Nuket Kardam - Turkeys Engagement With Global Womens Human Rights

Turkey's Engagement with Global Women's Human Rights

Series Editors: Jane Parpart, Pauline Gardiner Barber and Marianne H. Marchand

Gender in a Global/Local World critically explores the uneven and often contradictory ways in which global processes and local identities come together. Much has been and is being written about globalization and responses to it but rarely from a critical, historical, gendered perspective. Yet, these processes are profoundly gendered albeit in different ways in particular contexts and times. The changes in social, cultural, economic and political institutions and practices alter the conditions under which women and men make and remake their lives. New spaces have been created economic, political, social and previously silent voices are being heard. North-South dichotomies are being undermined as increasing numbers of people and communities are exposed to international processes through migration, travel, and communication, even as marginalization and poverty intensify for many in all parts of the world. The series features monographs and collections which explore the tensions in a 'global/local world', and includes contributions from all disciplines in recognition that no single approach can capture these complex processes.

Also in the series

Un(thinking) Citizenship
Feminist Debates in Contemporary South Africa
Edited by Amanda Gouws
ISBN 07546 3878 2

Vulnerable Bodies
Gender, the UN and the Global Refugee Crisis
Erin K. Baines
ISBN 0 7546 3734 4

Fashioning Inequality
The Multinational Company and Gendered
Employment in a Globalizing World
Juanita Elias
ISBN 0 7546 3698 4

Setting the Agenda for Global Peace
Conflict and Consensus Building
Anna C. Snyder
ISBN 0 7546 1933 8

Nket Kardam
Monterey Institute of International Studies, USA

First published 2005 by Ashgate Publishing

Reissued 2018 by Routledge
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Nket Kardam 2005

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ISBN 13: 978-0-815-39869-1 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-1-351-14388-2 (ebk)

This series critically engages debates on globalization through focusing upon gendered processes and identities at the intersections of global and local sites. Turkey's Engagement with Global Women's Human Rights , by Nket Kardam, continues the series' preoccupation with the global/national/local nexus by exploring the intersection between global women's human rights norms and the Turkish context. Much has been written about the rise of women's networks around the world and their influence in shaping global women's human rights norms. Indeed, the terms 'gender', 'gender mainstreaming', 'women's empowerment' or 'women's human rights' litter development discourse. Kardam first asks whether these developments signify a new international regime or a system of global governance in the area of women's human rights and gender equality. The evidence suggests that a gender equality regime has indeed emerged, albeit with weak monitoring systems and ongoing debates over meanings. However, we still do not know enough about the impact of this regime in local contexts and how meaningful it has been for women around the world.

Kardam explores this question in Turkish society, a particularly interesting case because of its history of modernization and its division between secular and Islamist women's groups and ideologies. Using a constructivist approach, she explores the intersection between global women's human rights norms and the complex and fragmented local gender regimes in Turkey. The Western and Islamic world views, value systems and gender identities at first glance appear radically different. In the Western value system, women's individual rights are upheld in a secular democracy as individual citizens, while in the Islamic viewpoint, women and men derive their rights from God, and as members of a community ( umma ), they have separate but complementary responsibilities and rights. This would seem to be an either/or situation a true dichotomy. However, Kardam discovers a much more fluid and interactive reality on the ground. These supposed dualisms are not locked in implacable opposition, but rather are engaged in a dynamic exchange. Indeed, they are breaking down and the opportunity for increased dialogue among women is visible. Secularist and Islamist women in Turkey have begun to learn from each other and started adopting each other's strategies and terms.

Kardam's research thus throws doubt on the uncritical acceptance of supposedly inevitable dualisms between secularism/Westernism and Islam, and suggests that the now often cited Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington needs to be fundamentally challenged before it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Indeed many of the social tensions, but also opportunities, for dialogue are to be found within civilizations rather than between them. The task of finding solutions to these supposed dualisms and oppositions involves, therefore, acknowledging the critical importance of examining global change in local as well as global contexts.