A New York Times reporter asked a Turkish military officer in 1997 about the effects of Turkish government officials wearing traditional Muslim dress. “Is it really the end of the world if civil servants begin wearing head scarves?” the reporter asked. “Yes,” the officer responded. “It is the end of the world.”

While much attention has been focused in recent weeks on the plight of women in conservative Muslim countries who are forced to wear veils or burqas, little mention has been made of more moderate Muslim governments. In Turkey, government leaders have not only refused to require traditional Muslim dress, but have actively discouraged it.

The politics of Muslim dress in Turkey was the subject of a lecture yesterday by Alev Cinar at the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center. Cinar, a research associate at the Center, described the way that the veiling and unveiling of Turkish women has been used as a political tool.

“A head covering is often seen as a symbol of political Islam, not only in Turkey, but all over the Muslim world,” Cinar said. “The veil is becoming a more common symbol of Islam than the mosque.” Cinar explained that while a mosque is a purely religious symbol, the veil is a representation of political ideology.

“The veil is hidden and mysterious,” she continued. “As such, it allows for the mystification of political Islam.

“How,” she asked, “did a simple head covering become a symbol of political ideology?”

Cinar explained that Turkey underwent a process of modernization in the 1920s and 1930s, in which Western traditions were promoted. Kemal Ataturk, the first President of modern Turkey, was determined to undermine the conservative Islamic legacy of the Ottoman Empire. In addition to altering the Turkish alphabet’s letters from Arabic to Roman, and abolishing the Caliphate and Sultanate, Ataturk discouraged Islamic dress.

While veils were not officially banned, their use was frowned upon. Ataturk organized dance receptions, in which women wore European ball gowns, and promoted the distribution of photographs and cartoons of women in bathing suits. In 1929, a nation-wide beauty pageant was held.

“Who is the prettiest woman in Turkey?” asked the semi-official state newspaper. “If all citizens give this issue due concern…the competition will yield beneficial results.”

“They wanted to show that the government had such control over Islam that women who had worn veils only a decade ago could wear bathing suits in public,” Cinar said. “The body of the beauty queen was constituted as a ‘national body.’ The secular [society] was presented as having ultimate control over women’s bodies.

“Since European perceptions of Turkey were controlled by images of veiled women,” she continued, “what better means could Turkey use to define itself from the Ottomans then women in Western clothing?”

Yet despite the proliferation of unveiled Turkish women, the Turkish government remained almost exclusively male. In 1935, the Turkish Women’s Federation was dismantled by the state.

In the 1980s and 1990s, there was a resurgence of political Islam in Turkey. A conservative Islamic party became part of a coalition government, although it eventually lost its power. Some Turkish women began voluntarily dressing in veils as a political or religious statement.

The conservative Islamic party, known alternately as the “welfare” party, and the “virtue” party, began to use a veil as its symbol. Eventually, though, the party decided that veils were too feminine to be a suitable symbol.

The secular government became severely worried about the proliferation of veils, although it refused to actually ban the head coverings. A Turkish court ruled that university administrations could decide for themselves whether or not to allow Islamic dress.

“When the head of the Higher Education Council asked the court what [constituted] modern clothing,” Cinar said, “a justice said, ‘Go and look at Europe. Whatever you see there is modern clothing.'”

Cinar described a woman who worked for her as a teaching assistant at a Turkish university, and chose to wear a head scarf. Eventually, the woman was told that if she refused to remove the scarf, her grant would be cut off. The women refused, and left the university.

“The student herself did not see Islam as a political ideology,” Cinar said. She added that the student had voted for a liberal political party. “My other graduate student [assistant] was a male who was wearing a beard,” she continued, noting that beards are often an expression of political Islam. “There were no problems with it.”

At the conclusion of Cinar’s lecture, a critique was given by Benjamin Odhoji, a fellow research associate at the Center. Odhoji examined what he felt were the key points of Cinar’s speech.

“The most important thing [in the lecture] is the way the body functions as a political and ideological text,” Odhoji said. “Alev’s main argument, as I got it, is that the new Turkish state instituted secularism through unveiling the female body…this new secular republic decided to redefine itself by unveiling the female body, thereby instituting a Western or European kind of modernism.

“The new Islam,” Odhoji continued, “reveiled the female body. Both used the body as a side from which to articulate political and national projects.”

Odhoji also discussed the ramifications of the Turkish beauty pageant.

“The beauty queen is presented as representing the nation,” he said. “Her body is portrayed as representing Turkish secularism, and so her body is represented as a mark of modernity. Modernity is therefore inscribed on this particular body.

“It is interesting,” he added, “that this particular representation of the state happens to be the granddaughter of a former Islamic authority. The female body is defined in terms of the erasure of Islam.”

Many in the audience were struck by the way in which women’s bodies were used as political tools, but women themselves were prevented from taking part in politics.

“The situation in Turkey is a lot better than a lot of what we’re hearing about in nations like Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan,” said Elizabeth Pallitto, also a research associate. “But if you look at this ideal-sounding situation a little deeper, you might see that the women are pawns, or that the female body is the site on which male anxiety is played out.”