalised that she endorses this ‘no survival, no other option’ sce-
nario. In this way, the film attempts to make a point about how traditions
perpetrate injustice against women in many fundamental ways. The film starts
questioning the way in which prostitution is an integral part of patriarchal
capitalism thereby challenging the idea of the impossibility of thinking out-
side the dominant patriarchal paradigm. The reason for Asiye’s mother’s
descent into prostitution is explained straightforwardly in this sequence and is
related to the lack of a male. As Campbell argues more generally about
prostitution: ideologically, the fallen woman film deals with the disturbance to
the patriarchal order that occurs when a female is cast adrift from the family
and is forced, bereft of protection from father or husband, to fend for herself.17
The cause of prostitution is presented not only as a result of the economic
position of women, but also as a result of patriarchal traditions and the lack
of the male. As articulated by Kate Millett, it seems that prostitution is
paradigmatic, somehow the very core of the female’s social condition; it not
only ‘declares her subjection right in the open, with the cash nexus between
the sexes announced in currency, rather than through subtlety of a marriage
contract’, but also the very act of prostitution itself ‘is a declaration of our
value, our reification’.18
When the first act comes to an end with an impasse, Selahattin asks Seniye what
she thinks Asiye must do next. After thinking for a while, Seniye answers: ‘Of
course, she must choose the option of an honourable life, but she needs
somewhere to stay after her mother leaves.’ The dichotomy between an hon-
ourable life and prostitution becomes clear here. Selahattin keeps narrating
the story and informs Seniye that Asiye stayed with one of her teachers until she
graduated. Seniye, then, offers a way of survival: marriage. It also becomes
apparent that Seniye is conservative, a traditionalist who has internalised the
rules of patriarchy. Her reasons for offering marriage to save Asiye can be
linked to previous points about the necessity of the male. This conditioning of
90 Representing Prostitution
women to recognise marriage as the solution to all their problems is echoed
in de Beauvoir’s words: ‘marriage is the destiny traditionally offered to women
by society. It is still true that most women are married, or have been, or plan
to be, or suffer from not being’.19
For the second role play, one of the rooms in the brothel is decorated with
different coloured lights and balloons to indicate a wedding. The song that
keeps running in the background is a rather ironic one for such an occasion,
with lyrics including ‘Why have I met you? I wish I had never met you at all.
Why did I love you? I wish I had never loved you’. The music underpins the
inherent contradictions between love and arranged marriage. A transparent
curtain divides where the father-in-law sits and where the dancing takes place.
It signifies the thin line between happiness and being saved through marriage,
and the consequences of having a prostitute mother. Her teachers make Asiye
marry a man who is much older than her through an arranged marriage.
While the father of the groom and his friend talk, the friend recognises her
and informs the family that Asiye’s mother is a prostitute. Not wanting a
prostitute’s daughter, who might have also been involved in this business and
been ‘used’, the father-in-law calls off the wedding. Here, what is puzzling is
that no one questions the man who confesses knowing Asiye’s mother, having
been one of her customers. People decide to punish the innocent Asiye for
having a mother who was a prostitute. This suggests that there are sexual
double standards in a society where buying sexual access to women’s bodies
can only be embodied by men as if a patriarchal right. Moreover, the society
does not allow any agency to the daughter whose mother is a prostitute.
Consequently, social moral values persecute Asiye but condone the act of
buying women as objects. There is a further irony: Asiye’s situation is not her
own fault. Although she writes on Western societies, Millett’s argument is
applicable here in understanding the issue depicted by the film. She explains how
a society condemns the prostitute, but not the institution that victimises her:

One is slowly forced to realise that. a tremendous moral and sociological

confusion has surrounded the entire issue, a phenomenon one can account
for only by considering the monumental sexual repression within culture,
and its steady inability, after having created both the prostitute and her
plight, to recognise her as human in any meaningful sense at all.20

In fact, Asiye is judged by the profession of her mother and with the decision
to call off the wedding. What is remarkable here is that Asiye is condemned
as the victim even without becoming a prostitute. As though she was a pros-
titute she is denied and informed that her situation is of her own choice and
her own fault. This is in concurrence with Millett, who argues that prostitutes are
‘political prisoners – in jail for cunt. Jailed for it, for cunt, the offence we all
commit in just being female. That’s sexual politics, the stone core of it’.21
At the end of the wedding scene and before the next ‘act’, Selahattin asks
Seniye what she thinks about Asiye’s situation. She replies, ‘her mother’s condition
 Representing Prostitution 91
is a restraint for her marriage. Yet, still, the only and the right way of survival
is through marriage. Only someone who really loves her can bear her situation’.
Seniye claims that marriage is the best way of survival for Asiye. If it is
accepted that the prostitute’s position corresponds with that of the married
woman, it becomes obvious that what Seniye is suggesting is not a way of
survival, but another form of serving the male. The argument that sees marriage
as legal prostitution was used by many authors, including Mary Wollstonecraft
(as early as 1790) and has been further articulated in the writings of de
Beauvoir and Carole Pateman.22 De Beauvoir states that the prostitute’s
position corresponds with that of the married woman:

[.] for both the sexual act is a service; the one is hired for life by one man;
the other has several clients who pay her by the piece. The great difference
between them is that the legal wife, oppressed as a married woman, is
respected as a human being. the prostitute is denied the rights of a
person, she sums up all the forms of feminine slavery at once.23

This argument becomes clear in the film when Asiye says to Seniye (after
becoming a prostitute in a later scene): ‘Dear madam, we are the same. The
only difference between you and us: you give it to one man, we give it to
thousands of them.’ This comment assumes considerable importance since
marriage recognises the principle of sex in return for commodities. As Pateman
writes, ‘the marriage contract is’ still ‘fundamental to patriarchal right’, yet is
‘only one of the socially acceptable ways for men to have access to women’s
bodies’.24
Selahattin, Seniye and Şükriye enter an empty room with a burgundy curtain
invoking, again, the notion of theatre and the motif of a play within a play.
Selahattin starts narrating the next act while opening this curtain, which
opens to a dark street at night. Asiye is shown from an upper angle, from the
point of view of the window, while the camera looks down at Asiye’s white dress
in the dark street. The camera angle stresses her loneliness and vulnerability.
A reverse shot from outside, to the window where Seniye, Selahattin and
Şükran are standing, shows them watching Asiye. She runs away from a man
who follows her and hides in front of a house, ringing the bell in panic.
Selahattin opens the door (performing in the play as the brother of Asiye’s
school teacher). He provides food and accommodation for her without asking
anything in return. When he gives a key to her to lock the room she will be
staying in, the audiences of the role play (this time not only Seniye and
Şükran but also all the other women in the brothel) applaud him for his
genuine and decent behaviour. In the next scene, the camera is inside Asiye’s
cosy living room with paintings on the walls. She sits on the couch, wearing a
dress and looking well. Although she is the centre of attention, the camera
allows room to perceive the lifestyle she now has by showing details in the
frame. The camera follows her as she hears the doorbell, excitedly stands up
and quickly walks to the mirror to tidy herself.
92 Representing Prostitution
The camera is static while she looks at herself in the mirror. Here the
framing suggests how domestic and how housewife-like she has become.
Asiye’s image is shown in profile; she is placed in the centre of the frame. The
mirror is hung on the wall on the left-hand side of the frame. Since Asiye looks
at the mirror, only one side of her face is seen. The reflection of the mirror
that is captured by the camera is not her image, but the reflection of one of
the two white kittens whose painting is hanging on the other side of the room.
Hence, when the image of Asiye is juxtaposed with the image of a kitten (that
looks directly into the camera) Asiye’s purity and virtuousness is under-
pinned. In this way, she has ‘disappeared’ as a woman; she is now only an
allegory. She runs to the door excitedly and hugs Selahattin (performing the
good man who loves her). Through shot-reverse shots and through words of
love the affection between them is made clear. In a close-up they look into
each other’s eyes, then the camera turns to the painting with the two white
kittens, this time to stress the purity of the love between them.
Seniye’s remark that ‘if this love between the two can lead to marriage, then
it is good; but, if not, then Asiye will have made a big mistake’ is worth
exploring. What is hidden in her words is the approach of Turkish values
about women: a woman cannot or must not cohabit with a man. Even if she
has to, she must marry that man in order to purify herself and be legal as well
as honourable. Seniye seeks to save Asiye by offering her an element of
romance, and through redeeming her into a partner for the man she cherishes.
The love story here suggests a rescue fantasy. On the one hand, for Asiye,
who falls in love with this good man, this fantasy is an escape from a poten-
tially oppressive condition outside, since she feels secure and protected. For
the man, on the other hand, by rescuing her from falling into prostitution he
creates for himself the ideal love object. However, this is a fantasy narrative
because, unbeknown to Asiye, he is married. When she discovers this she is
embarrassed, shocked and disappointed and she instantly packs her suitcase
and runs away in the name of protecting her honour and with the shame of
having been a mistress to a man, even though he genuinely loved her. The act
ends when Selahattin comes out of the house and stands next to Seniye and
the group of women behind her waiting for her to comment on the play.
Captured in a close-up, pitying Asiye’s situation, Seniye comments: ‘She must
work. Otherwise, a girl like her is an opportunity to be exploited, in every
man’s eye.’ As Seniye talks, the camera follows Asiye in the middle of an
empty street, through a long shot. This framing gives her a sense of smallness
and defencelessness. The emptiness of the street is captured to signify her
loneliness. A point-of-view shot shows a sign: ‘A Female Worker Needed’.
She smiles – the close-up showing her relief – and moves towards the future
that Seniye suggests for her.
The next ‘act’ is important as it focuses on the issue of sexual harassment
in the workplace. Asiye is abused by her factory boss and is fired when she
complains about it. In this scene, the only audience is the cinema audience,
thus this is structured as a fantasy film within the play within the film. Asiye’s
 Representing Prostitution 93
dismissal from her job not only poses questions about abuse and sexual as
well as psychological harassment in the workplace, but also refers to the
devaluation of women’s work. The film here looks at the ways in which
patriarchy in the labour market controls women’s labour. As Yıldız Ecevit
highlighted, in patriarchal regimes it is common for women to be economic-
ally dependent on men. In fact, patriarchal relations in a capitalist market
allow room for the male to sexually and psychologically take advantage of
‘Asiyes’ while shamelessly exploiting them. These function either to keep
women in the home as unpaid family labourers, or (as in this case) in the
workplace, to control women’s participation in labour.25 Ecevit, who looks at
patriarchal relations in the capitalist market in Turkey, argues that although
the form and degree of control may change over time, women’s marginality is
enforced through the following mechanisms: ‘the maintenance of a lower level
of formal education for women than for men, the exclusion of women from
specific jobs and professions, discrimination in recruitment in the workplace,
sex discrimination in wages, dismissal for marriage and pregnancy, dismissal
of women before men in times of crisis, with the help of high compensation,
protective legislation preventing women entering certain jobs, trade union
discrimination towards women, and their restricted representation among
administrative cadres’. Statistics about changes in economic policy in Turkey
after 1980 are also provided in Ecevit’s work: ‘there was only limited expan-
sion in employment opportunities. These … have been exploited by men: for
every 87 men employed only 13 women found jobs … In 1985 the number of
women unemployed was 662,518. This is as high as 69% of the total numbers
of women employed in non-agricultural sectors’.26
After her dismissal Asiye is seen in the streets again. She is shown from a
high camera angle first, and then a close-up to her face discloses her sadness and
helplessness. She looks as though she does not know what to do. Selahattin’s
voice narrating the story of the play accompanies Asiye’s image here: ‘Asiye
resists, yet she struggles to stay alive. For six months she seeks jobs. She neither
has money nor a place to stay. One day, she was in the middle of the street,
looking at the window of a food shop. It had been three days since she had
eaten anything. Starvation must be the worst pain in life.’ Asiye looks pale
and thoughtful, the camera slowly pans in accordance with her slow-paced
movement. She halts in front of a delicatessen as, from a point-of-view
shot, the camera tracks towards the food inside the shop. She goes in and
grabs the first food she finds on top of the counter and starts eating. It does
not take long until the shop owner realises what she is doing and calls her a
‘whore’ and a shoplifter, while holding her arms to stop her running away.
The camera retreats. When the shop owner hears that she has no one and
nowhere to go, he exploits her vulnerable situation.
In the centre of the frame, with a piece of bread in one hand and a piece of
food in the other, Asiye looks scared and helpless trapped in between the
commodities in the shop. The shop owner suddenly threatens her by saying he
will call the police then putting his arms around her waist drags her behind
94 Representing Prostitution
the counter. She struggles to stop him. Even though she is the one who is in a
vulnerable position here, with the height difference and the positioning of the
characters within the frame, she looks down at him. This gives a sense of
moral authority to her, even though she is the one in the disadvantaged
position.
A close-up positions her in the centre of the frame. The shop owner is not
entirely seen since he is behind the scale on top of the counter. She stands
closer to the camera than him. In the background the shelves of food and
other commodities remind the audience of the commodification of the
woman. It is a suitable space in which to show Asiye fall into prostitution;
where money is exchanged for a product. Asiye exchanges her body for food,
hence the film stresses that the only capital that a woman has (if she has no
money and nothing else) is her body. This also becomes the first moment
when she agrees to this ‘exchange’. Here, the man’s pleasure is contrasted with
Asiye’s displeasure. Her cry and disgust as he disappears behind her is heard
and is stronger in the soundtrack, which does not allow his voice to be heard
clearly. When he moves down behind her and disappears from the frame the
audience is left with the close-up shot of Asiye’s anguished image. This gives
room for empathy with her and hence the pleasure of the male is deleted from
the frame. His pleasure is not seen, and not even heard. The focus is only on
her displeasure.
The film turns into a fallen woman story after this role play. From this
point onwards, the film starts dealing with the question that encapsulates the
problem of prostitution, that is, ‘why men demand that women’s bodies are
sold as commodities’.27 Here, prostitution starts being represented as part of
the exercise of the patriarchal law of male sex-right; one of the ways in which
men are ensured access to women’s bodies. Asiye is degraded, trapped and
condemned to a miserable fate until the end of the film.
Seniye and the others stand in the middle of the street looking towards the
shop from which Asiye comes out at the end of the role play. Selahattin sug-
gests that they have asked Asiye what she thinks she will do from now on.
Seniye and Selahattin are surrounded by others, Asiye walks to the centre of
the frame and stands confidently in front of Seniye (here they switch to the
play again) and says in a rather angry tone of voice: ‘It is not easy, dear
madam. Some random guy … you won’t know his name, but you’ll accept to
be in his arms.’ When Seniye realises that there is no other choice for Asiye in
life, apart from selling her body, she thinks that her death would be more
honourable. Selahattin poses a question here: ‘According to you, then, the
only way for Asiye to protect her honour and chastity is through death?’
The ‘you’ in his words does not only refer to Seniye, but also what she repre-
sents. On the one hand, since she is the audience of the play it is possible to
suggest that she also represents the audience of the film, to whom the ques-
tions are posed by the narrator. On the other hand, she represents the elite
women and, most importantly, she represents capitalist and patriarchal
ideology. Since she is the one who decides what happens to Asiye throughout
 Representing Prostitution 95
the film, she voices the rules imposed upon women in a capitalist and patri-
archal society by other women, too. Consequently, it is this ideology which
‘blocks all the ways for Asiyes’. After this scene, even though she starts
working as a prostitute, we never see her engaging in sexual activity. However,
in an indication of her change of status her costumes change, and so does her
manner of speech. This is made clear in the consequent scene in which Asiye
is seen with her golden-coloured sparkling boots, black tights and sparkling
golden dress on. She has strong make-up on, emphasising her red lips. The
zipper of the jacket is left open to the waist which is sexually inviting. Her
hair is dyed red, and is longer and frizzier. The way she leans on the side of
the door frame suggests confidence in her moves.
Asiye finds her mother and they start working together. They find a rich
customer and after showing him extra attention they get him to buy them a
house. The man agrees, but on the day he comes with a bag full of money to
take them to their new house, the pimp realises that the two are going to run
away leaving him with no money, so he kills the mother. It is indeed common
in films about prostitution, as Campbell points out, for the prostitute to die at
the end of the film, either through suicide, illness, accident, murder or execu-
tion.28 Asiye is left with a bag of money – enough to buy a house. While she
sits down on the floor, hugging her mother’s dead body, prostitutes from the
brothel walk towards the two. In the meantime, Asiye starts singing a sad
song. The prostitutes carry the body on their shoulders while joining in
Asiye’s song as they walk. They sing ‘the death of the prostitute’, while car-
rying the body of the mother: ‘Here is the end of a whore/ think about it
carefully/ is there a way out/ in the middle of the day/ with a bullet, the order,
morality/ tradition, law/they made us choose our end without our consent/ is
there a way out?’ When the last sentence of the song is heard (‘is there a way
out?’), Seniye and Selahattin are shown watching the role play from a bal-
cony. They both look sad. Seniye, in a frustrated way says: ‘There must be a
way out. Asiye must survive.’ Seniye’s voice is heard in the next shot, which
shows Asiye from outside the window (from Seniye’s point of view) of the
house. The rich man in the house is dead. Asiye, standing up and looking
thoughtful, walks around the table, on top of which is a big bag full of
money. Seniye insists that Asiye should take the bag and run. This is inter-
esting as she turns thief in her mind and recognises that this is the only route
Asiye can take. We see Asiye sitting confidently in her office talking business
with a man. Ironically, she is wearing exactly the same clothes and accessories
as Seniye. Asiye has become a brothel madam. She confidently walks back to
the desk, sits down and after bringing out her cheque book, makes one out to
the association Seniye represents. She realises that the signature on the cheque
belongs to the real Asiye who wrote the original letter to the association.
At this point, the play within a play structure is destroyed when it is
revealed that the woman who performed as Asiye throughout the stories in
the film (Nazlı) is actually an ex-prostitute who is now a businesswoman who
wishes to destroy the brothel and turn it into a spa hotel. The brothel is
96 Representing Prostitution
emptied; the shops on the street are destroyed. From a long shot, Asiye and
Seniye are seen walking arm in arm while vacating the building.
Here, it is important to consider the role capitalist ideology plays within the
film. Asiye’s survival is secured by becoming a brothel madam who capitalises
on her assets. While taking charge of her own business and affairs, she enga-
ges in the trade without any concerns regarding its morality. The film depicts
prostitution as an integral part of the capitalist order. In Campbell’s words,
‘for advocates of free enterprise, prostitution can become an image of the way
a market economy allows for the fulfilment of human desire in all of its
diversity’.29 This image is created in the final sequence of the film. The film,
then, does not necessarily save Asiyes; on the contrary, it only saves an individual
Asiye. The film also accommodates the notion of prostitution as a legitimate
business. Whether her survival gave Asiye her subjectivity back and whether
patriarchal ideology has been subverted in the film remains questionable and
vaguely articulated in the film itself.
This way of survival goes beyond reaffirming the class division for women:
‘the division of women into respectable women, who are protected by their
men’ and ‘disreputable women, who are out on the street unprotected by men
and free to sell their services’.30 To sum up, Asiye’s survival is an individual
one, through which she attains financial (and possibly sexual) autonomy.
Besides, the depiction of prostitution through Asiye is inevitably contained
within the dominant ideology.
The demands of patriarchal ideology and culture are represented in the film
through the story of an individual. Whether this opens a possibility for a
feminist discourse in Turkish cinema is arguable. In representing a woman’s
descent into prostitution, the film’s task is made easier by the fact that patri-
archal ideology is so demonstrably split between how to deal with the social
phenomenon in question (prostitution) and by the (at the time) dynamic
debates within the feminist movement – both about the representation of
women and about prostitution. Overall, the film not only deals with the issue
of women’s oppressed condition but also looks at capitalist relations in a patri-
archal society. The patriarchal paradigm finds itself under attack throughout the
narrative. At the same time, the film leaves the decision of Asiye’s survival to
Seniye – the representative of patriarchal and capitalist ideology. As Campbell
writes, ‘whether prostitution, as some feminists demand, ceases to exist, or
whether, as others advocate, it becomes a profession like any other, the
struggle to be fought is for a society in which men’ and women ‘no longer
have the power to mark off one class of women from the rest’.31 The film calls
for resistance and a struggle against patriarchal order: ‘we know it all, we’ve
seen it all; now is the day to think about our flesh; the one who does not resist
is crazy, the one who does not fight back is dead, for those who are just
like us’ say the prostitutes in the film. These words seem to summarise the
message the film attempts to give: woman must resist, fight and create a new
independent woman.
6 Representing Widowhood and Sexuality

In his 1984 research on gender relations in agricultural peasant communities,

Behrooz Morvaridi interviewed a religious authority, who reflected the kind
of traditional religious views that oppress women:

A woman will never go to hell if she obeys the four principles of the Holy
Koran. First, a woman must not go out without her husband’s permission.
Second, she must not give things away without her husband’s permission.
Third, she must pray and fast in Ramadan. Finally, she must not listen to
the voice of strangers except for immediate relatives.1

This statement exemplifies women’s inability to act independently in many

aspects of life, under strict traditions. Morvaridi’s research highlights that it is
common that in small villages in Turkey religion is of crucial importance in
peasants’ lives, and that a religious authority is consulted on personal matters
and unquestioningly trusted in his reaffirmation of patriarchal rules. Moreover,
this authority often has more influence on women than other men.2 The
statement of the hodja (religious authority) ends with a comment on the
so-called ‘diabolical’ situation created by women in the absence of men:

You see, the devil is everywhere; even when you pray. When a husband is
away, the devil is present in a woman, tempting her to overthrow her
virtue. She may look at strange men with lust and passion, which means
the devil has penetrated her muscles.3

This statement calls to mind the phrase ‘the disorder of women’ as it proclaims
that women threaten the patriarchal order in the absence of the male. Carole
Pateman adopts this phrase ‘the disorder of women’ from Jean Jacques Rousseau,
who used the phrase to refer to the condition in which women are thought to
pose a threat to the political order, and so must be excluded from the public
world.4
Şerif Gören’s 1985 film Kurbaǧalar deals with issues including widowhood
and the concomitant absence of the male; the gendered division of labour in
peasants’ lives in rural Turkey; suppressed sexuality under religious rules; and
98 Representing Widowhood and Sexuality
the importance of the protection of female chastity in a patriarchal society.
The film analyses women’s subordination in Turkey while also identifying the
obstacles to their emancipation. It looks at how womanhood is produced in
the absence of the male and the kind of pressures that shape women’s identity
as well as the means available to women to resist oppression. The story takes
place in a small village in Western Turkey. The villagers are low-paid factory
workers or local wage labourers. Men in the village collect frogs at nights
around the nearby river to sell to the local factory, which makes use of the
frog skins in its production.
After her husband’s death, Elmas has to work and do her husband’s job at
the same time as cultivating the land they own in order to survive, pay her
husband’s debt and look after her son. The issue here is that both of these
jobs are done by men, yet Elmas, representing a strong and independent-
minded woman, is happy to take on the challenge. However, the locals are not
happy with this. Recalling the protagonist in Mine, as a widowed woman
Elmas attracts sexual attention from the male villagers. Ali (Talat Bulut), who
returns to the village after serving a prison sentence, has had feelings for
Elmas since before her marriage. After a night together he leaves Elmas as he
decides he does not want to be with a widow.
Kurbaǧalar is a film that focuses on the absence of the male through the
story of Elmas. The ‘disorder’ is represented in the context of religion and
tradition, and it is depicted as a result of the inclusion of a woman in the
male working environment. In her research on women and Islam in Turkey,
Feride Acar examines Islamist women’s magazines of the 1980s and argues
that all these texts adopted a similar approach, in that they failed to treat
women’s education and employment as aspects of women’s presence in the
public sphere. She notes that the discourse of these magazines insists that the
conditions for women’s employment outside the private sphere (and this is
‘only when financial difficulty makes it an absolute necessity’) ‘conform to
Islamist principles’ and to the idea that ‘men and women must be physically
segregated in the work place’.5
The film is significant in the sense that it constitutes an attempt to deconstruct
the idea that a woman’s social identity can be reduced to that of her husband
and family. Despite allowing Elmas a degree of freedom (at work and at
home) she is reduced to a piece of female flesh; an object of desire not only in
the eyes of the males of the village but also in the eyes of women, who start
seeing her as a threat to their marriages and relationships. Even though the
film allows room for exploring the experiences and living strategies of women
in widowhood through Elmas’s character, it affirms that, as a distinct system
of male dominance, village life determines women’s survival strategies as well
as influencing their forms of resistance and struggle. Among the structural
features of this form of patriarchal relations are patterns of deference based
on age, distinct male and female hierarchies and a separation of spheres of
activity (which is a practice of spatial segregation). The film explores the
predicament of a widowed woman, who must break from tradition and act
 Representing Widowhood and Sexuality 99
independently because
. she lacks the security that tradition is supposed to
offer. As Onaran Incirlioǧlu points out in her article on representations of
village women in Turkey, the image of a village woman is ambiguous: ‘on the
one hand, she is strong, wise, powerful and confident; on the other hand she is
backbreakingly overworked, undervalued, ignorant, submissive – simply
downtrodden’.6 Indeed, Kurbaǧalar’s representation of the village woman
concurs with this dual identity.
The film opens with shaky camera movement accompanying the image of a
dirtily clad man walking unsteadily, with a lantern in his hand and a big sack on
his back, in the empty streets of a village. The camera follows the weak-kneed
man staggering to the centre of the city. When he comes to the square in the
village centre he totters and falls down. The floor-level camera captures the
lifeless body of the man. The lantern has fallen just like the sack, out of which
frogs jump. The call for prayer begins, as though announcing his death, which
gives a dramatic background sound. The words of the prayers are clearly
heard: ‘God is one. I start with God’s name.’ The film sets up the religious context
of its narrative from the beginning: it ‘starts with God’s name’. A long shot
shows the dead body in the centre of the frame. A man enters the frame, sees
the body on the ground and runs to him in a panic, calling his name: Halim.
He announces his death to the others around. This clearly suggests that we
are in a small village in which everyone knows each other – hence the inti-
mate relationships between the villagers are instantly shown. The frogs cover
Halim’s head and arms. Elmas, who is in a state of shock, enters the white
circle drawn by the villagers around the corpse to protect people from possible
disease. The camera is positioned at a high angle and in a long shot it
shows Elmas inside the circle alone, crying near the dead body with the villagers
surrounding her. In the next shot, the camera position switches to Elmas’s
level as she looks up and vociferously informs everyone around that it was a
murder. This frame captures Elmas’s vulnerability in the centre of the circle.
She is surrounded by villagers who do not respond to what she reveals and
who literally look down at her. Their apathetic looks are not directed to the
death of a fellow villager, but to the now publicly widowed Elmas. None of
them try to comfort her. She is shown alone, clasped to her husband until
night as the screen darkens, emphasising that she does not want him to leave
her alone.
In the following scene Halim’s funeral takes place. What strikes our attention
in this scene is that there are no women at the funeral – just a hodja and a
few men who carry the coffin are shown in the graveyard. With a cut to
Elmas’s house we see women visiting her. These two images not only highlight
the idea of gendered spaces in the village, but also suggest that religious rules
have a considerable effect on villagers’ lives. They provide an analogy for
religious separatism: in the mosque women and men have separate sections
because they are not allowed to worship next to one another, and men look-
ing at women is considered sinful, particularly during prayer. Through the
theme of widowhood, the film explores how women are held in thrall by rural
100 Representing Widowhood and Sexuality
and conservative values. The narrative illustrates how tradition regards a
widow as someone who is vulnerable and open to threats (particularly those
posed by men); as someone who needs to be married as soon as possible after
the loss of her husband. Moreover, it represents an aspect of how tradition
can evolve and change in response to the contingencies of life.
It is common for a woman to rely on female companionship and emotional
support at times of crisis, during illness and certainly in the case of the death
of a spouse. In fact, death is an occasion of much visiting among women.
During the time Elmas is grieving for her husband’s death at home, the
women of the village gather both in the house and just outside in the garden
to share her sorrow. This seems to be the only support mechanism available
to Elmas, since she does not have any other relatives to take care of her.
However, this support system is put under scrutiny in the film. Women, all in
headscarves (signifying religious values), sit just outside Elmas’s house. The
camera pans through the women who gossip with each other quietly as Elmas’s
cry dominates the soundtrack. Elmas is not shown but her cry is heard as the
women outside talk about her: ‘How will she come through this with all those
fields and a child to look after, with all that debt?’; ‘She will be fine: she is
beautiful and young; she will find a man to marry soon and get over it. Who can
she trust? To whom can she go?’; ‘Poor Elmas! What else can she do apart
from getting married again?’; ‘She must marry, otherwise a widow woman’s
flesh is attractive; from now on she will be surrounded by men all over.’; ‘If
she doesn’t marry, it will be like hell to live in this village.’ These comments
represent the attitudes to widowed women while also addressing the vulner-
able condition of Elmas as a woman without a man, whose sole means of
survival is thought to be re-marriage. Yet, Elmas will refuse to marry again and
will decide to work to earn her living, to be able to look after her son and pay
off the debt left by her husband. What is significant and thought-provoking in
these dialogues is women’s self-pity used as a signifier of how patriarchal
values are internalised. Marriage is considered as the destiny of a woman who
has lost her husband or who is deprived of the security marriage offers. The
women of the village are, in effect, shown articulating their thoughts about
sexuality. This is evident in their conversations about Elmas’s condition:
‘A widow woman is like a piece of fire; once she opens her legs to a man she
does not close them again. If we cannot get her to re-marry someone soon,
she will be dangerous for us.’ One of the comments made by another woman
goes on to claim that ‘a widowed woman’s pain in between her legs needs to
be cured; and it can only be cured if she can marry again’. Throughout the
film the idea of the widow as a threat to order is underscored in the dialogues
of the women in the village.7
Ali returns to the village after a prison sentence. His widowed mother
(Tomris Oǧuzalp) welcomes him. After finding out about Elmas’s situation,
his repressed feelings towards her come back to the surface. When his mother
realises his feelings towards Elmas, she warns him: ‘My dear son! Be careful!
Don’t stay close to that woman, otherwise she will fool you and take your
 Representing Widowhood and Sexuality 101
mind away. You don’t know what a dangerous woman she is; she is a snake!
A widow won’t do you any good.’ At a later stage she cries: ‘I don’t want
a widow with a child in my house. I want a dream wedding for you with a
young, beautiful woman; not with some widowed woman who goes to work
to collect frogs at nights like, and with, men. She cannot enter this house
when I am alive.’ The mother’s provocative words not only signify her fear of
having Elmas as a bride or daughter-in-law, but also make a link to a man’s
relationship to his mother. In fact, the mother-son relationship, as noted by
Deniz Kandiyoti in her article on sex roles in Turkey, is intimate and affec-
tionate; the woman indulges her son, and looks to him for future security and
protection. Considering that Ali’s mother is also a widowed woman and the
relationship between her and Ali is ‘a mode of socialisation’ that carries ‘an
implicit investment toward future security in old age’, it also helps to ‘perpetuate
a system which results in women’s submission’.8
In considering peasant villages and the rigid social norms applied to women,
which confine them predominantly to a subordinate condition, it is important
to note that the traditions of religion (Islam) permeate gender relations. At
the core of the religious tradition is the concept of (a woman’s) honour
(namus), which is perceived to be something that has to be protected by the
male. Since the honour of a man is seen as being dependent on the sexual
purity of his women –this can be his mother, sisters, wife or daughters – he is
ashamed if they become sexually tainted, and even minor sexual suggestions
may render a woman impure.9 The concept of ‘honour’ recurs in films in
Turkish cinema and I return to and expand on this discussion in Chapter 7.
In her research on women and widows in Turkey, Marsel A. Heisel claims
that, particularly in rural areas, women are financially dependent on their
husbands even when they do much of the agricultural work, and they remain
under the male’s strict surveillance, with little opportunity to develop inde-
pendent behaviour.10 This argument proves accurate since peasant women are
caught between the divergent and often contradictory forces of traditional
and progressive values. The idea of the woman being protected by the male
suggests that she is not capable of protecting her own honour or chastity.
What is problematic here, in fact, is that women must protect themselves; in
other words, there always exists a threat posed to women by men. In patri-
archal systems, men are empowered and given the ‘natural’ right to be sexually
attracted to women, and women have to protect themselves from this natural
and inevitable attraction.
Upon widowhood Elmas remains in her husband’s house with her son. Her
fellow villagers’ support is withdrawn, particularly when Elmas wishes to
retain independence and self-determination. This idea, in effect, reinforces
women’s dependency and inhibits the development of social or personal
resources that women, and particularly widows, need in order to cope with
changing life situations. In its depiction of Elmas’s condition as a recently
widowed woman, the film uses the metaphor of prison by imprisoning her in
the private sphere until she decides to start working again. Although
102 Representing Widowhood and Sexuality
traditions in Turkey are not as strict, the situation presented in the film is
reminiscent of an Indian widow cited by Martha Nussbaum:

‘I may die, but I still cannot go out. If there’s something in the house, we
eat. Otherwise, we go to sleep.’ So Metha Bai, a young widow with two
young children in India described her plight as a member of a caste
whose women are traditionally prohibited from working outside the
home – even when survival itself is an issue. If she stays at home, she and
her children may die shortly, if she attempts to go out, her in-laws will
beat her and abuse her children.11

The metaphor of prison is employed in the film through the use of the ‘frame
within a frame’ motif to represent Elmas as imprisoned. In one of the scenes,
we see Elmas sitting by the window at night. The camera stands outside
Elmas’s house. Half of the frame is completely dark. In the other half is the
prison window with bars on suggesting imprisonment. There are two thin
horizontal bars and one thick vertical bar on the window. The thick one
divides the lightened part of the screen into two. On one side Elmas is seen
with her headscarf on, looking down, which highlights her sorrow. On the
other side of the bar, her son is shown eating at the table set on the floor. The
only light comes from inside the house from a naked light bulb on the side of
the child. The light is used on his side as he is the only reason for Elmas to
stay strong and alive. In the morning the camera pans through the village and
comes back to the house showing Elmas sitting by the window, emphasising
that she has not changed position. The light is still on, which suggests that
she has not slept and not moved all night. In a society where sexual segrega-
tion is a predominant characteristic, this metaphor of prison can also be read
as ‘a prison of gender’.12 The bars on the windows of her house denote
imprisonment. The lack of a husband and the darkness of the house connote
absence instead of a measure of security – the lack of rather than guarantee of
safety. Besides, even though she hides in the intimacy of ‘the home’, it will not
provide any possibility of protection from the threats and dangers of the
outside.
Scenes in which Elmas is in her house are intercut with scenes of the empty
fields that are no longer looked after. For a long time Elmas does not come
outside. She is only seen behind the bars of the window, sitting in the
dark; only her silhouette is shown most of the time. In one of the scenes in
which other people are shown working in the field, a man and a woman talk
about Elmas, which turns into a voiceover accompanying Elmas’s image in
the house. The woman wonders what Elmas will do about the field of failing
crops. A man answers: ‘She is a woman. She cannot get over it.’
The scene in which Elmas sees her face in the mirror is one of the pivotal
moments in the film. She is in the house. Hung on the big white wall there is
a small, unframed mirror. As she hesitatingly looks at the mirror, the camera
stands behind capturing her body, the wall and the reflection of her face
 Representing Widowhood and Sexuality 103
covered with a white headscarf. Her hesitation suggests that it is the first time
she has looked at herself since the death of her husband. This is important
because it highlights self-recognition. This short scene not only emphasises
the need for her to take action and work for her own and son’s life, but also
underscores her subjectivity, letting the audience into her private sphere. In
fact, by deciding to go back to the fields to work and earn her living, Elmas
tries to find self-determination in the traditionally male space, yet the widow’s
visibility and autonomy cause tension. By challenging the gendered designation
of space, Elmas challenges the dominant patriarchal ideology which dictates
that women must not circulate among men.
One of the prominent elements of patriarchal systems is the division of
labour by gender; and it is under this sexual division that certain types of
work are designated as male or female. It is important to look at how norms
of seclusion (of women, which deny them the right to gain employment outside
the home) are represented in the film. In the context of the social structures of
a village where particular spaces of operation are designated for socially
positioned individuals, it is crucial to explore what this space consists of for
women and what women do within this sphere. It is also important to identify
how the film represents the means available to Elmas for enlarging the
boundaries of this space. Throughout the film she never is depicted as
embarrassed to be seen working, and she has no fear of working at night with
men. Even though she grows accustomed to work, the criticism and gossip do
not die down. Yet she contravenes the system that secludes women and denies
them the right to work with men, thereby subverting the patriarchal ideology,
which has certain implications for the occupational options of women.
This system, which is interwoven with a hierarchical social structure, deter-
mines how patterns of female work go through a process of negotiation with
Elmas’s decision to work in a male job. In fact, this process of negotiation
‘transcends the boundaries of the household and produces often contradictory
ideas regarding what it means to be a man or a woman’ in rural Turkey.13
Through the narrative of survival (a matter of immediate survival for the
individual and a matter of women’s status), the film illustrates a perspective
on women’s rights to employment. If widowhood is assumed to be a threat to
the society, and if women’s employment outside the private sphere poses
another threat, then Elmas’s situation is twice as ominous – hence the gossip
about and hatred towards her in the village. Outside employment is con-
sidered as a threat since it may lead to the neglect of duties in the private
sphere and family, which consequently enhances the dangers of promiscuity
through contact with unrelated males, and may ‘involve increased economic
power that challenges male authority’.14 As long as a woman contributes
to family production and does not receive payment such a threat is not
perceived. Elmas’s work in the fields can be considered as this type of pro-
duction. Besides, other women work in the fields, too. However, her job as
a frog collector is considered a threat both to men and women, since it is a
male job as a result of which she earns money. In fact, what Elmas breaks
104 Representing Widowhood and Sexuality
with is the idea that the worker is a man, and the workplace is a male
territory.
When women, womanhood and women’s bodies, which represent the private
and all that is excluded from the public sphere, go out to the public, as in the
case of Elmas, consequences follow, including sexual harassment. Kurbaǧalar
also focuses on this issue. For instance, it represents the brutality of harass-
ment in the image of a man with an erection (by seeing Elmas’s silhouette
through her wet trousers) masturbating in public. Here, how the male gaze is
used in the film is worth analysing. While Elmas is a female character who
takes up the position of the subject by struggling to establish her agency
through working freely, she is still represented as a fetishised image. As soon
as she comes out in public as a widow she becomes the object of desire for
men in the village. This objectification of the woman and her body is medi-
ated through the power of gender (men as the bearer of the look) and through
the ideological representation of desire through voyeuristic mechanisms –
hence the male gaze. In one of the scenes that take place in the field, the
camera stands very close to a wooden fence. The green eyes of a man looking
sideways from between a crack in the fence are shown. In a reverse shot
we see Elmas, from his point of view, working while walking in water with the
skirt of her dress wet and stuck to her legs. The silhouette of her legs is clear.
Elmas is positioned in the centre of the frame when she opens her legs to gain
power before she starts hoeing the field with the tool on her shoulder. In a
reverse shot the camera zooms in to the eyes. This composition allows the
camera eye to become the eyes of the man looking at Elmas. The relentless
exchange of reverse shots (four times in a row) between Elmas’s image seen
from the point of view of the man and his eyes looking from the crack in the
wooden fence in close-up is accompanied by the sound of Elmas’s hoe hitting
the soil. With the start of the threatening and disturbing tone of music, Elmas
suddenly realises that someone is looking at her. In panic, and looking dis-
turbed and threatened, she slowly hides herself in the trench as we hear the
water. This image of hiding in the trench full of water resembles sinking.
A reverse shot from her point of view shows the man behind the fence running
away without being seen, so she cannot figure out who he is. This reiterates
that the bearer of the look is the male and the female is not given chance
to see the male. She is positioned in the centre of the frame and through
reverse shots she looks around and sees that all the men surrounding her
have stopped working and are gazing shamelessly at her. This is threatening
on her part since she no longer has a man to protect her from the looks
of the others. In panic, she quickly walks with her hoe on her shoulder
and gets out of the frame. The scene fetishises her by turning her into
an object of desire. The male gaze, then, functions at the expense of the
representation of the female character, who is reduced to an object. Yet
one may argue that the film is in many ways critiquing the male gaze
and objectification of women while simultaneously objectifying the character
to do so.
 Representing Widowhood and Sexuality 105
The cinematic construction of a male point of view reaches its most dis-
turbing level when erotic pleasure and sexual ‘violence’ merge in another
scene. In the field, while Elmas is working in the water, a (married) man hides
and lies down in the bushes, his face down and his body on the ground. He
gazes at Elmas’s silhouette. With a series of reverse shots, the tempo of which
increases to create a sense of tension and in harmony with his moving body,
he sexually stimulates himself in public while gazing at her. This scene does
not only have an erotic dimension, but also refers to a form of sexual vio-
lence. Elmas’s image is raped without her consent, even without her knowing,
in the eyes of the camera, which assigns power only to the male. The film,
here, does not seem to explore the effects of the male gaze for women in a
patriarchal society, in which the female body is considered as the property of
the male. Elmas, then, does not only suffer from the difficult conditions of
widowhood, but also the (sexual) attention she receives. This over-emphasis
on the fetishisation of her image (body) damages the subjectivity she attempts
to obtain throughout the film.
Elmas is sexually harassed at night by other men when collecting frogs.
A man who we cannot see comes closer to her as she tries catching frogs in the
lake and tries to touch her. There is so little light in the scene that the har-
assment is not seen clearly but is heard. Her scream mingles with the scream
of her son who waits for his mother in a little tent by the side of the lake. In
fighting for her own rights she goes to the police to complain but cannot get
much of a result; although the police brings in three suspects (including Ali)
she cannot figure out who has done it. This event results in a wave of (sexually
explicit) gossip about Elmas, which works against her. She is disadvantaged in
comparison to men in pay and conditions of work. She not only gets paid
less, but she also gets a warning from the man to whom she sells the frogs
about the job being a male one, telling her that there will soon be con-
sequences if she insists on working with men at night. His threatening words
signify that the gendered division of labour between men and women is
oppressive for women.
In her research on women and their sexual problems in Turkey, Arşaluys
Kayır points out that:

We live in a society where it is commonly believed that sex is a physiolo-

gical necessity for men, whereas a woman is entitled to sexual experience
only after marriage. Thus, men have the right to get to know their sexuality
and to make sexual explorations, but women can express their sexuality only
after their future husbands appear.15

This remark proves vital in understanding the repressed sexuality of women,

which is a theme that Kurbaǧalar deals with. Indeed, the film brings to the
surface and reflects upon some of the contradictions that exist within tradi-
tional moral values and patriarchal norms by depicting a village in which
men are the owners of women. Or, as in the case of Hüseyin, a young man in
106 Representing Widowhood and Sexuality
the village who in the name of protecting his family honour beats his own
sister in the centre of the village, before the eyes of the villagers, because he
catches her looking and smiling at a young man. Yet, when he himself hides
in the bushes to secretly watch Elmas or when he abuses her by shouting in
front of her house in the middle of the night using swear words to express his
desire towards her, his actions are not considered immoral.
The sexual attention Elmas receives but does not respond to, or is not
aware of, brings to the surface the female desire of other women. They want to
be desired, too. One of the village women seduces Hüseyin. Ali does not
respond to her but Hüseyin does. While carrying a load of dry bushes on her
shoulders, she fakes an accidental fall and asks for Hüseyin’s help. When he
approaches her she puts his hand on her breast, and while the camera moves
from this close-up to a long shot we see Hüseyin on top of the woman, in the
bushes, having sex in public. Since all the attention is on Elmas, nobody rea-
lises or cares about what happens to the other women in the village, even
though they have sex in public. What is thought-provoking and what points
to a contradiction is that the above scene is followed by the sound of the call
for prayer (ezan), with which the film makes a link to Islam as well as
repressed sexuality under the rules of religion. Men, who gossip in a sexually
overt manner in the village café about Elmas, are shown praying in the
mosque in a later scene, which signifies their attempt to purify themselves;
yet, they do not regret or they are not ashamed of having sex in public or
talking about it.
There are two scenes in the film in which Elmas’s desire is central to the
narrative. They both take place in the private sphere, in her bedroom. One of
them is at night when she dreams of Halim, and the other one is when she has
sex with Ali. In the first scene, the room is covered in blue tones. Elmas is
lying on her bed next to her son, who is asleep unlike her. Her eyes are open;
she has a smile on her face as she puts one of her arms on the empty pillow
next to her. In the next frame the blue tones are still there but the corners of
the frame are blurred. This allows room for the spectator to be inside her
dream, that is, inside her thoughts and feelings, and creates an opportunity
for identification. In the dream, Halim and Elmas are cuddling each other.
She looks secure and happy. The room looks tidier and despite the blue tones
the colourful flowers on the pillows are apparent in the dream scene. This
emphasises that Elmas’s life was previously more organised and colourful,
and she was feeling contented and secure with her husband. Although the film
allows the spectator to empathise with her situation, within the mise-èn-scene
it offers to find the order of a woman’s life in the existence of the male.
Elmas’s desire is in focus at the end of the film when Ali ends up in Elmas’s
house despite his mother’s discontent. Elmas waits behind the door excitedly
and opens it with happiness as she hugs Ali. They express their love towards
each other in front of the door. In a sudden cut, the two are seen naked as
their reflections in the mirror are captured. The scene does not last more than
ten seconds. As they lie next to each other in bed silently, Elmas’s son wakes
 Representing Widowhood and Sexuality 107
up in the other room and calls her. In her absence, Ali walks into the
bedroom naked and finds a love letter in Elmas’s bedroom from her husband.
This makes him realise that in deciding to be with her he will have to accept
her past, too. In the final scene, both are shown sitting at opposite ends of the
room, looking down rather than at each other, not speaking to each other.
After a while, Ali stands up slowly, without looking at Elmas, and without
saying goodbye, like a man who got what he wanted (which suggests that even
love does not change patriarchal relations in a sexist society where traditional
values are strictly imposed) and he leaves. He disappears into the darkness,
leaving the door open. Elmas is left alone and the audience is left with the
image of darkness on the screen. The film has an open ending, then, yet the
darkness carries negative connotations. It also signifies the unknown in
Elmas’s life.
The film, as Atilla Dorsay writes, ‘has a unique rhythm and is a calm and
mature film which at the end gives a contemporary message that will surely
lift up the souls of our women and make them happy’.16 Yet, although in
visual terms Elmas is sporadically given agency throughout the film, the story
remains as the narrative of the spoken subject and not the speaking subject.
The film criticises, at points, the strict traditional rules applied to women and
patriarchal norms imposed upon women in religious rural Turkey. The disorder
in the film is not created by women (or a widow as a man-less woman), but it
is caused by repressed sexuality, the effect of religion and patriarchal relations,
and internalised sexist ideology.
7 Women and New Turkish Cinema

Current writings on the representation of women in new Turkish cinema

focus on the concepts of silence and absent women. According to Suner, for
instance, one of the tendencies that can be observed in films since the early
1990s is that ‘the figure of woman … often comes into view as a constitutive
absence. She is the driving force behind the narrative, yet absent as a sub-
ject’.1 This assertion suggests that the image of woman in Turkish cinema is a
silent one, that she is spoken for and her voice cannot be heard. Suner goes
on to argue that women are represented as they are seen by men, and that
even where the stories revolve around female characters ‘filmmakers seem to
shy away from foregrounding’ these gender-related issues.2 In a similar line of
argument, Özlem Güçlü argues that silent female characters are ‘either used
as a vehicle for the male characters’ speech and stories, or rendered an erotic
or a suffering body in order to enjoy male gaze or affirm male mastery’.3 These
arguments are accurate in their judgements of the representation of women in
new Turkish cinema. Indeed, there have been a number of silent women narratives
since the 1990s. Serdar Akar’s Gemide (On Board, 1998) presents ‘silenced’
characters who do not even show reaction when raped. In Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s
Uzak (Distant, 2002), Bahar expresses her emotions through remaining silent.
In Mutluluk (Bliss) (Abdullah Oǧuz, 2007), Meryem cannot speak out the
truth about being raped. The Keje character in Yavuz Turgul’s 1996 film
Eşkiya (The Bandit) is mute, just like one of the female characters in Zeki
Demirkubuz’s 1997 film Masumiyet (Innocence). What underlies the silence
of all these characters are different levels and types of violence – verbal,
physical, emotional. Yet silence may have different connotations, for example,
one needs to consider the difference between ‘choosing’ to be silent and being
‘silenced’ in order to make sense of these different meanings. Silence may signify
a choice, a resistance, even a type of rejection of speaking the language of the
male. As Suner provocatively writes, when women speak ‘the untranslatable
to the male dominated language’ by remaining silent, silence turns into a form of
expression.4 Masumiyet and Eşkiya’s mute characters are cases in point. Their
silence is the cause of their husbands’ despair. However, when women use
silence strategically as a form of resistance, they seem to suffer from physical
violence. The woman in Masumiyet is mute because she was accidentally shot
 Women and New Turkish Cinema 109
by her own brother as he was trying to kill the man she was having an affair
with, in the name of protecting the family ‘honour’.
The concept of ‘honour’ is a recurring motif in Turkish films: there are
countless narratives that treat the concept as an integral part of representing
womanhood or relationships between men and women. Since the 1990s there
has been an increase in the number of films that attempt to critique the con-
cept as well as the practice of so-called honour-based violence. This is one
topic I have touched upon in the analysis of films in the previous chapters, yet
here it is useful and meaningful to. expand upon the representation of honour
crimes in recent films. Handan Ipekçi’s Saklı Yüzler (Hidden Faces) (2007)
focuses on honour crimes in South-East Turkey. Aydın Sayman’s Janjan
(2007) and Oǧuz’s Mutluluk are recent films directly related to the issue of
honour-based violence. Eylem Kaftan’s 2005 bio-documentary Vendetta Song
is also a case in point. It is a significant film that calls for an analysis of its
exploration of honour killings, gender inequalities, the traditional practice of
arranged marriages and the semi-feudal social structure in Eastern Turkey
within the context of Islamic tradition. The film also problematises the relations
of the West to the East (both within and outside Turkey) as the narrative . is
structured as the travelogue of a woman travelling from Canada to Istanbul
and then from Western to Eastern Turkey.
Religious values are significant determinants of cultural practices and customs:
honour crimes may not be religious but they are certainly religiously practised.
Vendetta Song problematises the concepts of Islam and tradition while at the
same time positioning honour crimes within an Eastern context. The film, on
the one hand, critiques gender politics through its feminist discourse and, on
the other, attempts to deconstruct this misperceived connection between Islam
and violence against women. While doing so, it also places emphasis on tra-
dition rather than religion. The tradition is a patriarchal tradition – and this
is what the film focuses on. However, there is an issue whether the film,
although it appears to want to draw a distinction between tradition and religion,
succeeds in doing so clearly or consistently.
It is thought-provoking to question how and whether there is a necessary or
contingent connection between culture, patriarchy and Islam. In patriarchal
regimes honour is typically perceived to reside in the bodies and sexuality of
women; protecting this honour and policing female activities relating to mar-
riage, sexuality and love are seen as the primary roles of the male or the male
members of a family or a community. This idea of regulating women’s lives,
experiences and sexuality is common in patriarchal discourses surrounding a
society.
Vendetta Song focuses on the reasons for the murder of Güzide while
addressing issues about tradition, patriarchy and Islam. It acknowledges sexual
difference as crucial in understanding these concepts. Aesthetic choices play
an important role in associating Islam with violence against women. A pivotal
scene in the film is when the director goes to the City Records Office to find
out about Güzide. The images are followed by the sound of the call for
110 Women and New Turkish Cinema
prayer, as we are told that most girls in Eastern villages are not considered
worth registering and that there are no records for Güzide. This instantly
suggests that this patriarchal convention is related to religious practices.
In another crucial scene in the film, patriarchy is overtly celebrated by one
of the interviewees. The director’s driver, who is also from Eastern Turkey,
talks about his two wives. The director asks his opinion about arranged mar-
riage and love, immediately after we see him praying in the middle of a field.
This act of prayer (five times a day) is a signifier of Islam, and it is in this
context that we are invited to consider what the driver says, as he is asked
‘what if your wife, who was thirteen when you married her, falls in love with
another man?’ He answers: ‘Such a thing cannot possibly happen. She will be
writing her own death sentence with her own hands. To tell you frankly [he
smiles], it is men who rule here. Men are in charge here. They have the voice.’
This overtly announces the effect of patriarchal tradition, which determines
social and cultural practices as much as religion does. Women’s silence is
another issue that is relevant to this discourse. This opens a space to critique
the idea that men have the right to talk, to decide, to say the last word;
whereas women are not perceived to be speaking subjects.
The film also focuses on the practice of bride price. The director is presented
with a headscarf by the daughter of the family she stayed with during the
filming of some scenes. Until this point we have not seen her in a photograph;
as her frozen image appears on the screen she tells us that she ‘felt at once
degraded, yet strangely flattered’ when she was seen with her headscarf by
some men in the village, who thought her bride price would be equivalent to
‘one thousand sheep, one hundred Kalashnikovs, fifty camels and ten horses’.
In her own photo, then, she becomes static, hypostatised, reified, frozen: she
becomes an object of the camera as soon as she is confirmed as a ‘member of
the family’. This scene is crucial in the construction of a feminist critique of
this patriarchal customary practice that commodifies women.
Vendetta Song is an interesting example, which adopts a complex and critical
stance on the question of ‘honour’. The biographical structure – common to
many feminist documentary films – potentially solicits identification between
the female viewer and her on-screen protagonists. With an emphasis on the
lasting significance of the past, the film critiques the present. The power of the film
emerges from its documentation of the reality of a collective and gendered
oppression. As Dicle Koǧacıoǧlu wrote, ‘the analytical framework for exam-
ining honour crimes and other so called traditional practices should shift
from a focus on “tradition” or “culture” to an examination of the effects of
various institutional structures’.5 For this reason, it is crucial to examine why
and how (through which discourses) honour crime is an Islamic phenomenon
or Eastern practice. Exploring this issue at the level of filmic representation,
in the context of Vendetta Song, demonstrates the ways in which codes of
patriarchal discourse are internalised within Turkish society.
A recent film that challenges the idea of women as silent images and absent
characters without agency is Yusuf Pirhasan’s 2012 film Kurtuluş Son Durak
 Women and New Turkish Cinema 111
(Kurtuluş Last Stop).6 It is a dark comedy that focuses on the issue of violence
against women. It tells the stories of six women living in different flats of an
apartment building and how they use their solidarity to fight against violence.
The protagonists of the film are intended to be representative of Turkey as
they come from different ethnic, religious, cultural and economic back-
grounds. This is suggestive of the fact that the concept of Turkish woman is
not and should not be considered to be a single entity. Yet what brings these
different women together is the different forms of violence they face from
men. Indeed, violence resonates at different levels: verbal, physical and psy-
chological. What is also thought-provoking is that none of these characters
are seen outside the private domain. Eylem (Belçim Bilgin) attempts to
commit suicide after being dumped and betrayed by her fiancé; Vartanuş
(Demet Akbaǧ) is devoted to looking after her ill father and does not have a
life of her own; Goncagül (Nihal Yalçın) is depressed of having an affair with
a married macho man; Gülnur (Ayten Soykök) gets beaten by her husband
every night; Tülay (Damla Sönmez) is depressed after seeing her mother
being beaten; and finally Füsun (Asuman Dabak) is an optimistic character
married to a man who is stereotypically represented as weak. What is visible
throughout the film is an effort to engage in self-expression in a radical
and communal manner. The film challenges discourses around womanhood and
violence against women through the use of comedy. The narrative presents a
positive transgression of gender norms and enables the characters to articu-
late personal issues around violence in the public sphere, particularly towards
the end of the film when the media suddenly becomes interested in this group
of women’s activities within the apartment block. The female transgression
and solidarity between women in the film allow them to take the subject
position as they critique patriarchal values and political and institutional
structures that oppress them. The generic choice here is of crucial importance
as the film uses comedy as a strategy. In doing so it makes its main message
more accessible to the mass audience. The film is a promising step in new
Turkish cinema’s representation of women as it presents a shift from patriarchal,
constraining and violent spaces to a shared space of female collectivity and
solidarity. It is also a positive step because a change at the level of representation
of women is essential in making a corresponding change in reality.
A change in the gender of the filmmaker may or may not make a difference
in representing women, however the presence and visibility of women film-
makers in Turkish cinema is worth examining in more detail given that film
direction remains a male-dominated field. Discourses that shape gender relations
in the film industry are worth scrutiny as inequalities persist. Although by
writing about single female directors one runs the risk of marginalizing them,
it is of crucial importance to celebrate the works and contributions of women.
Contemporary women filmmakers tend to focus on a range of issues around
political, cultural and ethnic identity and memory. Tomris Giritlioǧlu’s Salkım
Hanım’ın Taneleri (Mrs Salkım’s Diamonds, 1999) has received a number of
awards nationally for its controversial topic of the non-Muslim population in
112 Women and New Turkish Cinema
Turkey in the 1940s. At the heart of Yeşim Ustaoǧlu’s Bulutları Beklerken
(Waiting for the Clouds, 2004) are Greek and Turkish identities presented through
the stories of women in Northern Turkey; in Güneşe Yolculuk (Journey to the
Sun,1999) it is the Kurdish identity that is the centre of the narrative. In
Pandora’nın Kutusu (Pandora’s Box, 2008) Ustaoǧlu focuses on the concepts
of memory, identity and motherhood. Sırtlarındaki Hayat (Life on Their
Shoulders, 2004) is her only documentary to date. The film documents the
difficult working conditions for women in Northern Turkey, in the Black Sea
region. It also sheds light on a number . of problems including child brides,
health issues and illiteracy. Handan Ipekçi’s successful film Büyük Adam
Küçük Aşk (Big Man Little Love, 2001) is about the relationship between a
Kurdish child and a Turkish pensioner. The film was Turkey’s submission to
the Academy Awards Best Foreign Language Film category.
The women of Turkey have been the theme of several documentaries made
by and for women outside Turkey. A number of films have been made and
distributed by Women Make Movies over the last few years. These films tend to
focus on the relationship between religion and women’s place in Islam in Turkey.
Olga Nakkas’ 2006 film Women of Turkey: Between Islam and Secularism, for
instance, draws on interviews with women and examines the individual and
political resonance of the headscarf and veiling. The film presents Turkish
women not as a single entity but as individuals coming from a variety of
cultural, educational and professional backgrounds. Binnur Karaevli’s 2009
film Voices Unveiled: Turkish Women Who Dare provides a critique of the ban
on wearing headscarves at the same time as touching upon issues including
female officers in mosques, violence in the name of Islam, lack of education
and the economic dependence of women, women and Turkey’s EU candidacy,
and the tensions inherent between Muslim and Western cultures. What is
thought-provoking is that all the interviewees in the film are intellectual,
educated Turkish women, who can also speak English and articulate them-
selves clearly. Alba Sotorra’s 2009 film Unveiled Views: Muslim Women
Artists Speak Out focuses on the life of five Muslim women, one of whom is a
Turkish human rights lawyer. In the 2010 film The Price of Sex, director
Mimi Chakarova goes undercover as a prostitute in Turkey. Through a series of
interviews with pimps, customers and prostitutes she reveals contradictions
between religious values and the selling and consumption of women’s bodies
for sex. Examining these films in order to understand the relationship between
women and Turkish cinema at the level of gender politics, cultural identity and
visual representation, is certainly another area of potentially fruitful research.

Conclusion
In this volume, my overall objective was to examine the relationship between
feminism and cinema through a focus on the women’s movement and women’s
films of the 1980s. In doing so, I argued that the films of the 1980s made
women’s issues visible at the level of visual representation thereby opening a
 Women and New Turkish Cinema 113
space for a critique. In analysing the nature and implications of women con-
structed in Turkish cinema and the issues addressed by the women’s movement,
I argued that analytically, theoretically and historically, there are important
connections between the two sets of practices. This is why I concentrated on a
critique of the socially constructed nature of representations of women. The
examination of women in the socio-political and cultural context of the
women’s movement led to the formulation and statement of my central argu-
ment: that the enforced depoliticisation introduced after the 1980 coup was
responsible for uniting feminism and film in 1980s’ Turkey. The nature of the
representation of women in the 1980s illustrated that, despite occasional
appearances to the contrary, films in the 1980s continued to present women as
having a necessarily limited range of choices in a patriarchal society, and they
remained ambivalent about whether women are ultimately capable of exer-
cising independent agency. Indeed, women’s films of the 1980s do not merely
reflect some unitary patriarchal logic but are also sites of power relations and
political processes through which gender hierarchies are both created and
contested. Although these films empower women by dealing with women’s
issues, at the same time they marginalise women in their narratives. Turkish
cinema, in this sense, reveals powerful cross-currents producing complex and
often contradictory effects, frequently emerging as both a reinforcement and
subversion of male dominance in different narratives and contexts. However,
despite these complexities, gender asymmetry in Turkish society continues to
be produced, represented and reproduced through filmic texts.
Of course, no study can be exhaustive: every study always suggests other
lines of enquiry and research paths to tread. This volume offers a textual
reading of the films under consideration, but it would be revealing to analyse
the extra-textual elements of the films, including marketing, promotion and
critical reception. Equally, further examination of female filmmakers in
Turkey would be a crucial and fruitful arena for further research.
In talking about her experiences. of depoliticisation, torture and escape in
the same interview, a member of Ilerici Kadınlar Derneǧi (The Association of
Advanced Women), Nuran Sayman, told the story of giving birth to her
second child in 1982.7 When the time came for her to give birth, her friends
and husband were unable to help in taking her to hospital as they were still
being pursued by the police for their political activities. A helpful dolmuş
driver took her to the hospital and waited until after the birth.8 When the nurse
came to Mrs Sayman to say that her husband was happy to hear that she had
given birth, she could say nothing because she could not reveal that the driver
was not her husband. She named her child Savaş – war. Her first child had
been named Barış – peace. In such ways, names reflect changing realities and
the personal encapsulates the political.9
In 1986 Mrs Sayman procured an illegal passport to enable her go to Germany.
She had to lie to her son and say that her father was in Saudi Arabia where
he had found work. In their documents her sons had false first names but the
same surname, even though they had different fathers. At the time, Barış was
114 Women and New Turkish Cinema
nine and Savaş four. As they travelled on the train, Nuran thought it would
be wise to tell the older child what the names written on the passports were
and she waited for a moment when his brother was sleeping to tell him. As
she was doing so, Savaş suddenly woke up and said ‘I want another name
too’. After the trauma of the flight to Germany, the children no longer
wanted to know their parents’ real names as they did not want to be confused
about their identity.
These are typical stories.10 How personal stories of this sort are represented in
the growing body of films, particularly since 2000, focusing on the 1980 coup’s
effects on individuals’ lives, would be worthy of analysis in future research.
These films call for an exploration of the relationship between cultural memory
and Turkish cinema. In view of the idea that cinema presents a medium of
memory, it is important to look at how the process of depoliticisation is still
effective in the representations of the coup in recent films including Babam
ve Oǧlum (My Father and My Son) (Çaǧan Irmak, 2005), Beynelmilel (The
International) (Sırrı Süreyya Önder and Muharrem Gülmez, 2006), The Edge
of Heaven (Fatih Akın, 2007) and O … Çocukları (Bastards) (Murat Saraçoǧlu,
2008). These films struggle creatively with the dilemma of how to represent
experiences of atrocity (particularly torture applied to leftists) that defy the
victim’s ability to know, narrate and depict them. What brings these films
together is their use of children. These films use the child to depoliticise their
narratives. Yet they resurrect and recreate while remembering a traumatic past.
In a recent interview, the director of Babam ve Oǧlum, Irmak, stated that
his concern was to narrate a story rather than make a political statement,
despite the political nature of the subject.11 In this film, Deniz is born in the
immediate aftermath of the coup and the story is based around how he will
survive when his father dies as a consequence of torture. Beynelmilel’s young
Gülendam loses her boyfriend when he is shot by the local military for his
political activities in 1982. In The Edge of Heaven, Yeter has emigrated to
Germany and has been working as a prostitute, leaving her young daughter,
Ayten, in Turkey after the death of her politically active husband. Ayten is
imprisoned for following her father’s path and becoming politically active as a
student. O … Çocukları is based on children whose parents disappear after
the coup and who are placed in an ex-brothel. The film focuses on a particular
girl whose mother has to escape secretly to Italy with a fake passport, and
whose father is tortured to death. It is stories such as these that suggest the
continuing need to examine the relationship between depoliticisation and
cultural memory in the context of recent and contemporary films.
Another fruitful area of research would be to look at the representation of
women in recent films that take the 1980s as their focus. In the above films, it
is clear that women are represented as rounded and complex individuals
(similar to the representations in the films of the 1980s) and are still repre-
sented as forcibly deserted by their husbands who were tortured. As implied
in one of her dialogues, The Edge of Heaven’s Yeter (the character’s name is
chosen intentionally to mean ‘enough’) becomes a prostitute after the loss of
 Women and New Turkish Cinema 115
her husband. Beynelmilel’s Gülendam suffers the loss of her boyfriend.
In O … Çocukları, Hatice is shot by her own 15-year-old son, who has been
assigned the role of restoring the family ‘honour’.
Although for analytical purposes, this volume has made generalisations
about ‘Turkish women’, it should, of course, be remembered that ‘the typical
Turkish woman’ does not exist. In analysing the films I have alluded to the
distinctions and differences between women of different classes and back-
grounds – urban or rural, or from different regions. However, there are
important areas and topics for future research embedded in these distinctions
and their significance. To develop this point: thinking and writing about
Turkish women (and this is, of course, true of representations of ‘women’ in
general) as though they are one single body is deeply problematic. Some
women in Turkey, for example, may not even be aware of what the women’s
movement is (not only in the East but also in the West). Women in Turkey are
different in their image, in their awareness of womanhood and in their level of
consciousness of their rights. Such women face a powerful and constraining
culture in which virginity testing, honour killings and arranged marriages still
exist. Examination of these contemporary debates is a potentially fruitful
avenue for continued feminist research in Turkey. As articulated in Chapter 1,
although women in the 1980s failed to transform society to the degree to
which they aspired, they contributed to the establishment of a liberal civil
society where groups could raise power. Women’s contribution was significant
not only because of their impact on policies, but because their activism chal-
lenged the prevailing understanding of tutelary democracy at the level of
discourse. Women’s political activism offered an alternative understanding of
democracy in civil rights and liberties. What remained was to vocalise femin-
ist demands through political channels where they could move from paper to
practice and be translated into outcomes. I would argue that this is still the
case: inherent tensions and contradictions between gender practices and
ideologies remain, yet these were recognised within the 1980s’ women’s
movement and made more visible in the films of the 1980s.
Filmography1

Aaah Belinda! (Atıf Yılmaz, 1986)

Acı Hayat (Metin Erksan, 1962)
Adı Vasfiye. (Atıf Yılmaz, 1985)
Ah Güzel Istanbul (Ömer Kavur, 1981)
Ana Kucaǧı (Ömer Lütfi Akad, 1959)
Arkadaş (Yılmaz Güney, 1974)
Asiye Nasıl Kurtulur? (Atıf Yılmaz, 1986)
Ateşten Gömlek (Muhsin Ertuǧrul, 1923)
Aysel: Bataklı Damın Kızı (Muhsin Ertuǧrul, 1934)
Babam ve Oǧlum (Çaǧan Irmak, 2005)
Bedrana (Süreyya Duru, 1974)
Beyaz Mendil (Ömer Lütfi Akad, 1955)
Beynelmilel (Sırrı Süreyya Önder and Muharrem Gülmez, 2006)
Bir Kadın Bir Hayat (Feyzi Tuna, 1985)
Bir Şoförün Gizli Defteri (Atıf Yılmaz, 1958)
Bir Yudum Sevgi (Atıf Yılmaz, 1984)
Bulutları Beklerken (Yeşim Ustaoǧlu,
. 2004)
Büyük Adam Küçük Aşk (Handan Ipekçi, 2001)
Delikan (Atıf Yılmaz, 1981)
Diyet (Ömer Lütfi Akad, 1974)
Dönüş (Türkan Şoray, 1972)
Dul Bir Kadın (Atıf Yılmaz, 1985)
Düǧün (Ömer Lütfi Akad, 1937)
Dünden Sonra Yarından Önce (Nisan Akman, 1987)
Erkek Ali (Atıf Yılmaz, 1965)
Eşkiya (Yavuz Turgul,1996)
Evcilik Oyunu (Halit Refiǧ, 1964)
Fahriye Abla (Yavuz Turgul, 1984)
Fatmagül’ün Suçu Ne? (Süreyya Duru, 1986)
Firar (Şerif Gören, 1984)
Gelin (Ömer Lütfi Akad, 1973)
Gemide (Serdar Akar, 1998)
Gizli Duygular (Şerif Gören, 1984)
Göl (Ömer Kavur, 1982)
Gurbet Kuşları (Halit Refiǧ, 1964)
 Filmography 117
Güneşe Yolculuk (Yeşim Ustaoǧlu, 1999)
Hayallerim, Aşkım ve Sen (Atıf Yılmaz, 1987)
Hıçkırık
. (Atıf Yılmaz, 1953)
I.lk ve Son (Atıf Yılmaz, 1955)
I.lk Cinayeti/Altı Ölü Var (Ömer Lütfi Akad, 1953)
Istanbul’da Bir Facia-i Aşk (Muhsin Ertuǧrul, 1922)
Janjan (Aydın Sayman, 2007)
Kadın Severse (Atıf Yılmaz, 1955)
Kalbimin Şarkısı (Ömer Lütfi Akad, 1956)
Kanlı Feryat (Atıf Yılmaz, 1951)
Kanlı Nigar (Orhan Aksoy, 1977)
Kanun Namına (Ömer Lütfi Akad, 1952)
Kaşık Düşmanı (Bilge Olgaç, 1984)
Kırık Bir Aşk Hikayesi (Ömer Kavur, 1981)
Kırık Hayatlar (Halit Refiǧ, 1965)
Kurbaǧalar (Şerif Gören, 1985)
Kurtuluş Son Durak (Yusuf Pirhasan, 2012)
Kuyu (Metin Erksan, 1968)
Masumiyet (Zeki Demirkubuz, 1997)
Meçhul Kadın (Ömer Lütfi Akad, 1955)
Mine (Atıf Yılmaz, 1982)
Mutluluk (Abdullah Oǧuz, 2007)
Mürebbiye (Fehim, Ahmet, 1919)
O … Çocukları (Murat Saraçoǧlu, 2008)
Öldüren Şehir (Ömer Lütfi Akad, 1953)
Ölü Bir Deniz (Atıf Yılmaz, 1989)
Ölüm Perdesi (Atıf Yılmaz, 1960)
Pandora’nın Kutusu (Yeşim Ustaoǧlu, 2008)
Pençe (Sedat Simavi, 1917)
.
Saklı Yüzler (Handan Ipekçi, 2007)
Salkım Hanım’ın Taneleri (Tomris Giritlioǧlu, 1999)
Şalvar Davası (Kartal Tibet, 1983)
Sayılı Dakikalar (Atıf Yılmaz, 1965)
Şehirdeki Yabancı (Halit Refiǧ, 1962)
Şehvet Kurbanı (Muhsin Ertuǧrul, 1940)
Selvi Boylum Al Yazmalım (Atıf Yılmaz, 1978)
Seni Kalbime Gömdüm (Feyzi Tuna, 1982)
Seni Seviyorum (Atıf Yılmaz, 1983)
Sevmek Zamanı (Metin Erksan, 1965)
Sırtlarındaki Hayat (Yeşim Ustaoǧlu, 2004)
Susuz Yaz (Metin Erksan, 1964)
Sürü (Zeki Ökten, 1978)
The Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akın, 2007)
The Price of Sex (Mimi Chakarova, 2010)
Unveiled Views: Muslim Women Artists Speak Out (Alba Sotorra, 2009)
Uzak (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2002)
Vahşi Bir Kız Sevdim (Ömer Lütfi Akad, 1954)
Ve Recep Ve Zehra Ve Ayşe (Yusuf Kurçenli, 1983)
Vendetta Song (Eylem Kaftan, 2005)
118 Filmography
Vesikalı Yarim (Ömer Lütfi Akad, 1968)
Voices Unveiled: Turkish Women Who Dare (Binnur Karaevli, 2009)
Women of Turkey: Between Islam and Secularism (Olga Nakkas, 2006)
Yatık Emine (Ömer Kavur, 1974)
Yetim Yavrular
. (Memduh Ün, 1955)
Zeynep’in Intikamı (Memduh Ün, 1956)
Notes

Introduction
1 I shall use the English versions of articles in question where available.
2 Şirin Tekeli, ‘Emergence of the Feminist Movement in Turkey’, in Drude Dahlerup
(ed.) The New Women’s Movement: Feminism and Political Power in Europe and
the USA. London: Sage, 1986, p. 179.
3 Ibid., p. 195.
4 Ibid., p. 195.
5 Deniz Kandiyoti, ‘Emancipated but Unliberated? Reflections on the Turkish Case’,
Feminist Studies 13 (2) (Summer 1987), p. 324.
6 Yeşim Arat, ‘Women’s Movement of the 1980s in Turkey: Radical Outcome of
Liberal Kemalism?’ in Fatma Müge Göcek and Shiva Balaghi (eds) Reconstructing
Gender in the Middle East: Tradition, Identity and Power. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1994, p. 101.
7 Ibid., p. 110.
8 Şirin Tekeli, ‘Women in Turkey in the 1980s’, in Şirin Tekeli (ed.) Women in
Modern Turkish Society: A Reader. London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1995,
pp. 16–17. The book may be found in Turkish: . Şirin
. Tekeli (ed.) 1980’ler
Türkiye’sinde Kadın Bakış Açısından Kadınlar. Istanbul: Iletişim Yayınları, 1993.
9 Ibid., p. 13.
10 Yeşim Arat, ‘The Project of Modernity and Women in Turkey’, in Sibel Bozdoǧan
and Reşat Kasaba (eds) Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey.
Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1997, p. 10.
11 Yeşim Arat, ‘Democracy and Women in Turkey: In Defence of Liberalism’, Social
Politics, 6 (3) (Fall 1999), p. 374.
12 Aksu Bora .and Asena . Günal, 90’larda Turkiye’de Feminizm (Feminism in Turkey
in the 90s). Istanbul: Iletişim Yayınları, 2002, p. 13.
13 Ibid., p. 15.
14 Faruk Kalkan and Ragıp Taranç, . 1980 Sonrası Türk Sinemasında Kadın (Women
in Turkish Cinema after 1980). Izmir: Ajans Tümer Yayınları, 1988. This book is a
hard-to-track-down resource as it is only available in Turkish and is out of print.
15 Fetay Soykan, Türk Sinemasında Kadın (Women in Turkish Cinema). Dokuz Eylül
Üniversitesi,
. Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Sahne ve Görüntü Sanatları Anabilim Dalı,
Izmir, 1990 (PhD thesis).
16 Ibid., p. 130.
17 Feyzan Nizam, 1980’li yıllarda Türk Sinemasında Kadın be Toplumsal Dayanakları
.
(Women and their Social Support in Turkish Cinema in the 1980s). .Istanbul
Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Radyo-Televizyon Anabilim Dalı, Istanbul,
1993 (PhD thesis).
120 Notes
.
18 Hilmi Maktav, 1980 Sonrasında Türkiye’de Yaşanan Ideolojik ve Kültürel Dönü-
şümlerin Türk Sinemasına Yansımaları (Reflections of Ideological and Cultural
Changes in Turkey post-1980 on Turkish Cinema). Dokuz . Eylül Üniversitesi, Sosyal
Bilimler Enstitüsü, Sinema-Televizyon Anasanat Dalı, Izmir, 1998 (PhD thesis). .
19 Şükran Esen, 80’ler Türkiye’sinde Sinema (Turkish Cinema in the 1980s). Istanbul:
Beta, 2000.
20 Asuman Suner, New Turkish Cinema: Belonging, Identity and Memory. London:
I. B. Tauris, 2010, p. 163. For a review article on this volume please see Atakav,
Eylem, ‘There are Ghosts in These Houses! New Turkish Cinema: Belonging,
Identity and Memory’, Inter Asia Cultural Studies, 12 (1), 2010.
21 Teresa de Lauretis, ‘Rethinking Women’s Cinema: Aesthetics and Feminist
Theory’, in Patricia Erens (ed.) Issues in Feminist Film Criticism. Indianapolis and
Bloomington: Indianapolis University Press, 1990, p. 288.
22 Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen, 16 (3), 1975, p. 9.
23 E. Ann Kaplan, Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera. London and New
York: Routledge, 1996, p. 24.
24 Zoe Dirse, ‘The Gender of the Gaze in Cinematography: A Woman With A Movie
Camera’, in Jacqueline Levitin, Judith Plessis and Valerie Raoul (eds) Women
Filmmakers: Refocusing. New York and London: Routledge, 2003, p. 436.
25 Alison Butler, Women’s Cinema: The Contested Screen. New York and London:
Wallflower, 2002, p. 4.
26 Kaplan, op. cit., p. 30.
27 Laura Mulvey, op. cit., pp. 6–18.
28 Claire Johnston, ‘Introduction’, in Claire Johnston (ed.) Notes on Women’s
Cinema. London: Society for Education in Film and Television, 1973, p. 2.
29 Annette Kuhn, ‘The Textual Politics’, in Patricia Erens (ed.) Issues in Feminist Film
Criticism. Indianapolis and Bloomington: Indianapolis University Press, 1990, p. 252.
30 Laura Mulvey, op. cit., p. 18.
31 Laura Mulvey, ‘Film, Feminism and the Avant-garde’, Framework, 10, pp. 3–10.
32 Teresa de Lauretis, Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1984, p. 8.
33 Anneke Smelik, And the Mirror Cracked: Feminist Cinema and Film Theory.
Basingstoke and New York, Palgrave, 1998, p. 3.
34 Kuhn, op. cit., p. 251.
35 Butler, op. cit., pp. 1–3. Butler also notes examples of this: ‘as in the case of
Maggie Greenwald, director of a hard-boiled pulp fiction, The Kill Off (1989), and
the cross-dressed feminist western The Ballad of Little Jo (1993)’. Alternatively, a
filmmaker may contribute significantly to women’s cinema and another cinema at
the same time, ‘as Julie Dash has done consistently, and particularly with Daughters
of the Dust (1991), a landmark within both women’s cinema and African-American
cinema’. Some of the most distinguished practitioners of women’s cinema have
deliberately distanced themselves from the notion, for professional and/or political
reasons, to avoid marginalisation or ideological controversy ‘as in the case of
Chantal Akerman, who despite her cult following among feminists, prefers to be seen
as an auteur like any other, or the many women directors in contemporary Iranian
cinema whose professional existence depends on avoiding ideological confrontation’.
36 Judith Mayne, The Woman at the Keyhole: Feminism and Women’s Cinema.
Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990, pp. 5–6.
37 De Lauretis, Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema, p. 15.
38 Butler, op. cit., pp. 27–8. Butler notes that the most obvious of these is the woman’s
film, a category which crosses a number of other genres, and which is defined by the
presence of a central female protagonist and a concern with specifically feminine
problems and experiences, for instance in Stella Dallas (1937), Leave Her to
Heaven (1945) and The Reckless Moment (1949).
 Notes 121
39 Jeanine Basinger, A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930–1960.
London and Hanover: University Press of New England, 1993, pp. 6–7.
40 Annette Kuhn, ‘Hollywood and New Women’s Cinema’, in Charlotte Brunsdon
(ed.) Films for Women. London: British Film Institute, 1986, pp. 125–6.
41 Annette Kuhn, ‘Women’s Genres’, in E. Ann Kaplan (ed.) Feminism and Film.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 443.
42 Pam Cook, ‘Melodrama and the Woman’s Picture’, in Sue Aspinall and Robert
Murphy (eds) BFI Dossier No. 18: Gainsborough Melodrama. London: British
Film Institute, 1983, p. 14.
43 Molly Haskell, ‘The Woman’s Film’, in Sue Thornham (ed.) Feminist Film Theory:
A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999, p. 20.
44 Maria La Place, ‘Producing and Consuming the Woman’s Film: Discursive Strug-
gle in New Voyager’, in Christine Gledhill (ed.) Home Is Where the Heart Is.
London: British Film Institute, 1987, p. 138.
45 Butler, op. cit.
46 Ibid.
47 Jane Sloan, ‘Contest and Renewal: Butler’s Women’s Cinema’, Film-Philosophy,
8 (17), May 2004. Further debates on minor cinema can be found in Butler,
op. cit., pp. 89–125.
48 Annette Kuhn, Women’s Pictures: Feminism and Cinema. London and New York:
Verso, 1994), p. 3. Kuhn also asserts that because of the forms of organisation it
has adopted and developed over the years, and also perhaps because of its cultural
and political marginality, feminism presents itself very clearly as a process, and is
therefore hard to pin down.
49 Ibid., p. 4.
50 Kuhn points out that to put forward the case for a feminist cultural politics is to
hold a notion that ideology has its own affectivity both in general within social
formations, and in particular with regard to sex/gender systems.

1 Women of Turkey: Feminism and the 1980s’ Women’s Movement

1 Robin George Collingwood, An Autobiography. London, Oxford, New York:
Oxford University Press, first issued as an Oxford University Press paperback in
1970, p. 97.
2 Here I use the terms ‘feminist movement’ and ‘women’s movement’ interchangeably. It
is, however, worth noting that not all women who we would naturally term ‘feminists’
identified themselves as feminists at the time.
3 State feminism can be explained as the capacity of the state to respond and act in
favour of women’s rights. In the context of Turkey, state feminism refers to policies
implemented on women by male politicians.
4 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex. London: Vintage, 1997, p. 632.
5 Mary Astell, ‘Reflections upon Marriage’, in Bridget Hill (ed.), The First English
Feminist. London: Gower Publishing Company, 1986, p. 76.
6 Cited in Rita M. Gross, Feminism and Religion. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996, p. 118.
7 Riffat Hassan, ‘Muslim Women and Post-Patriarchal Islam’, in Paula Cooey, William
Eakin and Jay McDaniel (eds), After Patriarchy: Feminist Transformations of the
World Religions. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991, pp. 54–7.
8 Ibid., pp. 44–54.
9 Haideh Moghissi, Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism: the Limits of Postmodern
Analysis. London: Zed Books, 1999, p. 38.
10 Ibid., p. 40.
11 Deniz Kandiyoti, Women, Islam and the State. Philadelphia: Temple University,
1991, p. 24.
122 Notes
12 Mervat Hatem, ‘Toward the Development of Post-Islamist and Post-Nationalist
Feminist Discourses in the Middle East’, in Judith Tucker (ed.), Arab Women: Old
Boundaries, New Frontiers. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993, pp. 31–3.
13 Zehra F. Arat, Deconstructing Images of the ‘Turkish Woman’. New York: Palgrave,
1999, pp. 6–7.
14 Jenny White, ‘State Feminism, Modernization and the Turkish Republican
Woman’, NWSA Journal 15 (3) (Fall 2003), p. 145.
15 Arat, op. cit., p. 1.
16 Ibid., p. 2.
17 White, op. cit., p. 148.
18 White provides a list of these changes in White, op. cit., pp. 148–55.
19 Şirin Tekeli, ‘The Turkish Women’s Movement: A Brief History of Success’,
retrieved from www.iemed.org/publicacions/quaderns/7/193_Tekeli.pdf (accessed 15
July, 2007), p. 194. The article was written in 2006 for the memorial day of Duygu
Asena, an author who was a prominent . figure in the feminist movement in Turkey.
20 Şirin Tekeli, Türkiye’de Feminist Ideolojinin Anlamı ve Sınırları
. Üzerine (On the
Meanings and Boundaries of Feminist Ideology in Turkey). Istanbul: Alan Yayınları,
1988, pp. 307–34 (my translation).
21 This point is further analysed in the sections of this chapter on the women’s
movement of the 1980s, and is supported with primary evidence (examples from
the activities of the women involved in the feminist movement).
22 Arat, op.
. cit., p. 25.
23 Pınar Ilkkaracan and Liz Amado Erçevik, ‘Human Rights Education as a Tool of
Grassroots Organizing and Social Transformation: a Case Study from Turkey’,
Intercultural Education 16 (2) (May 2005), p. 115.
24 This took place in July 2004.
25 Meltem Müftüler-Bac, ‘Turkish Women’s Predicament’, Women’s Studies International
Forum 22 (3) (1999), pp. 303–15.
26 This interview took place on 23 June, 2005.
27 Ramazan Gülendam, ‘The Development of a Feminist Discourse and Feminist
Writing in Turkey: 1970–1990’, Kadın 2 (1) (June 2001), pp. 93–116.
28 Şirin Tekeli, ‘Women in Turkey in the 1980s’, in Şirin Tekeli (ed.) Women in
Modern Turkish Society: A Reader. London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1995,
p. 13. Tekeli claims that these political groups were more ‘effective’ than actually
powerful. This distinction proves to be important in understanding the socialist
movement of 1970s’ Turkey.
29 It is interesting to note here that women at the time, working side-by-side with
men, used to be called ‘bacı’, which means ‘sister’, thereby eliminating the threat of
sexuality, as opposed to one of the Islamic arguments that women constituted a
threat to public order.
30 Tekeli, ‘Women in Turkey in the 1980s’, p. 13.
31 Gülendam, op. cit., p. 96.
32 This claim of feminism being the child of the coup was not the only argument that
was asserted by these scholars.
33 This is because the coup took place on 12 September.
34 Gülendam, op. cit., pp. 97–8.
35 Ayse Gelgeç-Gürpınar, ‘Women in the Twentieth Century: Modernity, Feminism
and Islam in Turkey’, retrieved from http://dspace.uta.edu/bitstream/10106/37/1/
umi-uta-1316.pdf (accessed 10 August, 2006), p. 62.
36 This was a series of political, legal, cultural, social and economic reforms that were
implemented to transform the young Republic of Turkey into a modern, demo-
cratic and secular nation-state. They were implemented under the leadership of
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in accordance with Kemalist ideology.
37 Gelgeç-Gürpınar, op. cit., pp. 63–4.
 Notes 123
38 Yeşim Arat, ‘Women’s Movement of the 1980s in Turkey: Radical Outcome of
Liberal Kemalism?’, in Fatma Müge Göcek and Shiva Balaghi (eds) Reconstructing
Gender in the Middle East: Tradition, Identity and Power. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1994, p. 107.
39 Arat argues that the movement was anti-authoritarian. Ibid., pp. 105–7.
40 Ibid., p. 107.
41 Yeşim Arat, ‘From Emancipation to Liberation: the Changing Role of Women in
Turkey’s Public Realm’, Journal of International Affairs 54 (1) (2000), p. 112.
42 Zuhal Yeşilyurt Gündüz, ‘The Women’s Movement in Turkey: from Tanzimat
towards EU’, Perceptions (Autumn 2004), p. 118 (italics original).
43 The term is suggested by Arat in Yeşim Arat, ‘Democracy and Women in Turkey:
In Defence of Liberalism’, Social Politics (Fall 1999), p. 374.
44 Here I adopt Sheila Rowbotham’s phrase from Sheila Rowbotham, Woman’s
Consciousness, Man’s World. Middlesex: Penguin, 1973, p. xi.
45 This argument also takes place in Arat, ‘Democracy and Women in Turkey’, p. 372.
46 The term ‘self-declared feminist’ is used here in order to refer to those who identify
themselves as such in pursuit of women’s liberation.
47 Yeşim Arat, ‘The Project of Modernity and Women in Turkey’, in Sibel Bozdoǧan
and Reşat Kasaba (eds) Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey.
Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1997, p. 103 (italics original).
48 Arat’s thought-provoking article looks at this issue in detail. Yeşim Arat, ‘From
Emancipation to Liberation: the Changing Role of Women in Turkey’s Public
Realm’, p. 113.
49 Deniz Kandiyoti, ‘Emancipated but Unliberated? Reflections on the Turkish Case’,
Feminist Studies 13 (2) (1987), p. 324.
50 Müftüler-Bac, op. cit., p. 304.
51 Arat, ‘The Project of Modernity and Women in Turkey’, pp. 105–6.
52 Yeşim Arat, ‘Democracy and Women in Turkey: in Defence of Liberalism’, Social
Politics (Fall 1999), p. 374 (italics original).
53 Tekeli, ‘Women in Turkey in the 1980s’, p. 15.
54 Aksu Bora and Asena Günal, 90’larda Türkiye’de Feminizm. Istabul: Iletisim
Yayınları, 2002, p. 12.
55 Ibid., p. 15.
56 Somut was a weekly journal, published by YAZKO. Bora and Günal write about
the opportunities Somut has given to women in detail in the introduction to their
book, Bora and . Günal, 90’larda Türkiye’de Feminizm, pp. 15–17.
57 Şule Torun, ‘Insanlar ve Ötekiler’ (Human Beings and the Others), Somut (4 February
1983), p. 4 (italics original; my translation).
58 Arat, ‘Women’s Movement of the 1980s in Turkey’, p. 103.
59 Müftüler-Bac, op. cit., p. 311.
60 Şirin Tekeli, ‘The Turkish Women’s Movement: A Brief History of Success’, p. 195.
It is relevant to note here that the judge was male.
61 Bora, a feminist activist and academic who took part in the movement of the
1980s, writes about this event in 1988, in Sosyalist Feminist Kaktüs (Socialist
Feminist Cactus), a journal which started being published in the same year, by
those women who had worked together in Women’s Circle and in Solidarity against
Battering. It. is also . cited in Aksu Bora and Asena Günal, 90’larda Türkiye’de
Feminizm. Istanbul: Iletişim Yayınları, 2002, p. 24 (my translation).
62 Hürriyet, 11 May 1987, cited in Aksu Bora and Asena Günal, 90’larda Türkiye’de
Feminizm, pp. 24–5 (italics are my emphasis).
63 Arat, ‘Women’s Movement of the 1980s in Turkey’, p. 105.
64 Yeşilyurt Gündüz, op. cit., p. 122.
65 Cited in Arat, ‘Women’s Movement of the 1980s in Turkey’, p. 106 (translated by
Arat).
124 Notes
66 Taken from the briefing of the Association. Cited in Arat ‘Women’s Movement of
the 1980s in Turkey’, p. 104 (translated by Arat).
67 Yeşilyurt Gündüz, op. cit., p. 119.
68 Bora and Günal, 90’larda Turkiye’de Feminizm, p. 26 (my translation).
69 Ibid., p. 27.
70 The Women’s Library and Information Centre is still active and provides
researchers (or simply those who are interested in the history of women or women’s
studies in general) with material including posters, books, magazines, journals,
private diaries, photos, etc.
71 Arat, ‘Democracy and Women in Turkey,’ p. 370.
72 This is also argued in Arat’s article, ‘Women’s Movement of the 1980s in Turkey’,
p. 110.
73 Arat, ‘Democracy and Women in Turkey’, p. 383.
74 Collingwood, op. cit., pp. 103–4.

2 Historically Framing Women and Turkish Cinema

1 All the resources used in this chapter (with the exception of Nezih Erdoǧan’s article
and Gönül Dönmez-Colin’s book) were in Turkish, thus it is important to note here
that all the quotations used are my translation. Also, the large majority of the films
cited in this chapter were not released in other countries apart from Turkey. I have,
thus, added my own translations of the titles to give an idea of their content.
Where available, I have added the original English titles of the films. .
2 Giovanni Scognamillo, Türk Sinema Tarihi (History of Turkish Cinema). Istanbul:
Kabalcı Yayınevi, 2003, p. 12.
3 For a detailed discussion on women and early cinema in Turkey, please see Canan
Balan, ‘Wondrous Pictures in Istanbul: From Cosmopolitanism to Nationalism’ in
Richard Abel, Giorgio Bertellini and Rob King (eds), Early Cinema and the
‘National’. New Barnet: John Libbey Publishing, 2008, pp. 172–85.
4 Atilla Dorsay and E. Ayça, ‘Bedia Muvahhit ile Konuşma’ (Interview with Bedia
Muvahhit), Yedinci Sanat, 9, 1973, p. 90.
5 Turkish film historian Giovanni Scognamillo notes that this film is one of the many
lost early films of Turkish cinema, and thus it is hard to comment on the impor-
tance of the film and how provocative it was considering society’s norms and
understandings about marriage at the time. Besides, we only know about the film
through the novel. For details, see Scognamillo, op. cit., p. 29.
6 Mahmut Tali Öngören, Sinemada Kadın ve Cinsellik Sömürüsü (Exploitation of
Women and Sexuality in Cinema). Ankara: Dayanışma Yayınları, 1982, pp. 42–3.
7 The film was an adaptation of Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar’s 1898 novel of the same
name.
8 Nezih Erdoǧan, ‘Narratives of Resistance: National Identity and Ambivalence in
the Turkish Melodrama between 1965 and 1975’, in Catherine Grant and Annette
Kuhn (eds), Screening
. World Cinema. Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2006, p. 145.
9 Nijat Özön,. Ilk Türk Sinemacısı: Fuat Uzkınay (The First Turkish Filmmaker: Fuat
Uzkınay). Istanbul: TSD Yayınları, 1970, cited in Giovanni Scognamillo, op. cit.,
p. 30.
10 Scognamillo, op. cit., p. 46.
11 The period, between 1923 and 1929 is called the theatrical cinema period, since it
was presided over by actors under the leadership of Muhsin Ertuǧrul, then Direc-
tor of the Conservatory. The phrase ‘theatrical cinema’ refers to the impact of
theatre on cinema at the time.
12 Agah Özgüç, Türk. Sinemasında Cinselliǧin Tarihi (The History of Sexuality in
Turkish Cinema). Istanbul: Broy Yayınları, 1988, p. 23.
 Notes 125
13 The film is an adaptation by Hasan Cemil Çambel, from Swedish author Selma
Lagerlöf ’s long story entitled Töser fran Stormytorpet.
14 Oǧuz
. Adanır, Sinemada Anlam ve Anlatım (Narration and Meaning in Cinema).
Izmir: Kitle Yayınları, 1994, p. 128.
15 Nilgün Abisel,
. Türk Sineması Üzerine Yazılar (Writings on Turkish Cinema).
Ankara: Imge Yayınevi, 1994, pp. 126–7. Also, Yeşilçam (Green Pine) is a metonym for
the Turkish film industry,
. similar to Hollywood. It is named after Yeşilçam Street in
one of the districts of Istanbul, where many actors, directors and studios were based.
16 Vildan Çetin focuses on how female characters are punished for causing trouble for
the male, in her unpublished master’s thesis. For details, see Vildan Çetin, . Türk
Sinemasında Kadın Yönetmenler (Women Directors . in Turkish Cinema). Istanbul:
Marmara Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Iletişim Bilimleri Anabilim Dalı,
2001, p. 107.
17 Başak Şenova, ‘Yeşilçam Melodramında Baştan Çıkarma’, 25.Kare, 20, p. 26 (italics
original).
18 Özgüç, op. cit., p. 34.
19 Ibid., pp. 34–6.
20 In fact, according to the statistics in Agah Özgüç’s Dictionary of Turkish Films,
male dominance is evident: between 1950 and 1959 the total number of films was
545, and the percentage of films directed by male directors was 99.45 per cent. For
details, see
. Agah Özgüç, Türk Filmleri Sözlüǧü: 1914–1973 (Dictionary of Turkish
Films). Istanbul: Sesam, 1998.
21 Abisel, op. cit., p. 136.
22 Ibid., p. 137.
23 According to Özgüç’s Dictionary of Turkish Films statistics, the number of films
produced between 1960 and 1969 rise to 1,710 from 545 films in the previous
decade.
24 It is not the intention of this study to focus on these films, which show a striking
resemblance to the sexually explicit films of 1970s’ Turkish cinema; instead the
centre of attention is those films which deal with women’s issues in this period.
25 Some other films worth mentioning here for their focus on women and women’s
lives are Atıf Yılmaz’s Ölüm Perdesi (The Curtain of Death) (1960), Sayılı Dakikalar
(Counting the Minutes) (1965) and Erkek Ali (The Male Ali) (1964); Metin Erksan’s
Susuz Yaz (Dry Summer) (1964), Sevmek Zamanı (Time to Love) (1965) and Acı
Hayat (Bitter Life) (1962).
26 Scognamillo, op. cit., p. 227.
27 Ibid., p. 228.
28 Ümit Aslanbay, ‘Ben Seyircinin Bacısıyım’ (‘I am the Sister of the Audience’),
Cumhuriyet . Dergi, 5 April 1987, pp. 6–7, cited in Şükran Esen, 80’ler Türkiye’sinde
Sinema. Istanbul: Beta, 2000, p. 30.
29 Abisel, op. cit., pp. 132–55.
30 Colour films were relatively new to the Turkish cinema industry at the time.
31 Abisel, op.cit., p. 114.
32 Esen, op. cit., p. 35.
33 As Esen also notes, these films were not censored at the time whereas films dealing
with social and political issues were in almost all cases censored. For details, see
Şükran Esen, op. cit., p. 36. Also, for a detailed discussion of 1970s’ Turkish
cinema, see Savaş Arslan, Cinema in Turkey: A New Critical History. Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. For a critical review of Arslan’s book,
please see Atakav. E., ‘Cinema in Turkey: a New Critical History’, Screen, 52 (4),
pp. 535–7.
34 Faruk Kalkan and Ragıp Taranç, . 1980 Sonrası Türk Sinemasında Kadın (Women
in Turkish Cinema after 1980). Izmir: Ajans Tümer Yayınları, 1988, pp. 76–8.
35 Çetin, op. cit., pp. 117–18.
126 Notes
36 Abisel, op. cit., p. 212.
37 Ibid., p. 212.
38 Tali Öngören, op. cit., p. 141.
39 Ibid., p. 143.
40 For statistics see Giovanni Scognamillo, op. cit., p. 211.
41 Esen,
. op. cit., p. 29.
42 Ibrahim Altınsay, ‘Sinemamızın Son Dönemi Üzerine Notlar I’ (‘Notes on the
Most Recent Period of our Cinema’), Yeni Olgu, September 1984, 3 (9), p. 48.
43 Adanır, op. cit., p. 150. .
44 Necla Algan, ‘80 Sonrasında Türk Sinemasında Estetik ve Ideoloji’ (‘Aesthetics
and Ideology in Turkish Cinema after 1980’), 25.Kare, 16, 1996, p. 5.
45 Zeynep Avcı, ‘Türk Sineması Kadına Bakıyor mu?’ (‘Is Turkish Cinema Looking
at Women?’), Videosinema, 5, Fall 1984, p. 66 (italics original).
46 Fetay Soykan, Türk Sinemasında Kadın (Women in Turkish Cinema). Dokuz Eylül
Üniversitesi,
. Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Sahne ve Görüntü Sanatları Anabilim Dalı,
Izmir, 1990 (PhD thesis), p. 124.
47 The term ‘arabesque films’ is named after arabesque music, which is a popular
genre in Turkey influenced by Arab popular and Islamic folk music. These films
have singers of arabesque music as their main characters and tell tragic life stories,
particularly related to migration from Eastern to Western Turkey.
48 These films were dubbed as ‘12th September films’ taking their name from the
coup. It is important to note here that even though these films were concerned with
the political, they were only able to address it in an indirect and oblique way
through the use of metaphors, in order to avoid censorship. These films are
important since they became the first films representing a period’s social and poli-
tical events. As Hilmi Maktav points out, in none of these films was the September
coup directly dealt with, instead the coup and its effects were told indirectly
through metaphors, and they were all fictional narratives. For a detailed analysis
of these films, see Hilmi Maktav, ‘Türk Sinemasında 12 Eylül’ (‘12th September in
Turkish Cinema’), Birikim, 138, Fall 2000, p. 79.
49 Orhan Kemal, a well-known author in Turkish literature, was interviewed by the
journal Yeni Sinema, 25, December, 1968.
50 There are a few exceptions to this, such as films of the 1970s dealing with social
and political issues, cited in the previous section.
51 Altınsay, op. cit., p. 21. In his remark Altınsay refers to the metaphors of heaven
(seven layers up) and hell (seven layers down) in order to emphasise the limits of
this binary opposition of the good and the bad.
52 Ibid., pp. 16–18. Altınsay provides a detailed account of the changes in film characters
after authors started writing film scripts.
53 This chapter deliberately does not focus on female filmmakers. For a detailed
analysis of women filmmakers in Turkey, see S. Ruken Öztürk, Sinemanın Dişil
Yüzü: Türkiye’de Kadın Yönetmenler . (The Female Face of Cinema: Women
Filmmakers in Turkish Cinema). Istanbul: Om Yayınevi, 2004.
54 This line of argument will be extended and evaluated in the following case study
chapters when it is applied to the films.
55 Altınsay, op. cit., p. 22. .
56 Nilüfer Göle, Modern Mahrem (The Forbidden Modern). Istanbul: Metis Yayınları,
1998, p. 174 (italics original).
57 Burçak Evren,
. Türk Sinemasında Yeni Konumlar (New Perspectives in Turkish
Cinema). Istanbul: Broy Yayınları, 1998, pp. 35–6.
58 Atilla Dorsay, ‘Sinemamızda Yeni Cinsellik ve Özgür Kadın Tipi’ (‘New Understanding
of Sexuality and Independent Woman in Our Cinema’), Gösteri, 49, December
1984,
. p. 58.
59 Ibrahim Altınsay, op. cit., p. 12.
 Notes 127
3 Representing Career Women
1 Fetay Soykan, Türk Sinemasında Kadın (Women in Turkish Cinema). Dokuz Eylül
Üniversitesi,
. Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Sahne ve Görüntü Sanatları Anabilim Dalı,
Izmir, 1990 (PhD thesis), p. 164.
2 Feyzan Nizam, ‘1980’li Yıllarda Türk Sinemasında Kadın ve Toplumsal Day-
anakları,’
. (‘Women and their Social Support in Turkish Cinema in the 1980s’).
I. stanbul Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Radyo-Televizyon Anabilim Dalı,
Istanbul, 1993, p. 164.
3 Semire Ruken Öztürk, Sinemanın Dişil Yüzü: Türkiye’de Kadın . Yönetmenler (The
Feminine Side of Cinema: Women Filmmakers in Turkey). Istanbul: Om Yayınevi,
2004, p. 175.
4 Here, Tzvetan Todorov’s narrative theory is applied to the film. For further details
of the theory, see Tzvetan Todorov, Genres in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990.
5 Jeanine Basinger, A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women 1930–1960.
London: Chatto and Windus, 1994, p. 358.
6 Margaret Adams, ‘The Compassion Trap’, in Vivian Gornick and Barbara
K. Moran (eds) Woman in Sexist Society. New York: Basic Books, 1972, p. 556.
7 Hale Cihan Bolak, ‘Towards a Conceptualization of Marital Power Dynamics:
Women Breadwinners and Working Class Households in Turkey,’ in Şirin Tekeli
(ed.) Women in Modern Turkish Society: A Reader. London and New Jersey: Zed
Books, 1995, p. 179.
8 This argument is also pointed out by Hilmi Maktav in his article. Hilmi Maktav,
‘Türk Sinemasında 12 Eylül’ (‘12th September in Turkish Cinema’), Birikim, 138,
Fall 2000, p. 228.
9 In fact, on 17 May 1987, a march was organised by feminists from various groups
to voice a demand related exclusively to themselves and their bodies. As recorded
by Şahika Yüksel, ‘after the march, which caused a stir among women, a decision
was taken to start a special campaign about this issue’. The Campaign against
Battering was born. Şahika Yüksel, ‘A Comparison of Violent and Non-violent
Families’, in Şirin Tekeli (ed.) Women in Modern Turkish Society: A Reader.
London and New . Jersey: Zed Books, 1995, p. 281.
10 Emine Onaran Incirlioǧlu, ‘Images of Village Women in Turkey’, in Zehra F. Arat
(ed.) Deconstructing Images of the ‘Turkish Woman’. New York: Palgrave, 1999, p. 219.
11 Ibid., p. 218.
12 Ibid., p. 219.
13 Öztürk, op. cit., p. 175.
14 Ibid., p. 175.

4 Representing Female Desire and Subjectivity

1 The director of Mine, Atıf Yılmaz, is quoted in Gönül Dönmez-Colin, Women,
Islam and Cinema. London: Reaktion Books, 2004, pp. 140–1.
2 Atilla Dorsay, ‘Temiz ve Özenli Bir Çalışma’ (‘A Neat Piece of Work’), Cumhuriyet,
24 January
. 1986, cited in Kalkan F. And Taranç R., 1980 Sonrası Türk Sinemasında
Kadın. Izmir: Ajans Tümer Yayınları, 1988, p. 101.
3 Fetay Soykan, Türk Sinemasında Kadın (Women in Turkish Cinema). Dokuz Eylül
Üniversitesi,
. Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Sahne ve Görüntü Sanatları Anabilim Dalı,
Izmir, 1990 (PhD thesis), p. 135. .
4 Maktav, H., 1980 Sonrasında Türkiye’de Yaşanan Ideolojik ve Kültürel Dönü-
şümlerin Türk Sinemasına Yansımaları. Dokuz. Eylül Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler
Enstitüsü, Sinema-Televizyon Anasanat Dalı, Izmir, 1998 (PhD thesis), p. 231.
128 Notes
5 Kalkan and Taranç, op. cit., p. 124.
6 Alper Fidaner, ‘Sinema Kadına Bakıyor’ (‘The Cinema is Looking at Women’),
Yarın,41, June 1985, p. 11, cited in Fetay Soykan, op. cit., p. 145.
7 It is important to remember the socio-political conditions in Turkey at the time
and the effects of depoliticisation. This film, one may argue, exemplifies the way
filmmakers dealt with highly political issues – in this case feminist issues – as if
they were non-political topics.
8 Other examples of films that use the themes of sexuality and independent woman
are Delikan, Seni Seviyorum, Bir Yudum Sevgi, Fahriye Abla, Şalvar Davası, Kaşık
Düşmanı, Firar, Gizli Duygular and Kurbaǧalar. .
9 Giovanni Scognamillo, Türk Sinema Tarihi (History of Turkish Cinema). Istanbul:
Kabalcı Yayınevi, 2003, p. 212 (italics original).
10 Ibid., p. 185.
11 Dönmez-Colin, op. cit., pp. 138–9 (italics original).
12 Mine’s only other friend seems to be the books which are given to her by Perihan.
Throughout the film, she communicates her feelings and ideas in the voiceovers
while she is shown reading books.
13 Dönmez-Colin,
. op. cit., p. 139.
14 Ibrahim Altınsay, ‘Sinemamızın Son Dönemi Üzerine Notlar I’ (‘Notes on the
Most Recent Period of our Cinema’), Yeni Olgu, September 1984, 3 (9), p. 22.
15 It is tradition in Turkey for the family of the man to pay a visit to the house of the
woman if he wants to marry her. During this ritual, in which he (or his father)
must ask for permission from the father of the woman, she is obliged to serve
coffee to the man when the fathers agree to the marriage.
16 It is interesting that she always reads at night when she is away from her husband,
in another room. This suggests that her marriage does not allow her to read and
learn during the daytime. Moreover, it may refer to the husband’s attitude towards
reading and his discontent about his wife’s intellectuality.
17 Here, I am adopting the phrase from Carole Pateman’s theory of ‘the sexual contract’.
For details, please see Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract. Cambridge: Polity
Press, 1994. It is important to note here that Mine and Cemil do not have any
children. This suggests that Mine has been protecting herself from getting pregnant.
Until the rape scene, there does not seem to be any form of physical violence
towards Mine by Cemil.
18 A similar rape scene is discussed in Anneke Smelik’s analysis of Marion Hänsel’s
film Dust. In fact, her analysis is helpful in looking at the rape scene in Mine. It is
available in Anneke Smelik, And the Mirror Cracked: Feminist Cinema and Film
Theory. Basingstoke and New York, Palgrave, 1998, pp. 70–1. Here, I adopt some
of the phrases Smelik uses in her description and analysis.
19 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex. London: Vintage, 1997 [1949], p. 403.
20 Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Deve-
lopment. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press,
1982, p. 16.
21 A similar case reoccurs in a dialogue between Cemil and Mine, in another scene.
When the two are arguing, Mine makes is clear in her words that she is protecting
her honour and chastity for her own self not for her husband. She says: ‘If you ask
about my chastity, I am protecting it for my own, not because I am scared of you.’
22 Gilligan, op. cit., p. 16.
23 The idea of a goddess to define Mine’s position in relation to these men is under-
lined in one of the young man’s secret letters (poems) to her which reads: ‘You are
like a fragile and elegant flower looking from the window, complaining about
darkness and cold/ Let us run away together and leave this village/ won’t the rail-
way take us to the spring?’ This poem confirms that the villagers are aware of
Mine’s unhappiness in her marriage, thus want to possess her themselves. This also
 Notes 129
refers to the idea that women are not and cannot be alone or free from men in a
sexist environment such as this one.
24 Asuman Suner, Hayalet Ev: Yeni Türk Sinemasında Aidiyet, Kimlik ve Bellek
. (The
Ghost House: Belonging, Indentity and Memory in Turkish Cinema). Istanbul:
Metis Yayınları, 2006, p. 200 (my translation and italics my emphasis).
25 De Beauvoir, op. cit., p. 454.
26 Ibid., p. 454.
27 Smelik, op. cit., p. 87.
28 Ibid., p. 72.
29 De Beauvoir, op. cit., p. 395.
30 Kalkan and Taranç, op. cit., p. 95.
31 Burçak Evren, ‘Mine’, Milliyet, 21 January, 1983.
32 Dilek Cindoǧlu, ‘Mine Nasıl Kurtulur?’ (‘How can Mine Survive?’), Somut, 6 May
1983, p. 10; Ünsal Oskay, ‘Mine’, Somut, 13 May 1983, p. 10.

5 Representing Prostitution
1 Agah Özgüç, Türk. Sinemasında Cinselliǧin Tarihi (The History of Sexuality in
Turkish Cinema). Istanbul: Parantez, 2000, p. 67.
2 Özgüç’s book Türk Sinemasında Cinselliǧin Tarihi details the history of prostitution
in Turkish cinema.
3 Agah Özgüç, op. cit., p. 68. ‘The Şoray Laws’ refer to the rules Türkan Şoray
stipulated to the directors with whom she worked until the early 1980s, to be pre-
cise, until Mine (1982). Özgüç also notes that these rules were: ‘I do not kiss, I do
not get naked and I do not have sex in front of the camera.’
4 Burçak Evren,
. Türk Sinemasında Yeni Konumlar (New Perspectives in Turkish
Cinema). Istanbul: Broy Yayınları, 1998, p. 61.
5 Esra Esenlik, ‘Asiye Nasıl Kurtulur?’, can be accessed at http://www.feminisite.net/
news.php?act=details&nid=72 (last accessed 10 May 2008).
6 Evren, op. cit., p. 62.
7 Russell Campbell, Marked Women: Prostitution and Prostitutes in the Cinema.
Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2006, p. 33.
8 Ibid., p. 33.
9 Fetay Soykan, Türk Sinemasında Kadın (Women in Turkish Cinema). Dokuz Eylül
Üniversitesi,
. Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Sahne ve Görüntü Sanatları Anabilim Dalı,
Izmir, 1990 (PhD thesis), p. 150.
10 Ibid., p. 152.
11 Evren, op. cit., p. 62.
12 Esra Esenlik, op. cit.
13 Öykü Tümer, ‘Farklı Bir Bakış: Asiye Nasıl Kurtulur?’(‘A Different Perspective to
Asiye Nasıl Kurtulur?’) can be accessed at http://www.filmcenter.boun.edu.tr/
Links/Sinefil/2006/1/Asiye_Nasil_Kurtulur.pdf?ref=Yapma.net (last accessed 12 May
2008).
14 Christine Gledhill, ‘Klute 1: A Contemporary Film Noir and Feminist Criticism’,
in Ann Kaplan (ed.), Feminism and Film. Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 2000, p. 68.
15 Gledhill, op. cit., pp. 68–9.
16 See, for example, German cabaret songs of the 1930s such as Mack the Knife, which
depicts a murderer, or Cole Porter’s Love for Sale, which depicts the life of a prostitute.
17 Campbell, op. cit., p. 5.
18 Kate Millet, ‘Prostitution: A Quartet for Female Voices’, in Vivian Gornick and
Barbara K. Moran (eds.) Woman in Sexist Society. New York: Basic Books,
1972, p. 66.
130 Notes
19 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex. London: Vintage, 1997, p. 445.
20 Millet, op. cit., pp. 64–6.
21 Ibid., p. 120.
22 Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, C. Poston (ed.). New
York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1975 [1972].
23 De Beauvoir, op. cit., p. 569.
24 Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994, p. 189.
25 Yıldız Ecevit, ‘The Status and Changing Forms of Women’s Labour in the Urban
Economy’, in Şirin Tekeli (ed.) Women in Modern Turkish Society: A Reader.
London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1995, p. 86.
26 Ibid., p. 86.
27 Pateman, op. cit., p. 194.
28 Ibid., p. 11.
29 Campbell, op. cit., p. 208.
30 Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy. New York: Oxford University Press,
1986, p. 139.
31 Campbell, op. cit., p. 387.

6 Representing Widowhood and Sexuality

1 Morvaridi’s research took place in the village of Ak in North-East Turkey. Behrooz
Morvaridi, ‘Gender Relations in Agriculture: Women in Turkey’, Economic
Development and Cultural Change, 40 (3), 1992, p. 580.
2 Ibid., p. 581.
3 Ibid., p. 580.
4 Carole Pateman, The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political
Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995; first published 1989, p. 17.
5 Feride Acar, ‘Women and Islam in Turkey’ in Tekeli, Ş. (ed.), Women in Modern
Turkish Society: A Reader. London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1995, p. 51. In
her research, Acar, aims to provide an account of the Islamist discourse of the
1980s by analysing three women’s magazines which she regards Islamist: Kadin ve
Aile (Woman and . Family), Bizim Aile (Our Family) and Mektup (Letter).
6 Emine Onaran Incirlioǧlu, ‘Images of Village Women in Turkey’, in Zehra F. Arat
(ed.) Deconstructing Images of the ‘Turkish Woman’. New York: Palgrave, 1999, p. 200.
7 It is worth noting here that there is a gap in knowledge and lack of resources about
the representation of widowhood and widows in Turkish cinema. This signals a
need for further research on this topic.
8 Deniz Kandiyoti, ‘Sex Roles and Social Change: A Comparative Appraisal of
Turkey’s Women’, Signs, 3 (1), Women and National Development: the Complexities
of Change, Autumn 1977, p. 62.
9 Marsel A. Heisel, ‘Women and Widows in Turkey: Support Systems’, in Helena
Znaniecka Lopata (ed.) Widows: Middle East, Asia and the Pacific (Volume 1).
Durham: Duke University Press, 1987, p. 87. Heisel also points out that often the
widow has to remarry with the husband’s kin. Most polygamous marriages occur
when a man takes in his brother’s widow. Such illegal unions are based on the
rationale that he would be the best stepfather to her children and also on the fact
that he can thus regain his brother’s land.
10 Ibid., pp. 79–80.
11 Martha Nussbaum, ‘Introduction’, in Martha Nussbaum and Jonathan Glover
(eds) Women, Culture and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1995, p. 1.
12 Here, I adopt a phrase from Anneke Smelik, And the Mirror Cracked: Feminist
Cinema and Film Theory. Basingstoke and New York, Palgrave, 1998.
 Notes 131
13 Nükhet Sirman, ‘Friend or Foe? Forging Alliances with other Women in a Village
of Western Turkey’, in Şirin Tekeli (ed.) Women in Modern Turkish Society: A Reader.
London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1995, p. 201.
14 Deniz Kandiyoti, op. cit., p. 66.
15 Arşaluys Kayır, ‘Women and their Sexual Problems in Turkey’, in Şirin Tekeli (ed.)
Women in Modern Turkish Society: A Reader. London and New Jersey: Zed
Books, 1995, p. 289.
16 Attila Dorsay, ‘Belgesel Tadında Bir Köy Filmi’ (‘A Village Film with a Taste of
Documentary’), Cumhuriyet, 27 December 1985. Also cited in Fetay Soykan, Türk
Sinemasında Kadın (Women in Turkish Cinema). Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi,
. Sosyal
Bilimler Enstitüsü, Sahne ve Görüntü Sanatları Anabilim Dalı, Izmir, 1990 (PhD
thesis), p. 86.

7 Women and New Turkish Cinema

1 Asuman Suner, New Turkish Cinema: Belonging, Identity and Memory. London:
I. B. Tauris, 2010), pp. 173–4.
2 Ibid., p. 175.
3 Özlem Güçlü, ‘Silent Representations of Women in the New Cinema of Turkey’,
Sine/Cine: Journal of Film Studies, 1 (2), Autumn 2010, p. 83.
4 Asuman Suner, Hayalet Ev: Yeni Turk Sinemasinda Aidiyet, Kimlik ve Bellek.
Istanbul: Metis Yayinlari, 2006, p. 200 (my translation; italics are my emphasis).
5 Dicle Koǧacıoǧlu, ‘The Tradition Effect: Framing Honour Crimes in Turkey’,
Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 15 (2), 2004, pp. 118–51.
6 Kurtuluş
. also means ‘survival’.
7 Ilerici Kadınlar Derneǧi was established in 1975 and was closed by the government
in 1979 as it was the only woman’s organisation of Türk Komunist Partisi (Turkish
Communist Party).
8 A dolmuş is a type of minibus operating as a cross between a taxi and a timetabled
bus service.
9 To a large extent, Turkey maintains the practice, both in first names and surnames,
of naming people after virtues, objects or abstract concepts. Although this practice
was once common in Western Europe, and can still be seen in many names, in
Turkey the names still have a sharp and immediate
. political resonance.
10 Interviews conducted on 7 January 2009 in Izmir, Turkey.
11 Cited in Gönül Dönmez-Colin, Turkish Cinema: Identity, Distance and Belonging.
Reaktion Books: London, 2008, p. 52.

Filmography
1 Here, I have not included the films that are mentioned merely in passing (for
example, the sex films of the 1970s’ Turkish cinema and the films referred to in
quotations by other authors).
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Index
Aaah Belinda! 55,116
Abdullah Oğuz 108,117
Acı Hayat 116,125
Adı Vasfiye 11,116
aesthetic(s) 11,13,14,45,48,85,109,120,
126,136
Agah Özgüç 39,41,83,84,124,125,129
agency 3,11,59,72,77,78,90,104,107,110,
113 . binary opposition 3,43,47–50,56,126
Ah Güzel Istanbul 50,53,83,116
Ahmet Fehim 39,117
Aksu Bora 9,119,123
Alba Sotorra 112,117
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
13,15,120,137
Alison Butler 14,15,17,120,121,133,139
An Unmarried Woman 15
Ana Kucağı 41,116
Anneke Smelik 14,120,128,130
Annette Kuhn 13,17,120,121,124
anti-feminist 25,26
arabesque films 10,49,126
Arkadaş 46,47,116
arranged marriage 46,56,67,71,73,84,89,
90,109,115
Arşaluys Kayır 105,131,137
Asena Günal 9,119,123
Asiye Nasıl Kurtulur? 5,50,55,1–2,116,
129,134,140
Asuman Suner 11,78,120,129,131,139
Ateşten Gömlek 38,39,116,
Atilla Dorsay 53,67,107,124,126,127,134
Atıf Yılmaz 5,11,41,46,47,50,51,55,56,
68,70,83,116,117,125,127
audience(s) 4,13,15,16,41–45,51–58,63,
65,73,86,87,88,91–94,103,107,111,125
Aydın Sayman 119,117
Ayşe Gelgeç-Gürpınar 26,27,122,135
Aysel: Bataklı Damın Kızı 40,116
Babam ve Oğlum 1,114,116
Başak Şenova 40,139
Bedia Muvahhit 38,124,134
Bedrana 46,116
Behrooz Morvaridi 97,130,138
Beyaz Mendil 40,116
Beynelmilel 114,115,116
Bilge Olgaç 48,51,117
Binnur Karaevli 112,118
Bir Kadın Bir Hayat 67,116
Bir Yudum Sevgi 68,116,128
Bulutları Beklerken 112,116
Burçak Evren 52,81,84,85,126,129,134
Büyük Adam Küçük Aşk 112,116
Çağan Irmak 1,114,116
Cahide Sonku 83
Campaign for Solidarity against
Battering 32
Canan Gerede 51
career woman/women 5,16,55–66,127
Carol Gilligan 77,78,128,135
Carole Pateman 91,97,128,130,138
Chantal Akerman 129
chastity 38,42,43,53,67,69,77,78,80,
94,98,101,128
Christine Gledhill 85,86,121,129,135,137
Claire Johnston 11,12,129,136
Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination Against Women 24
Counter cinema 13,14,17,136
coup 1–5,7,9,19,26,27,28,35,48,
49,52,54,113,114,122,126
customs 22,30,33,40,42,46,47,60,67,109
dark comedy 111
decentralisation 28,31
Delikan 53,116,128
142 Index
democracy 1,2,7,9,26,27,28,35,36,
115,119,123,124,130,132,138
democratisation 4,9,19,27,28
Deniz Kandiyoti 7,29,101,119,121,123,
130,131,136
depoliticisation 1,2,3,4,9,19,26,52,54,
113,114,128
Dicle Koğacıoğlu 110,131,137
discourse 5,8,21,33,35,36,44,45,57,59,
62–66,78,79,80,86,88,96,98,109,110,
111,115,122,127,130,135,136,137,139
disequilibrium 57,60
Diyet 46,116
documentary 57,62,63,66,109,110,112,131
domestic sphere 28
domestic violence 30,31,33,35,62,63
Dönüş 46,116
Düğün 46,116
Dul Bir Kadın 70,116
Dünden Sonra Yarından Önce 5,50,55,
56,65,116
E. Ann Kaplan 12,120,121,129,135,136,
137
Eastern 46,109,110,126
emancipation 6,7,29,72,98,123,132
. 135,136,137,138
Emine Onaran Incirlioğlu
64,99,127,139,145
equilibrium 57,59,60,63,64
Erkek Ali 116,125
Eşkiya 108,116
Esra Esenlik 84,85,129,134
Evcilik Oyunu 42,116
Eylem Kaftan 109,117,136
Fahriye Abla 116,128
fallen woman 10,56,67,69,77,83,84,85,
89,94
Faruk Kalkan 9,10,45,69,81,119,125,
127,128,129,136
Fatih Akın 114,117
Fatmagül’ün Suçu Ne? 69,116
Félix Guattari 16,17
female collectivity 111
female desire 50,67,77,82,106,127
feminine 12,14,16,79,91,120,127
femininity 12,15,16,53,70
feminism 3,4,5,9,11,13,14,17,18,19,24–34,
48,52,54,56,64,69,72,86,112,113,
119,120,121,122,129,130,134,
135,136,137,138,139,140
feminist activism 7,8,27,30,32,35
feminist discourse 35,57,64,65,66,79,96,
109,122,135,136
feminist film theory 11,12,13,14,15,120,
121,137,139
feminist ideology 2,6,7,26,122
feminist movement 4,6,9,10,23,26,49,50,
52,53,54,56,60,67,96,119,121,122,
134,139
Feminist Weekend 34
femme fatale 39,48,49,83
Feride Acar 98,130,132
Fetay Soykan 10,49,68,85,119,126,127,
128,129,131,135,139
Feyzan Nizam 10,56,119,127,138
Feyzi Tuna 51,67,116,117
film noir 85,129,135
Firar 50,116,128,134
Flying Broom 9
Fürizan 51
gaze 12,13,58,71,76,81,88,104,105,108,
120,134,135,138
Gelin 46,116
Gemide 108,116
gender 6–11,17–29,31,33,34,47,52,53,
59,61,62,64,70,72,97,99,101–115,
119,120,121,123,130,132,133,134,
Gilles Deleuze 16,17
Giovanni Scognamillo 39,42,70,124,125,
126,128,139
Giselle Halimi 31
Gizli Duygular 69,116,128
Güneşe Yolculuk 112,116
Gurbet Kuşları 42,116
Haideh Moghissi 20,121,138
Halide Edip Adıvar 38
Halit Refiğ. 42,116,117
Handan Ipekçi 109,112,116,117
Hayallerim, Aşkım ve Sen 56,117
Hilmi Maktav 10,69,120,126,127,137
Hıçkırık 41,117
honour 23,24,42,43,46,53,62,69,81,84,
92,94,101,106,109,110,115,128,
131,137,138
honour killings/crimes 24,109,110,115,
137
Hülya Koçyiğit 43,50,52,54
human woman 3,48,70
.
I. brahim Altınsay 48,72,126,128,132
Ilk ve Son 41,117
individualism
. 5,33,35,51,70
Ipsala Cinayeti/Altı Ölü Var 40,117
Işıl Özgentürk 51

Islam 8,20–24,98,101,106,109,110,112,
118,121,122,126,127,130,
. 132,134,135,137,138
Istanbul’da Bir Facia-i Aşk 39,117
Jacques Lacan 12
Janjan 109,117
Jeanine Basinger 15,60,121,127,133
Judith Mayne 14,120,137
Kader 9
Kadın Çevresi 32
Kadın Severse 41,117
Kalbimin Şarkısı 41,117
Kanlı Feryat 41,117
Kanlı Nigar 83,117
Kanun Namına 40,117
Kaşık Düşmanı 117,128
Kemalism 7,29,119,123,132
Kemalist 7,8,23,27,28,29,30,122
Kırık Bir Aşk Hikayesi 67,117
Kırık Hayatlar 42,117
Kurbağalar 5,6,50,97,98,99,104,105,117,
128
Kurtuluş Son Durak 110,111,117,
Kuyu 43,117
labour 8,27,32,86,93,97,103,105,130,134
Laura Mulvey 12,13,120,138
Left 1,2,7,8,25,26,28,35,44,49
liberalism 7,33,119,123,132
Mahinur Ergun 51,68
Mahmut Tali Öngören 39,46,124,138
male authority 61,74,103
male desire 11,44,86
male gaze 12,71,76,104,105,108
Margaret Adams 60,127,132
Maria La Place 16,121,127
Marsel A. Heisel 101,130,136
Martha Nussbaum 102,130,133,138
Marxism 25
Mary Astell 20,121,132
Mary Wollstonecraft 91,130,140
masculine 23,71,77
Masumiyet 108,117
Meçhul Kadın 41,117
media 8,10,20,31,32,33,111,135,137,139
Mehmet Rauf 39,83
melodrama 1,16,40,41,42,49,51,121,124,
134
Meltem Müftüler-Bac 24,29,122,123,138
memory 11,111,112,114,120,129,131,
132,139
Index 143
metaphor 5,43,76,77,101,102,126
Metin Erksan 43,116,117,125
milieu 3,4,6,18,19,25,26,33,68
military 1,2,4,7,8,9,26,27,28,34,35,
54,114
Mimi Chakarova 112,117
Mine 5,50,51,53,67,70–89,98,117,127,
128,129,133,134,140
minor cinema 16,17,121
mise-en-scène 3,51,61,73,88,106
modernization 19,22,23,29,30,53
modernity 8,21,29,30,119,122,123,132,
133,135,136
Molly Haskell 16,121,135
morality 15,72,82,95,96
motherhood 15,16,33,59,60,112,136
Muhareem Gülmez 114,116
Muhsin Ertuğrul 38,39,40,83,116,117,
124
Müjde Ar 50,52,54,83
Murat Saraçoğlu 114,117
Mürebbiye 39,117
Muslim 20,21,23,38,111,112,117,121,135
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 21,23,122
Mute 78,108
Mutluluk 108,109,117
narrative cinema 13,14,120,138
Necla Algan 48,126,132
Nezih Erdoğan 39,124,134
Nijat Özön 39,124,138
Nilgün Abisel 40,41,42,44,46,125,126,
132
Nilüfer Göle 52,126,135
Nisan Akman 5,51,64,65,115
Nuran Sayman 113,114
Nuri Bilge Ceylan 108,117
O… Çocukları 114,115,117
Objectification 71,75,79,104
Öldüren Şehir 40,117
Olga Nakkas 112,118
Ölü Bir Deniz 68,117
Ölüm Perdesi 117,125
Ömer Kavur 46,50,51,67,83,116,117,118
Ömer Lütfi Akad 40,41,46,83,116,117
Orhan Kemal 50,126
Ottoman 10,21,22,38
Öykü Tümer 85,129,140
Özlem Güçlü 108,131,135
Pam Cook 16,121,134
Pandora’nın Kutusu 112,117
144 Index
patriarchy 5,6,8,13,15,17,18,21,40,
41,57,57,62,69,72,79,85,89,93,109,
110,121,130,134,135,136,137
patriarchal: culture 11,13,41,56,57,85;
discourse 44,45,65,85,86,109; ideology
53,94,96,103; society 35,43,59,72,76,
77,80,82,85,86,88,98,105,113
Pençe 39,83,117
post-coup 2,4,19,35
prostitution 5,6,10,83–96,129,133,137
protagonist 5,12,16,39,40,46,50,56,
58,64,68,70,79,83,84,98,110,111,120
psychoanalysis 12,13,139
radicalization 25
Ragıp Taranç 9,10,45,69,81,119,125,127,
128,129,136
Ramazan Gülendam 25,26,27,122,
135
rape 28,40,41,56,69,73,74,75,76,79,
80,81,83,105,108,128,135
remembering 124
repressed sexuality 105,106,107
Republican 8,21,22,23,30,122,140
Riffat Hassan 20,121,135
Right 1,2,26,28,35,44
Robin George Collingwood 19,36,121,
124,133
Ruken Öztürk 56,65,126,127,138
Rural 6,8,9,10,22,46,47,60,61,62,63,
64,66,97,99,101,103,107,115
Russell Campbell 85,89,95,96,129,130,
133
Saklı Yüzler 109,117
Salkım Hanım’ın Taneleri 111,117
Şalvar Davası 117,128
Sedat Simavi 39,117
Şehirdeki Yabancı 42,117
Şehvet Kurbanı 83,117
Selvi Boylum Al Yazmalım 46,47,117
semiotics 12,13,80,120,137
Seni Kalbime Gömdüm 68,117
Seni Seviyorum 53,117,128
Serdar Akar 108,116
Şerif Gören 5,6,51,69,97,116,117
Sevmek Zamanı 117,125
sex: discrimination 93; films 47,48; roles
101,130,136
sexist: ideology 107; society
77,85,107,127,129,132,135,
137
sexual harassment 28,32,34,71,75,92,
93,104
sexuality 5,9,10,23,29,30,35,45,48,
50,51,52,53,54,68,69,70,71,76,77,82,
97–109,122,124,126,128,129,130
Sigmund Freud 12
silence 47,77,108,110
Simone de Beauvoir 20,76, 78,80,90,91,
121,128,129,130,133
Şirin Tekeli 6,7,8,22,25,26,31,32,119,
122,123,127,130,131,132,133,
134,136,137,139,140
Sırrı Süreyya Önder 114,116
Sırtlarındaki Hayat 112,117
socialist 23,25,26,122,123
solidarity 7,35,111
Somut 31,123,129,133,139,140
spectator 12,13,14,15,16,72,73,
79,106
spectatorial pleasure 12
star persona 84
state feminism 3,7,19,21–24,27,29,121,
122,140
subjectivity 5,8,14,17,51,66–82,86,96,
103,105,127
Süreyya Duru 46,89,116
Sürü 46,47,117
Susuz Yaz 117,125
Şükran Esen 11,120,125,126,134
Şule Torun 31,123,139
Teresa de Lauretis 11,13,14,15,120,137
textual analysis 3,5,10,17,55
The Abortion Act 32
The Ankara Circle 9
The Association of Women Against
Discrimination 34
The East 8,109,115
The Edge of Heaven 114,117
The Flying Broom 9
the human woman 3,48,50,70
The Price of Sex 112,117
the Qur’an 20
The Thursday Group 34
to-be-looked-at-ness 11
Tomris Giritlioğlu 111,117
trauma 1,114
Türkan Şoray 46,50,51,52,53,54,70,84,
116,129
Turkish Woman’s Union 22
UN Convention on the Elimination of
All Forms of Discrimination against
Women 32,34
Unveiled Views: Muslim Women Artists
Speak Out 112,117
 Index 145
Uzak 108,117 Women’s Library and Information
Ünsal Oskay, 81,129,138 Centre 9,32,35,124
women’s movement 2,4,6,7,8,9,11,12,16,
Vahşi Bir Kız Sevdim 41,117 18,19,22–37,49,70,112,113,115,119,
Ve Recep Ve Zehra Ve Ayşe 67,117 121,122,123,124,132,134,139,140
Vendetta Song 109,110,117 Women’s Platform on the Turkish Panel
Vesikalı Yarim 83,117 Code 23,134
violence 9,13,28,30,31,33,34,35,41,61,62,
63,64,75,76,78,79,105,108,109,111, Yatık Emine 46,118
112,128 Yavuz Turgul 108,116
virginity 9,24,43,80,115,138 YAZKO 31,123
Voices Unveiled: Turkish Women Who Yeşim Arat 7,8,9,119,123,124,132
Dare 112,118 Yeşim Ustaoğlu 112,116,117
Yetim Yavrular 41,118
Western 21,22,26,28,39,53,54,67,90,98, Yılmaz Güney 46,47,125
109,112,126,131,139 Yusuf Kurçenli 67,117
Westernisation 28,53,54 Yusuf Pirhasan 110,117
Westernised 7,21,22,53,64
Widowhood 97–107,130 Zehra Arat 21,122,127,130
womanhood 6,98,104,109,111,115 Zeki Demirkubuz 108,117
Women for Women’s Human Zeki Ökten 46,47,117
Rights 24 Zeynep Avcı
. 49,126,132
Women of Turkey: Between Islam and Zeynep’in Intikamı 41,118
Secularism 112,118 Zuhal Olcay 56,58