Ilkkaracan, P.

English

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195
9 ·  Re/forming laws to secure women’s rights 
in Turkey: the campaign on the Penal Code
P I N A R  I L K K A R A C A N 
On 26 September 2004, a draft law aimed at the reform of the Turkish 
Penal Code was accepted in the Turkish parliament as the result of a 
three-year campaign led by a platform of women’s and lesbian, gay, 
bisexual and transgender (LGBT) organizations, the Women’s Platform 
on the Turkish Penal Code (WPTPC). The campaign secured thirty-five 
amendments towards recognition of women’s legal entitlement to sexual 
and bodily autonomy and rights despite strong opposition from the 
right-wing, Islamist Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP, Justice and De-
velopment Party) government. It aimed to transform the underlying 
philosophy and principles of the old Penal Code, which constructed 
women’s bodies and sexuality as belonging to their families, fathers, 
husbands and society; to eliminate all articles that constituted viola-
tions of women’s human rights, particularly sexual and bodily rights; 
and to ensure progressive definitions of sexual crimes. This signified 
a groundbreaking shift in the overall perspective of the Turkish state 
and the public on the issue. The campaign occupied the public agenda 
for three years, generated wide discussion and broke taboos on issues 
related to sexuality. 
This chapter provides a critical account of the campaign, its actors 
and the factors that contributed to its success. It draws on the author’s 
personal experience as the co-founder of the Women’s Working Group on 
the Penal Code (WWGPC), which initiated the campaign; and coordinator 
of the NGO Women for Women’s Human Rights – New Ways (WWHR – 
New Ways), which acted as the coordinating body throughout. 
The historical and political context: women and civil society in 
Turkey
Primary education has been mandatory in Turkey since 1924, but 
32 per cent of women are still illiterate (State Statistics Institute 1986). 
The percentage of paid women workers is still a mere 16.1 in urban areas 
(Ministry for Women’s Affairs and Social Services 1994). The representa-
tion of women in parliament remains under 10 per cent. Yet the official 
196
discourse of the state holds that the problem of the status of women 
has been solved and that Turkish women should consider themselves 
lucky because they were granted specific rights in the public sphere 
even before their European counterparts. 
The founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923 after the war of in-
dependence was followed by the introduction of several revolutionary 
reforms, including drastic changes regarding equality of women and 
men in the legal sphere; secularization of the state; the abolition of the 
Sultanate, the sharia (Islamic religious law) and the caliphate; and the 
adoption of Latin letters as the Turkish alphabet.' In 1926 the introduc-
tion of the Turkish Civil Code, modelled on the Swiss Civil Code, banned 
polygamy and granted women equal rights in matters of divorce and 
child custody. The Civil Code in particular was an important victory over 
advocates of sharia. However, even this widely acknowledged and cele-
brated reform of the Turkish Civil Code, which has been predominantly 
regarded as progressive both in academic circles and among the Turkish 
public, was far from bringing actual equality for women in Turkey. Until 
the reform of the Civil Code in 2001, several laws, especially those in 
the marriage and family section of the old Civil Code, reduced women 
to a subordinate position. For example, the husband was defined as the 
head of the marriage union, granting him the final say over the choice 
of domicile, and over issues concerning children. 
This state discourse on the status of women has been internalized 
by many of the women who have been able to benefit from the new 
possibilities of the young republic, such as professional women living 
in big cities or women of the bureaucratic elite. Consequently, most 
women’s groups and associations formed during the post-republican 
era have concentrated on ‘helping’ or ‘educating’ women in rural areas, 
instead of questioning their own status or pressing for further rights. 
Moreover, the dichotomy they have perceived between themselves and 
rural women has hindered their understanding of the problems and 
potentials of these women, reducing the effectiveness of their efforts. 
In the 1960s and 1970s, right- and left-wing political movements 
dominated Turkish political debate and activity in reaction to strong 
state controls. Women’s issues and activists were subsumed into the 
Marxist movement and its discourses. The 1970s witnessed an armed 
conflict between right- and left-wing groups, resulting in tragic vio-
lence and the deaths of hundreds of activists and civilians. The 1980 
military intervention, justified by the military as the only way to end 
the anarchic atmosphere, suppressed leftist opposition by force, while 
also systematically depoliticizing the masses and setting the stage for 
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neoliberal policies proposed by the International Monetary Fund and 
other capitalist forces. In this atmosphere of repression and fear, the 
first new social movement to articulate its demands and oppose the 
government was the women’s movement.( 
Since 1980, several factors have weakened state authority and control 
in social life, thereby enabling the development of civil society in Turkey. 
Transition towards a free-market-based economy, political and cultural 
conflicts and globalization have all led to the rise and development of 
a civil society with autonomy vis-à-vis the state. A major research study 
on the status and progress of civil society in Turkey notes that in this 
context women’s organizations deserve particular attention for their 
success (Bikmen and Meydanog˘lu 2006). 
The new feminist movement of the 1980s brought private-sphere 
women’s human rights violations in Turkey to public attention for the 
first time, initially campaigning on domestic violence. In 1989 another 
widespread and energetic feminist campaign followed against sexual 
harassment and sexual violence. This brought an important achieve-
ment in the legal arena. Article 438 of the Turkish Penal Code, which 
reduced by one-third the sentence given to rapists if the victim was a 
sex worker, was repealed by the Grand National Assembly in 1990. A 
law aimed at protecting victims of domestic violence was passed in 
1998 as a result of another feminist campaign.) 
Throughout the 1990s, feminist advocacy and lobbying for legal 
reform concentrated mainly on the reform of the Civil Code, which 
contained several provisions violating both the constitutional guarantee 
of gender equality and international conventions to which Turkey was 
a signatory, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of 
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).* 
Although the reform of the Civil Code and amendments for gender 
equality first got on to the agenda of the Turkish parliament in the 
1950s, none of the reform attempts was conclusive until the fully fledged 
reform of the Civil Code in 2001, the result of a broad and intensive cam-
paign by the women’s movement. This was achieved after a decade of 
campaigning. Conditions appeared favourable: the government was well 
disposed to the women’s movement’s demands and European Union 
accession prospects were expected to intimidate opponents of gender 
equality. Nevertheless, male members of parliament (MPs) rebelled 
against their own government to overturn the proposed gender equal-
ity provisions. The women’s movement responded with a large-scale 
campaign which influenced public opinion and eventually contributed 
to the approval of a new Civil Code in November 2001, which abolished 


Re/forming Laws to Secure Women?s Rights in Turkey: The Campaign on the Penal Code

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Re/forming Laws to Secure Women?s Rights in Turkey: The Campaign on the Penal Code

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