The political objectification of women in Turkey: The example of 1997 Turkish Military Memorandum

This research aims to establish that February 28 period functioned as a two-way process in which women were politically objectified while Islamist women were becoming political subjects simultaneously. There is both a state of antinomy and a state of mutual generation if one is to view the political subject and political object. The prerequisites of being a subject are to question one's position and to be conscious of being one. The object is the one that has been determined, prevented from becoming an individual, and has had its identity shattered. Identification that causes political objectification also works as a process that renders the emergence of the subject possible. The process of identification might cause the political objectification of one, and it also can function as a process that can enable the emergence of a subject. The status of the subject and the object are neither ascribed nor fixed, for every agent contains its own "other" within. Becoming a political subject is a course of a social struggle that materializes to counter the system of partitioned political shares. Women garnering votes were influential in helping the Welfare Party get elected (RP); however, women's inclusion in the political sphere had been limited. During the period of February 28, women were instrumentalized and objectified via binary discoursive antagonisms. Through bans imposed on the headscarf, the participation of women in the public sphere was limited save for the ones with a pre-determined outlook. Women wearing headscarf organized protests and marches against the bans and demanded their rights through NGOs. The women with the headscarf, questioning her position and opposing the partitioned political shares, transformed into the Islamist women through a process of becoming political subjects, differentiating themselves from the other female groups. The research analyzes the period of February 28 in the context of events, agents, and outcomes, also further elaborates on the viewpoints on women during the period and positions of women as political subjects and objects. During the February 28 process, women wearing the headscarf have begun to question the state they are in and they entered a course of becoming political subjects through campaigning against the partitioned political shares. It has been put forth in this paper that the February 28 process had functioned as a two-way process through which women, although being politically objectified, became political subjects as Islamist women simultaneously. Keywords: Political subject, Political object, subjectivization and objectification, February 28, headscarf, woman.