Banning Headscarves and Muslim Women's Subjectivity in Turkey

This dissertation focuses on the subject formation processes of Muslim women who experienced the headscarf ban in universities and public institutions in Turkey from 1997 to 2010. It employs the ban as a vantage point to understand the relationships between power, discourses, and the formation of subjectivities. The Kemalist discourse of headscarves, which has evolved through interactions with and been shaped by Western understandings of veiling, has dominated the Turkish state institutions. Beyond its manifestation through the headscarf ban as a discriminatory measure, the Kemalist discourse on headscarves has had substantial impacts on public perceptions of wearing headscarves. Women wearing headscarves, who found themselves in frameworks defined by the Kemalist discourse, did not necessarily let these structures fully guide them. Instead, these women have produced new discourses about their personalized understandings of Islam and also appropriated rights-based discourses. My interviews reveal that many women wearing headscarves have tried to find ways around the headscarf ban (such as wearing hats, berets, or wigs), instead of taking off their headscarves for good or quitting their education. Producing these strategies and constantly making decisions for the best modes of action has shaped these women's subjectivities in a fundamental manner in a context which they have interacted with multiple structures such as family, the state, and religion.