Kadın Oy Hakkı Hareketinin Siyasi Partileri: Erken 20. Yüzyıldan İki Örnek

Abstract

Erken 20. yy birinci dalga feminist hareketten etkilenen ve güç alan kadın oy hakkını savunmayı temel meselesi olarak gören siyasi organizasyonların doğuşuna şahitlik etmiştir. Amerika Birleşik Devletleri’nde Ulusal Kadınlar Partisi (The National Woman’s Party) ve 20. yy başında yeni kurulan Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde Kadınlar Halk Fırkası kadınların oy hakkı için mücadele eden birinci dalga feminist hareket bağlamında kurulmuşlardır. 1920’li yıllarda oy hakkını elde ettikten sonra, Amerika’daki kadınlar sonraki elli yıl boyunca eşit haklar için mücadele etmiştir. Türkiye’de ise 1930’lardan 1980’lere kadar kadın hareketi bir tür sessizlik evresine girmiş ve kesintiye uğramıştır. Karşılaştırmalı metodolojiye dayanarak tasarlanan bu çalışma, bu farklılaşmanın nedenine odaklanmakta ve kadın hakları hareketlerinin geleceği için nasıl bir çıkarımı olduğu sorusuna yanıt bulmaya çalışmaktadır. Araştırmada, iki parti, kampanya stratejilerini içerecek şekilde arka planlarındaki hareketin çerçevesi ve içerisinde var olmaya çalıştıkları siyasi iklim açısından karşılaştırılmıştır ve bu karşılaştırma sonucunda çalışma kitlelere yayılan hareketlerin ve demokratik siyasi iklimin kadın hakları hareketlerinin hayatta kalabilmesi için gerekli olduğu sonucuna işaret etmiştir.

Keywords

• Kadın oy hakkı hareketi
• siyasi partiler
• birinci dalga feminizm
• Türk modernleşmesi
• Demokrasi

Political Parties of Women’s Suffrage: Two Cases from the Early 20th Century

Abstract

The early 20th century witnessed the emergence of women’s suffrage political organizations motivated by the first wave of feminism. The National Woman’s Party in the United States (U.S.) and the Women People’s Party in the newly founded Turkish Republic were established as a result of the first wave of feminist movements advocating for women’s suffrage. After suffrage was achieved in the 1920s, women in the U.S. fought for fifty more years to secure passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), while Turkish feminism entered a period of silence and discontinuity from the 1930s to the 1980s. Using a comparative methodology, this article attempts to explore the reasons for this divergence to draw inferences about the future of women’s rights movements. The article compares the two parties in terms of the framework of the movements underpinning the parties, including their campaigning strategies, and the political climates in which they struggled. From this comparison, the study identifies the necessity of mass-reaching movements and a democratic political climate for the survival of women’s rights movements.

Keywords

• Women’s suffrage
• political parties
• first wave of feminism
• Turkish modernization
• Democracy

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