Position of the women rights in Turkey and European Union relations

Throughout the history women were pushed into the backgorund at almost every society and they had to struggle to gain the rights that men are endowed with. This process which we will call as women's movement started for gaining some fundamental rights. In time this movement requested another rights and liberties, tried to define the status of women and role of women in the society. Women's movement reacted that women be accepted as weak, fragile, naive and sentimental creatures and it made an effort for making women and their experiences visible at political, social, public and business life. Women's struggle abovementioned and results of this struggle was referred in the study. EU is still in existence which is one the most important supranational organisation, EU's approach women rights in the context of human rights and the legal arrangements of this subject at the acquis communautaire made by EU was discussed. Besides Turkey, which is on the membership process of EU since 1959, adopted legal arrangements about women's rights for alignment it's own national law to the acquis communautaire was examined. The main purpose of this study, narrate the advancements about women rights in EU and Turkey and reveal EU's positive contributions to the development process of women's rights in Turkey. In this study, feminist theory, which is considered to be proper in terms of the quality of the subject, was used as a theoretical framework. Without adhering to a single feminist theory, the common points of all feminist theories' approximation to women's rights in the context of human rights was taken. Particularly books and articles, EU founding treaties and reports, news and law texts was used as a material. The study was finalized with analyzing the data and findings obtained.