^#smrgSAHAF Political Islam in Turkey and Women's Organization - 1999

This project focuses on the women's organization of the Islamist Welfare Party. Women's activism and engagement in the Welfare Party has been an unprecedented phenomenon in Turkey. Women have not been militant activists in large numbers within the party ranks in other contexts either. The main concern of the study was to investigate how women mobilized other women so successfully. One major argument is that women were mobilized into politics through a process of seemingly "apolitical" politicization. Both those who took part in the party organization and others who were recruited as members were politicized in the social context of person-alistic networks which were preserved in the political domain. The activist women of the Welfare party successfully tapped the traditional medium of socialization and politicized it. It is further argued that the activists were engaged in Islamist politics, because they satisfied their needs for personal/individual fulfillment and empowerment through secular, mundane political work, quite independent of religious fullfillment.

Yeşim Arat is a Professor in the Department of Political Sciene and International Relations at Boğaziçi University. She received her B.A. degree in Economics and Political Science from Yale University in 1978 and her Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University in 1983. She has a book named Patriarchal Paradox Women in Turkish Politics and many articles on women's political participation. Professor Arat has lectured and worked on questions of gender politics extensively. (From back cover)