The place of women in Turkish political life: Early Republic Period

Political participation is an extremely important tool for governments to base themselves on a legitimate basis and maintain this legitimacy. Gender is an important threshold in the expansion of political participation and has been the focus of discussions in terms of participation in political life from past to present. Because women have been able to gain their right to participate in political life in a very difficult and late period. In this context, it is seen that women in Turkey are also struggling to exist in political life. The demands for women's rights, which started relatively weak in the Tanzimat Period and continued during the Constitutional periods, were tried to be met by the state power with limited reforms outside the political scope, and the recognition of women's political rights and the removal of obstacles to the exercise of these rights began in the early Republican period.In Turkish political life, women's participation in the political field has been inevitable for modernization and democracy. With the Republic period, women have gained the status and freedoms they want and deserve, and many reforms have been carried out on this issue. In the implementation and implementation of the changes made, the perspective of the managers of the period on the subject of women is also important. In the implementation and implementation of the amendments, the perspective of the rulers of the period on the issue of women constituted an important place, and the reforms for women's rights were sometimes criticized and sometimes supported. In this study, the political rights granted to Turkish women in the early Republican period were discussed in comparison with the rights granted to their counterparts in other countries, the place of women in Turkish political life was evaluated and the value of their political achievements was analyzed.