The intimate politics of secularism and the headscarf: the mall, the neighborhood, and the public square in Istanbul

Abstract

The headscarf continues to be a highly charged political issue in Turkey where it is often understood through the prism of the opposition between so-called Islamists versus secularists. My work brings together feminist scholarship on the politics of everyday space and recent rethinking of the categories of secularism and religion. I begin by situating this politicized debate in the everyday material contexts of the public square, the street, and the mall. By introducing popular culture (notably the film Büşra) and my own fieldwork on the veil, I argue that the headscarf represents the intersection of politics of place and individual agency in a way that renders ideological debates contingent on everyday practices. Reducing the headscarf to a sign of Islamism fails to take into account the ever-shifting meanings of this object across time and space. The differences within and between the everyday urban sites I examine reveal much more complex, often contradictory, and discontinuous geographies of secularism and Islam. This analysis reveals a multiplicity that belies attempts to delineate clearly bounded spaces, subjects, and ideologies, one that is intimate and political.

El pañuelo en la cabeza continúa siendo un tema con una alta carga política en Turquía, donde a menudo es visto con una perspectiva de oposición entre los llamados islamistas versus los secularistas. Mi trabajo une la investigación feminista sobre la política del espacio cotidiano y el reciente replanteamiento de las categorías de secularismo y religión. Comienzo situando este debate politizado en los contextos materiales cotidianos de la plaza pública, la calle y el centro comercial. Al introducir a la cultura popular (especialmente el film Büşra) y mi propio trabajo de campo sobre el velo, sugiero que el pañuelo en la cabeza representa la intersección entre la política de lugar y la agencia individual de manera que torna a los debates ideológicos dependientes de las prácticas cotidianas. La reducción del pañuelo a un signo de islamismo no tiene en cuenta los significados siempre cambiantes de éste y sus posicionamientos complejos a lo largo del tiempo y el espacio. Las diferencias dentro y entre los sitios urbanos cotidianos que examino revelan geografías de secularismo e Islam mucho más complejas, y a menudo contradictorias y discontinuas. Este análisis revela una multiplicidad que contradice los intentos de delinear espacios, sujetos, e ideologías claramente delimitados, una multiplicidad que es íntima y política.

Keywords:

• headscarf
• Islam
• secularism
• feminist geopolitics
• everyday

Keywords:

• pañuelo
• Islam
• secularismo
• geopolítica feminista
• cotidiano

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank the School of Geography and Development at the University of Arizona for inviting me to give the 2011 Janice Monk Lecture in Feminist Geography and to ADVANCE, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and the Near Eastern Studies Department for their support of my visit. Janice Monk, Sarah Moore, Sallie Marston, John Paul Jones III, Jessie Clark, Anne Ranek, and many others at Arizona provided inspiration, encouragement, and stimulating questions. Thanks to Routledge Taylor & Francis Group and Gender, Place and Culture for their organizational support at the 2011 Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting. I would also like to thank Erdağ Göknar, Nathan Swanson, the editors of Gender, Place and Culture, Anna Secor, Altha Cravey, Sara Smith, Gabriela Valdivia, Alvaro Reyes, and Nina Martin for their valuable comments and suggestions. The research projects presented here were funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation Dissertation Research Grant and the Chester Fritz Scholarship for International Exchange at the University of Washington, Seattle, the Junior Faculty Research Award of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the National Science Foundation Geographical and Spatial Sciences Program (‘Collaborative research: The veiling fashion industry: transnational geographies of Islamism, capitalism and identity.’ Proposal No: 0723986).

Notes

1. ‘Intimate politics’ is inspired by Sara Smith's (forthcoming) concept of ‘intimate geopolitics.’

2. Büşra is based on Bahadır Boysal's comic series of the same name (collected and published as a book, Boysal 2010). Boysal collaborated with the director Çağlar in writing the story for the film. The comic series challenged many of the orientalist stereotypes about veiled women. The film presents a tamed version of the original punk Büşra.

3. The storm of speculation leading up to this film's opening in March 2010 focused on the headscarf itself (Haber 3 2010; Hürriyet 2010).

4. See Gökarıksel and Secor (2011) on the politicization of these accessories.

5. This fieldwork research is for two different projects. The first focused on shopping malls and consisted of over 80 in-depth interviews conducted in 1996 in the Akmerkez shopping mall and between 1999 and 2001 in over six large shopping malls in Istanbul. My research in Fatih began in 2004 when I interviewed managers and sales assistants of veiling-fashion stores and observed daily life in this neighborhood. Collaborating with Anna Secor (University of Kentucky), we conducted focus groups with over 40 veiled women in 2009 in Istanbul. I continue to collect information through interviews, observations, and news analyses, for both of these projects during my annual research trips to Istanbul.

6. My own position as a researcher is also important here. I do not wear a headscarf and my appearance, education, my status as someone who grew up in southern Turkey, conducting research in Istanbul, and now living in the USA have positioned me in various ways in these research projects: as a student, a professor, a young woman, a mother, middle class, from the South (and hence a migrant to Istanbul), apparently secular (signaled by dress, comportment, and language) but interested in questions of Islam and someone who may be able to tell the often unheard stories of headscarf-wearing women.

7. The controversy over this incident started with a commentary written by Mustafa Muslu (2007) for the daily Vatan newspaper. After listing the features that make Kanyon one of the most exclusive malls in Turkey, Muslu criticized Emine Erdoğan's regular shopping sprees at Kanyon and especially her closing down of the expensive British-based Harvey Nichols store within this mall. As Muslu's piece circulated within mainstream media, it stimulated a criticism of over-spending but nevertheless associated the new Islamic elite with shopping malls.