13 - Negotiating Anti-veiling Campaigns

Summary

This chapter brings out a less-known aspect of anti-veiling campaigns during the early republic of Turkey. It covers the provincial society’s negative perception of and resistance to unveiling. In contrast to the widely accepted arguments emphasizing the conflict between religiosity and modernity, this chapter reveals the socioeconomic, gender and psychological reasons that motivated the approach of men and women to unveiling. This chapter argues that despite the anti-veiling campaigns, peer pressure and local, traditional norms outweighed the state’s influence and that women did not give up veiling. This part also shows how the government dealt with the people’s insistence on veiling in a flexible manner rather than in coercive ways.