Mustafa Keomal Attacks The Veil Summary

Mustafa Kemal’s plan to increase rights for women began with a social reshaping of what it meant to be a Turkish woman. Historically, Middle Eastern women were considered to face more discrimination and have less liberties than their Western counterparts. This treatment could be tied back to the region’s main faith, as in Islamic families “the wife’s obligations are to maintain a home for her children and obey her husband, and the husband is entitled to exercise his marital authority by restraining his wife’s movements and preventing her from showing herself in public” (Moghadam, 42, 43). Though Kemal was mostly concerned with modernization, gender equality was a necessary step in achieving his goals. He did not like the image of women being held back by social restraints, and attempted

Attacking the veil, a sacred religious symbol, was seen as another threat to the national culture in a string which had been dubbed “‘the annihilation of our own identity”” (Kinzer, 44). The veil was debilitating to women because they had no choice whether they wanted to wear it or not. If a pious Islamic follower wished to wear the veil, that is different than her husband ordering her to wear the veil. Ataturk could have been clearer in his speech, but he was fundamentally correct. Women deserved an opportunity to have an identity, an appearance that didn’t look controlled by men, which is what Kemal gave them through his admonishment of the veil. Additionally, within the family, Turkish women gained significant power under Mustafa Kemal, as he “changed the civil code abolishing polygamy and granting women equal rights to men in divorce and inheritance” (Gelvin,