Unknown Speaker 0:44
Thank you everyone for joining us. We'll just give it one more minute for others to join, and then we will start. Thanks for your patience. You
Unknown Speaker 1:35
all right, good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. My name is badema pitik. I'm the Assistant Director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies here at UCLA, and on behalf of my colleagues at the center, I'm pleased to welcome you to today's event. First, I would like to acknowledge our co sponsors, UCLA gender studies and UCLA Barbara Streisand, Center for the Study of Women. This event is also part of the Middle East Studies Association, global Academy initiative, and we thank them all for their collaboration.
Unknown Speaker 2:13
For those of you who are not familiar with the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies. CNES is a research hub where over 100 faculty from humanities, social sciences, arts and the law school collaborate in a variety of research and pedagogical projects. Founded in 1957 it is one of the oldest and most distinguished US Centers for interdisciplinary research on the Middle East, broadly construed, including Iran, the Persianate world, Turkey, the Arab world and North Africa. Please check our website, where you will find all the events and programs of our center. And my colleague, Cleo will be posting some links in the chat for your reference. All of our events are free to the public, so you're welcome to join us in the future. Now I would like to turn the podium to Professor Zainab corkman, Associate Professor of Gender Studies at UCLA, who will introduce the speaker of today's event. Professor corkman, thank you for joining us today, and the floor is yours. Thank you, vadema. I am very honored today to be introducing our speaker, Doctor Samia Topal. Samia Topal has earned her PhD in religious studies at Arizona State University in 2012
Unknown Speaker 3:34
with a dissertation entitled Building a pious self in secular settings, Muslim women in modern Turkey. She holds an MA in gender studies and religion from soas University of London in the UK, and before she took on her current role as the program manager of the toy center of entire religious understanding at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio, Dr Topal worked as an assistant visiting assistant professor of religious studies at Colgate University and at William and Mary. And she was teaching course on Gender, secularism and Islam in Turkey and the Middle East, which are her areas of interest and expertise. And we are very happy to host her today, and a title of her talk today is walking away from that scarf analyzing the online platform you will not walk alone. Welcome, Dr Topal and turning the mic to you now.
Unknown Speaker 4:37
Hi, Zainab. Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity, and I know I have limited time, so I would like to start my presentation without losing any time. And
Unknown Speaker 4:50
it's I've it's been a long time since I haven't given any talk on Zoom, so
Unknown Speaker 4:57
I hope you can now see the screen.
Unknown Speaker 5:01
And so
Unknown Speaker 5:04
I'm semiha, and I've been studying about gender and piety for for a long time. And I will be talking about this website, slash online platform, today walking away from the headscarf. The website is called, you will not walk alone. And
Unknown Speaker 5:24
as you can see, like it does have a clear message that it wants to, you know, give to people.
Unknown Speaker 5:33
The first time I came across this blog was in the beginning of 2019
Unknown Speaker 5:38
at the BBC, news, news, you know, video coverage, and it was kind of the founders of the blog were giving interviews without showing their faces, and since then, they remain anonymous, so we don't have any public information about who the people behind this website are. You know, neither the the volunteers nor the creators, they remain anonymous, and that's one significant features of this website. What interested me about this was actually like in 2019
Unknown Speaker 6:16
it had been three years since I started to experience life without the headscarf after 20 years of wearing it. So it kind of spoke to me in a very close way. But it also was different in the sense that I kind of was more following a journey of piety still, even even after the headscarf and I was carrying out research with women who kind of had similar stories with me, like still wanting to maintain piety or become a pious woman, but not wearing the hijab anymore. And that research, I started doing that in 2018 and was finally able to publish it in 2022
Unknown Speaker 7:06
because of the pandemic. And by that time, this blog grew into almost like a movement. It kept receiving these anonymous letters from Turkish users, and in hundreds, and even now, now 1000s. So it grew and grew. That's why I kept my eye on it, while also, you know, working on my project of unveiling and piety, because I was also
Unknown Speaker 7:36
realizing that this really is for giving the wipe of giving up the piety, as well as the head scarf. So it kind of was also an interesting way for me to compare with what I have been studying so far. And
Unknown Speaker 7:54
like, there is not really
Unknown Speaker 7:57
seeing, you know, studies that has been done on this blog, other than I have seen only one by a professor of law in University of Portsmouth. Everyone ull who analyzed 592
Unknown Speaker 8:12
letters on this website, between 2018 and 2020
Unknown Speaker 8:17
but from the perspective of
Unknown Speaker 8:19
the rights and liberties of conservative women in Turkey. So it was written from a rights perspective, whereas I kind of want to, even though I am work, you know, concerned about women's rights, and I identify myself as a feminist, and I kind of share the sentiments of the letters. In that sense, I do not approach this blog as kind of with a feminist approach, necessarily. I'm trying to really understand
Unknown Speaker 8:49
what's happening to the understanding the configuration of piety in these stories, even if it is not there anymore, I think it still deserves to be understood or to be explored, and
Unknown Speaker 9:06
it's again, a continuation of what I have been studying since 2011
Unknown Speaker 9:11
like with my PhD study, how is piety constructed among urban, highly educated Muslim Women? That is kind of my major question, and
Unknown Speaker 9:25
this still counts, as you know, a continuation of that study, even if the age group with this blog is reducing significantly, we are mostly looking at letters sent by teenagers on this blog, actually. So that's also for a new thing for me, because I have been usually studying the piety among adults, usually with higher education and with some serious independent experience in the public sphere, like that was kind of
Unknown Speaker 9:59
the.
Unknown Speaker 10:00
The profile I was following. So I am kind of approaching this in a way of, like comparing how things have been changing, especially from the 10 years ago that I was, you know, initially studying this and then continuing the study of that four years ago with the post 2016 changes among the, you know, the pious women among turkey. So
Unknown Speaker 10:27
it's kind of giving me, and I said, like
Unknown Speaker 10:33
a challenging ground, like, usually I'm looking trying to understand what agency and piety means in these letters,
Unknown Speaker 10:45
they're kind of they obviously do not carry any concern of maintaining piety, that is clear, because they are really caring about more urgent needs of Self Realization. And this blog is interesting and has been kind of made news by the liberal media, the secular media a couple of times, because it kind of gives them a discursive tool to criticize or to politically undermine the Islamist policies of the current, You know, regime in Turkey.
Unknown Speaker 11:21
But I kind of also think that it,
Unknown Speaker 11:26
I would like to resist that urge to see this as particular like as something clearly representing a political opposition to Islamism, or representing the project of the secular liberal, you know, liberation project for Muslim women. I just think it's kind of is too quick a solution to arrive at. So this is a discursive safe space, as defined by the Debra anguilar. As I said, the only research that has been carried out on this blog, as far as I have seen so far. But it is also more than a space, as I will explore like a discursive space. It kind of has serious connections to action and real change. And it's not only women who want to take off the headscarf that are writing to this blog. There are also letters written by men who are complaining about having to hide their sexual orientation or they are not believers in Islam, but living in these conservative families, appearing to be or pretending to be, a practicing Muslim. So but the majority of the letters come from women about their struggle with veiling. And in this
Unknown Speaker 12:47
lecture, I will be focusing on the veiling issue, and then not the other issues of sexual orientation.
Unknown Speaker 12:56
And the question again, is really is, can this be connected to the political environment? Can Is there a political message in this blog? But my concern is mainly about, why did they decide to walk away from the hijab, the headscarf? Why did it not work as a tool of cultivating piety, as has been kind of explored in many
Unknown Speaker 13:23
recent ethnographies of piety before, right?
Unknown Speaker 13:28
So usually, like veiling from the secular perspective, was just directly an oppressive act, like it could not be really willingly be chosen by any modern woman, and that was challenged with recent like ethnographic studies in Turkey, it was, you know, nila fergula was the one who started actually this, like her forbidden modern was almost like, For the first time, denoting some agency to these Islamist women, but mainly because of the education that they were receiving in secular institutions. But the real change to this discourse comes actually with Saba Mahmood study in 2005 and that has, like inspired my
Unknown Speaker 14:20
study as well. Since then, as she was explaining or giving the meaning of women's agency and empowerment within the institutions and discourse of Islamism, so she was simply saying that these people are on a path of
Unknown Speaker 14:37
ethical self making and a path of a horizon of Islamic piety, rather than a secular liberal Self Realization.
Unknown Speaker 14:47
In that sense, it opened the path for many modern Muslim women to
Unknown Speaker 14:53
express their practice of veiling to the secular liberal audiences, or the Western audiences as a choice.
Unknown Speaker 15:00
Choice, and
Unknown Speaker 15:02
that kind of helped, especially in the 1990s like starting with 1980s 1990s
Unknown Speaker 15:10
the ethical milieu of that period in Turkey and the Middle East was allowing for that kind of discourse, like headscarf was seen as a tool of agency, especially against the oppressive secular regimes and the Western kind of hegemony. And I think from my perspective too, like when I think retroactively, my attachment to the headscarf in the 1990s and 2000s
Unknown Speaker 15:43
was shaped with that, I think, desire of claiming agency by going against a state rule or a state repression. And now, looking at these letters, these people, it's a different period. They're
Unknown Speaker 16:00
the generation of, you know, the AKP, and
Unknown Speaker 16:07
it's kind of significant for them in that sense, like the agency is not necessarily sought in standing against state oppression as the generations of 20. You know, 1990s did so like, if anything, the state is now like, actively promoting the wearing of the headscarf, even by elementary school girls. They see it as a sign of the success of their project of pious generations. And
Unknown Speaker 16:39
it's usually then seen as like
Unknown Speaker 16:44
this. The this blog is usually pitted against this claim of raising a pious generation, and many claims about actually the rule of the Islamist rule leading to a religious decline in the Turkish society, as opposed to their intention of increasing, you know, religiosity or piety, we don't have really good data to measure religiosity in Turkey, because they have not been carried out by academic institutions.
Unknown Speaker 17:14
But even the imperfect data we should we see kind of shows us that there is the transformation in the understanding of religion happening, especially between 2011 and 2018
Unknown Speaker 17:27
which corresponds to the period when the AKP turned more autocratic and Islamist.
Unknown Speaker 17:36
But I would kind of not get into the details of this the statistics, because that's really not a reliable data. I would like to present only what we can say is no. Data shows an increase in piety among the young generation, like the generation that grew after 2022
Unknown Speaker 17:57
so even that kind of says, I think something the Islamist rule did not necessarily lead to more piety among the Turkish population.
Unknown Speaker 18:10
So what we look when we look at the blog, which is
Unknown Speaker 18:17
no, as I said, it started as a platform just a minute.
Unknown Speaker 18:28
Okay?
Unknown Speaker 18:30
So what we see here is they are kind of making their call, starting in July, 2018
Unknown Speaker 18:39
to women that are sharing these similar experiences. I think from this space, I will be reading my analysis to make it more understandable, not walking alone. What does that mean? Who are these people and what are they trying to do? They start their call with this sentence, with this kind of like a poetic introduction if you're also scared about the things you will be challenged if you say no, the fights you try to have and cannot dare to repeat hurting your mother, sister or daughter, who you could not help with your good intention but never want any evil done to them, your father's spouse, brother, who you try to vindicate in your mind by thinking that's their upbringing. That's the way they know your sister or friend who tried and failed. Your own mind when it bewilders you to discover that a different life is possible. The answers you face when you ask yourself the question, what worse could happen? Your inner voice that says you're going to lose more if you grow on it more and more your new unknown life that you have no idea how to manage or thinking about all these indecisive about any of them, or just want to get struggle. Get your struggle off your chest, write your story to us. This was initially started with with the couple like with.
Unknown Speaker 20:00
Volunteers or women who shared similar sensibilities and then turned into, as I said, a big platform. What are they afraid? Is they're kind of afraid of
Unknown Speaker 20:14
removing the headscarf because of the risks it entails, such as, like hurting the feelings of their parents, losing the emotional, social and financial support of the family, being disciplined with harsher measures, and risking the well being and safety of other female members in their family and facing an unknown life. So the the website received others in 2018 but their translation into English started on, or happened in 2021
Unknown Speaker 20:44
as can be seen from the upload dates of the like ad letters on the English website, you won't walk alone.
Unknown Speaker 20:52
It started for a Turkish speaking audience in Turkish, but quickly turned into, you know, an international or it has the desire, at least, to turn into an international feminist movement, with volunteers translating the letters to English, and most recently, into Arabic, Farsi and Spanish. And they do more than translation for the platform. They edit the letters, choose the accompanying images to be published with each letter, and usually they pick depictions of the female body in empowering and privacy defying ways. They also carry out scholarship calls for girls who are denied high school or mostly college education by their families in order to prevent them from continuing their lives without the headscarf. It is noteworthy that all the scholarship campaigns are calling for individual donations from their followers on social media. Instead of seeking any individual sponsorship, they are careful to avoid making any political claims other than being a solidarity platform that is, as they say, brought to life voluntarily by the people that had gone through the same difficulties and who met online. So their aim is to shed light on these moral impasses and
Unknown Speaker 22:12
experienced by Muslim girls and women due to being coerced into veiling in various degrees. In other words, like this, coercion can happen like it can be physically exerted on them by outsiders with threats of physical, emotional and financial abuse, or they can internally suppress their desires to go against the norms of their family and social circle, which provides them with a sense of belonging and identity and
Unknown Speaker 22:43
these are kind of the Turkish website, the English one. And this kind of is the Arabic Farsi and Spanish. These are all carried out by volunteers. Therefore, the number of translations are less and less in, you know, in less common languages.
Unknown Speaker 23:01
It's important to look at their section called frequently asked questions, because they can kind of see that a platform calling for the unveiling of Muslim women in a Muslim majority country that has been ruled by an Islamist government for the last two decades would clearly raise some eyebrows and could potentially be accused with self Orientalism, Islamophobia and betrayal to the headscarf caused by Turkish Islamists.
Unknown Speaker 23:30
Hence the sanction. The section of the website proactively addresses these accusations by highlighting their spontaneous, voluntary formation, meaning they are not founded or funded by an external power. Their identities as Muslims from Muslim families, meaning they are not aiming to further Islamophobia, but simply expressing their genuine struggles as Muslim women, their shared ideas on gender equality and freedom of expression, not amounting to a political project, meaning they are not a political threat to the government or a political asset at all, and their opposition to any kind of compulsion to wear or not wear the headscarf, meaning that they are not betraying the headscarf struggle of the previous generation.
Unknown Speaker 24:19
The reason why the platform faces these accusations is mainly because of the reductionist approaches attributed to veiling and unveiling of women's bodies in a polarized society like Turkey, we have the on one hand, the modern, secular, Western liberal, versus the traditional Religious, Middle Eastern and oppressed so
Unknown Speaker 24:40
which an originally Western colonialist discourse on Muslim women. It has been carried into the clash of civilizations thesis today, which is the thesis or the claim for sexual liberation, and the claim for.
Unknown Speaker 25:00
The universality of sexual rights has been used mainly by the Western discourse to pit the Islamic civilization as backward and denying women their innate femininity, whereas the Western women are deemed autonomous, free to pursue their desire. So it can easily
Unknown Speaker 25:23
be employed in such a discourse. When looking at the contents of these letters, and they are careful to not fall into these traps or these political polemics,
Unknown Speaker 25:35
they kind of also are complaining that whenever a Muslim women want to share any negative facts or expressions about Islamic faith, they are always faced with accusation, this accusation of, you know, serving Islamophobic discourse or undermining the image of Islam. So they are kind of
Unknown Speaker 25:55
expressing, from the beginning, that that's not their goal. They are simply they're not against the veil itself or religion itself. They're against oppression.
Unknown Speaker 26:06
So that kind of sets the ground for me in analyzing the themes. And when it comes to these themes, they seem to be very obvious, like they seem to be calling for the themes of liberation and choice and
Unknown Speaker 26:24
flaming agency. And I intend to show the complexity of these notions, and
Unknown Speaker 26:33
starting with like, I will be looking at around like 12 letters among the 80 of them that has been already translated to English. And these letters, as I said, are dated around 2021
Unknown Speaker 26:50
like that's the approximate
Unknown Speaker 26:53
date of these letters. And if you want to follow like the up to date ones, the current ones, they are all on in the in the Turkish website, they are not adding, they haven't been adding any new English translations for for a while, and it's mainly because, as I said, it's based on voluntary work. So I will be looking at the these letters and examine the themes of choice and obligation, education and empowerment and questioning of the veil, patriarchy and faith in these letters,
Unknown Speaker 27:29
the main issue I see in this discourse, in this space, is a broken terrain, a broken ground to configure, configure any kind of an ethical path to cultivating a pious self, because the writers of these letters
Unknown Speaker 27:49
are, or were too young to attribute a meaning to covering their hair and dressing modestly, unlike what we see in the ethnographic accounts, like my anti Fernando's Muslim, you know, research on Muslim French women, it wants to show how these veiled women in French society are actually like modern free agents, and who can combine like balance the sense of obligation and desire in very particular ways,
Unknown Speaker 28:20
which is based on the concept of the law of God. So the law of God is at the core of the practice of veiling as an agentive ethical project. The more you practice, the more you love God, the more you love God, the more you want to practice. That's kind of how desire and obligation are, kind of in this interdependent process. But what we see in these letters, in these stories, is
Unknown Speaker 28:46
not even once the mentioning of love of God.
Unknown Speaker 28:51
They are more concerned about pleasing their parents than pleasing God, as can be seen in these letters, and it's usually also the female members of the family, mostly the mother or the grandmother that exert the greatest pressure on the girls to be veiled. And that happens despite they also have been through the same problem as children like this person's mother had started wearing the burka. Burka here, I think she means char chef, like the black two piece clothing, Turkish woman, where when she was 12 years old, like she says, it's supposed to be my mom who needs to understand me best, but even she doesn't understand but a key term I see here is with my own decision. So with my own decision, I started wearing the abaya the Farage around 10th grade. So we're talking about a 1415, year old girl here. And the word with my own decision sounds like choice and agency at first sight, but the context of the decision quickly gives it away as not being a true choice in the.
Unknown Speaker 30:00
First place, because if we conceptualize agency as the capacity, capacity to author one's own life, this case suggests that it was only partially valued by her family when she decided to wear a buyer in addition to covering her hair, but the same agency was completely denied of her when she wanted to reverse that decision. So a common case we see in these letters is the families usually encourage them in making a choice to wear the veil, but they show no encouragement. Actually, they show strong discouragement when they want to choose to unveil. So choice here is not really working in a consistent way, and therefore we cannot really call it a real choice, but it is a strong argument, especially living in a strong living in a secular country like even Turkey, Muslim girls feel obliged to tell to themselves and to the secular others that veiling is, or was their personal choice, but at the same time, they are taught that in their conservative religious training from childhood, they are taught that veiling is a religious obligation which incurs divine punishment when abandoned. And besides this personal decision, like wearing the hijab or covering one's hair becomes quickly a social issue, a family matter, and they cannot really decide on their own personal appearance anymore when they want to take the hijab off. This is seen in
Unknown Speaker 31:36
the case of this woman, who is 30 years old, has been wearing the hijab for 15 years, but cannot make the decision, even if she's married and she thinks her husband would support her decision, she still cannot make this decision to take off the hijab, and one reason for that is she's afraid of her sister, who is about to go to university, and she fears that her father might punish her sister for the wrongdoing of this woman who wants to, you know, apparently, according to the parents, they want to commit a sin by wanting to take off the hijab. So the personal decision is really something that is questioned here
Unknown Speaker 32:19
and when is strong, role is attributed to covering or uncovering of one's hair, it's really impossible. It becomes impossible to conceptualize such a religious obligation as a personal, ethical commitment. It's not about you anymore, like it's rarely about the person who is wearing the hijab. So how can you really turn that into a personal like a technology of the self, as Foucault was mentioning in his you know, hermeneutics of the self and also the head scar, special religious status is constantly undermined, not only by the political forces like the secularists and The Islamists, continuously using the headscarf for their political goals, but also the reactions of the parents when they kind of
Unknown Speaker 33:08
prove that they are more concerned about their social reputation than the face of their daughters. And it is seen, you know, in this kind of letter, when you know the
Unknown Speaker 33:22
parents, like she says again, like they didn't force me necessarily, like she was not forced pressured into veiling because she it was she was only 12 and hadn't had puberty yet, but it was also not a real choice for her.
Unknown Speaker 33:40
I decided to do that because of the negative perception created by the environment. Besides, it was an obligation for me, in any case, that they would come so
Unknown Speaker 33:51
I struggle with my family because of the situation. And I want to be free, I want to have fun, I want to buy the dresses I like, but I always get negative feedback from my family, so what she thinks is her family doesn't give any value to her freedom, and it was really not a choice for her in the first place, which she recognizes only when she arrives, like at The age of 15. So another case is more serious, like how to have a family totally disregards the well being of their child just because she rejects to wear the headscarf, and even the Father threatening to like to kill in that sense. And she basically says, My father doesn't love me. He loves me because of the hijab. So when I don't have it, he doesn't love me. And in that sense, the veiling cannot really be embraced as a purely religious obligation and practice. It cannot be considered as an ethical, you know, tool, because the concern is never divine.
Unknown Speaker 35:00
Leisure or divine
Unknown Speaker 35:02
proximity, like getting closer to the Divine or the love of God, it is you know these norms about modesty, unveiling, according to them, their experiences lack a connection between their journey of self realization and the cultivation of virtues that would take them to their individual horizon of happiness or flourishing. Another theme that we see is most of the letters the girls talk about how they have been sent to Imam Atif schools. And from one point, like from a secular point of view, you can say, education empowers women no matter what, and that can be kind of supported, obviously, but it's also part of their problem in these letters, because they are they become the only direction for them, like the only choice for them, which is not even a choice, in this case, If they want to continue their education, their mandatory education, and the Imam Atif schools were initially established by the Kemalist state in 1945
Unknown Speaker 36:10
to recruit, like to raise
Unknown Speaker 36:14
Imams and hat tips like the preachers and priority leaders. But with the rise of political Islam, they became quickly politicized and turned into or defined as the political backyard of the Islamist parties, which made them also a target of the state repression in late 1990s similar to the headscarf band The Imam Mater, schools were limited in their career prospects, and their numbers were decreased to make sure that less and less students attended these schools. So this obviously backfired when Erdogan and the AKP came to power and they use the state power to give more.
Unknown Speaker 37:00
You know, attract attractiveness to these schools. They made these schools, once again, open to all careers, increase their number. And the schooling system in Turkey is based on neighborhood. So you are supposed to go to the school that's closest to your neighborhood. And most of the time that would be any momative school. So that kind of turned into an issue of debate,
Unknown Speaker 37:26
but it is still in that sense,
Unknown Speaker 37:30
better than not going to school at all for the girls from the conservative families,
Unknown Speaker 37:37
because the alternative would be really going to Quranic schools or boarding schools, and that would take them away from the physical like National Education Curriculum altogether.
Unknown Speaker 37:54
So they kind of I'm someone who has been to religious boarding school since the age of six. I have been made to wear the headscarf even before getting my first period. So I have been studying in imativ schools for my secondary and high school education.
Unknown Speaker 38:11
It only gives them this one world and which maintains veiling and gender segregation in the public sphere. So even if education is supposed to be, you know, in a secular sphere, according to the modern theories of secularism, the Imamate of schools are like pocket spaces where that secularism is undermined, and religious education and veiling and gender segregation are maintained.
Unknown Speaker 38:40
So
Unknown Speaker 38:44
part of that problem is, what is the what's being taught to them? And the idea that if you show a strand of your hair to non, you know, family males, you would burn in hell, is something that they are taught in this kind of like conservative Quranic school or boarding school type of education. So that is why, like when we think of education and empowerment, it does not necessarily lead to an empowerment if what the content of the education and the context of the education is simply reiterating and perpetuating the existing,
Unknown Speaker 39:24
I would say the oppressive system.
Unknown Speaker 39:28
And another problem I see is like usually we see veiling is supposed to be
Unknown Speaker 39:35
a tool of self cultivation, to know yourself, to identify yourself and what does the what do the leather leather say about cultivating yourself?
Unknown Speaker 39:49
I would usually see actually a losing of the self, instead of cultivation of that through the headscarf, like the headscarf, making them invisible, non existent. That's the terms.
Unknown Speaker 40:00
They use in letters, actually,
Unknown Speaker 40:03
world, the letter says verbal repression is not always a must. It is a great injustice to direct children at vulnerable ages. Even if a person wants to be veiled, they should veil after age 18, says one of the letters, when recounting her decision to veil at the age of 15 with a single verbal suggestion by her father, like all your friends are now veiled, when will you veil? This is what the father said, and it took a second for her to decide to veil, because she knew that she would one day have to choose between veiling in order to fulfill a religious obligation and to please her father, but never feeling beautiful and free, or remaining not veiled and free, but carrying multiple layers of guilt against God, her family, society, in her conscience, so she felt that the freedom given to her was only in the shape of a mold and that she needed to fit in. In other words, the boundaries of her ideal self were already decided by an external, religious and social authority with that mold. Even if she reached to her ideal self in the scheme, it would still not be her own self, but simply a fulfillment of a pre given and pre authored project. And according to her then claiming ownership of oneself is only possible once one reaches 18, which is the legal age of adulthood, according to the modern western view. So she kind of supports that view.
Unknown Speaker 41:36
However, the traditional child pedagogy emphasizes the responsibility of the adults, especially the Father, in molding the child into a pious character before they become legally responsible or mukellif themselves with puberty, so the father sees himself responsible for the religious behavior of his children, especially His daughters, he would occasionally justify using verbal and physical abuse as methods of disciplining. That responsibility, then is traditional path to the husband when she gets married, meaning that this girl, this woman, never gets the autonomy over herself and be a moral subject who gets to decide between right and wrong in the light of divine guidance.
Unknown Speaker 42:23
And
Unknown Speaker 42:25
another letter in that sense, shows us, when I was only four years old, my parents sent me to special day cares, where they would teach religious doctrines. I was in sixth grade, I covered even before having my first period. So then early religious molding in that sense, and obviously I did not have a say in any of this. But then she realizes that I want to live my life. This is not the way I want to live my life, and I need to find real me. So that becomes a question, real me. What is the real me in looking for that real self, she asks herself, what makes her happy? What makes her unhappy? And she finds out that the hijab, the headscarf, makes her unhappy, so she decides to take it off after that point. But it's not easy, because she has never been given the choice of making her own decisions. And
Unknown Speaker 43:21
after deciding to
Unknown Speaker 43:24
uphold her personal choice and freedom, she realizes that she cannot do it without lying to her parents and uncovering her hair only when she was away from her family for college. So she then has to face the guilt, the remorse for lying to her parents in her search for finding her true or authentic self. And you can see the paradox here. In searching for authenticity, you have to lie, you have to pretend. And eventually, when her secret is out, she face, she faces the wrath of her father, and kind of,
Unknown Speaker 44:04
she makes it in herself, like why she had to lie, because the this anger that she sees from her father kind of justifies, you know, her decision, because she's chased by her father and kind of threatened To be killed. Obviously, these, most of these are words that are said in Angry moments, but they remain in the hearts of these young girls as saying, like my father simply gave up on me because I refused. I rejected wearing the hijab. So force veiling therefore hinders ethical self cultivation, because these women realize that they feel that they are reduced into their head coverings, their appearances, just like this treatment of the parents show and in the other letter, we kind of see you talk to your father you.
Unknown Speaker 45:00
Explain that how it makes you unhappy, and still the response you get this, it doesn't matter. You just need to keep wearing it. So from their perspective, therefore they are only an object, which is the headscarf, and that's the only thing valuable in them. But in her letter, she simply said that I'm not even a Muslim, and that kind of because becomes, in that sense, the irony of the situation. She is forced to wear the hijab while she is not considering herself a Muslim anymore. And for her,
Unknown Speaker 45:33
her parents care nothing about her feelings and
Unknown Speaker 45:39
so or well being. And
Unknown Speaker 45:44
that leads to obviously questioning the veil, because when you see it has been reduced so much into a symbol, reified into an object,
Unknown Speaker 45:55
it leads to the questioning of the religious faith altogether,
Unknown Speaker 45:59
eventually, by these Muslim women, because they face this identity, confusion and lack of self worth, and they tie it to the falsehood of the faith that gave birth to these empty rules in the first place. And with Turkey's history of headscarf bands, there have been many absurdities created that trivialized the headscarf for Muslim women, especially with this requirement of taking on and off your headscarf in the middle of the street, has really kind of turned it into an empty signifier at some point, because on one hand, you're told that you're not supposed to be showing a strand of your hair to outsiders, like to these extra this stranger men, but on the other hand, you are taking it on and off in the presence of them and starting not to feel weird about it anymore. So that kind of experience
Unknown Speaker 46:58
trivialized, as I said, the meaning of veiling, as we see in this example, the head scarf pen in around 2010
Unknown Speaker 47:07
arbitrarily removed. So when the students go to school without the hijab, they learn that it is not allowed. So they now must go to the restroom and cover their hair, which was uncovered a minute ago. So that makes them question, why was it really so important, the pieces of hair? Was it really so important? So that becomes her point of questioning. And
Unknown Speaker 47:32
in that sense, I began doing research and questioning I wanted to be like this real Muslim, or I kind of put an end to this. So her search tells her that
Unknown Speaker 47:44
religion telling women to cover their hair when outside, giving men the freedom to beat their wives if necessary, condemning innocent people of the same sex who loved each other, but on the other hand, allowing men to marry more than one woman and punishing sexuality with a whip was very irrational for me. I believe in the Creator, but I think religions are entirely fabricated. So I took off the headscarf last year, so you can see how the chain goes with the trivialization of the headscarf, leading to the questioning of the faith altogether, eventually making her declare herself as someone not believing in religions, what was generally called deists today,
Unknown Speaker 48:29
and
Unknown Speaker 48:30
because they're kind of searching when, when they start questioning the veil, the search is triggered in them for an authentic self that could meant This broken tie between one's actions and thoughts, between mind and body, between intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity, which means practicing your faith to connect with and worship the divine versus using your religion to meet personal and social needs. So when this is both connected, that gives one an authentic and healthy self, but
Unknown Speaker 49:04
all the tactics they are forced to apply in order to claim their agency moves them away from authenticity, because they are supposed to lie to their families, both when they are living with them and when they live away from them, and this period of pretending to be a believer and a veiled Muslim woman seems to be inevitable before they acquire the financial means and emotional bravery to open the challenge to moral norms dictated by their families, social circles, even the state supported institutions such as Imam schools and private educational institutions run by religious foundations. So this platform becomes a life saving tool or source for many of these women, because they usually say that I didn't know other people shared these, you know, troubles that i.
Unknown Speaker 50:00
I'm carrying with me. So
Unknown Speaker 50:03
because it's helping, it's bringing together these people who are living with a fragmented sense of the self, and
Unknown Speaker 50:13
I knew there were people out there whose conditions were much worse than me. I'm thankful to those who are raising the who's founded and supported this platform, and the people who wrote and shared their stories. So it reminded me of this quote by Maya Angelou. Like every time a woman stands up for herself without knowing it, possibly without even claiming it, she stands up for all women. So anytime these women stand up for themselves, they are also standing up for the other women, first of all, in their own families, and also, you know, in the larger social sphere. And we see this in this letter that says, like, I want to be a good scientist and prevent my siblings from being crushed under this ignorance. And they're kind of reminded me of the power of the solidarity as well. And with each letter that is submitted to this website, we see the story of a success or an ongoing struggle, and that keeps the momentum for change always active. There's always new letters, new stories and updates to the old stories being kind of shared with the people. There are some letters that says, like I wrote six months ago about my struggle now I have succeeded it, and I'm very happy. Or someone writes that I still could not do it. I need more support. Please. You know, someone contact me and let us talk in per in private. So this kind of solidarity is really helping, but what I see is as a tactic, so many of these middle school and high school age girls are waiting to turn 18 to and go to college to build their independent lives that have been denied to them by their conservative families. Many letters that says, like, I'm waiting to enter like a turn 18, enter into the university exam and move away from my family so that I will live as I wish.
Unknown Speaker 52:10
And
Unknown Speaker 52:11
what we see is, though, it doesn't always work like going to college away from the family does not always give them the space to take off their veil, as we see in this letter title, that wishes to find a job now. So when they cannot achieve that dream, and they go to college, it is deferred into the post graduation, they say, like, when I find the job, I will have my financial independence, and then I will kind of be free from these oppressions. So they kind of keep changing these tactics. Why? Why doesn't the college work? Because when they go to college, they they see that similar to the Imamate kind of pathway, there are these dorms and organizations or houses that are run by religious groups that are chosen or picked by these families of these, you know, these girls so that they have to keep living in these community houses. If I take my head scarf off this in this community house where I stay, they will kick me out, and I have no other place to stay. I don't have enough money to cover the rent. So even through college, they have to continue, you know, this pretending until they find a job. And again, if that doesn't work, that can be, you know, other means. But they're always, constantly looking for ways out, you know, from from this, this life. So I don't know how much time I have, but I'm at the conclusion part now. I want to
Unknown Speaker 53:50
come to, like, what, what does it mean in that sense, like, what does it have to do with the Islamist rule? Like as many people
Unknown Speaker 54:00
connecting the decline in the faith or the religiosity of the young generation to the Islamist rule, or sometimes blaming the conservative policies of the government for, you know, pushing these goals into forced failing. What we can say is there is not a forced veiling as a state policy, at least, like there was a forced unveiling as a state policy. Before this, the headscarf ban was forced unveiling through the hands of the state. We don't see it yet, at least the state forcing, you know, Muslim women to veil.
Unknown Speaker 54:39
But we also see that under the ban, the head scarf ban, there was also some form of freedom for these, such these kinds of girls to be, you know, protected from the forced veiling by their families. This is kind of obviously not a justification of.
Unknown Speaker 55:00
They had scarf pan. But also we should not
Unknown Speaker 55:03
deny this reality that it was an avenue for many of these girls to experience being unveiled with a good excuse, like the state doesn't let me to wear the hijab, and that was kind of when that excuse was taken away. They the girls had no tool to no excuse to defy to say no to the head scarf, especially we're looking at teenagers, which is a difficult thing for them to defy, to reject, like the values of their families.
Unknown Speaker 55:37
So this, this choice of like whether education or hijab is not there anymore after 2010
Unknown Speaker 55:47
and
Unknown Speaker 55:50
the girls, as I said, have little means to escape from their family, the social conservative family upbringings. Another thing is there is also an encouragement of such conservative practices, not maybe a law a state policy, but clearly consistent discourses by the state elites that would Grace like early veiling gender segregation or intensive Islamic education at an early age, these were
Unknown Speaker 56:26
not condemned anymore, unlike in the in the secularist era, they are actually, you know, encouraged and praised by the state and the domestic sphere, which has never been actually free from state influence in Turkey has also been penetrated by these pro Islamist discourses. So when like, think of yourself as a girl who wants to take off a hijab, and the TV shows that are being you know, broadcast on the state channel are praising women with the hijab, and that kind of is consolidating the belief, the view of the family, that the hijab is is compulsory. It's a must. You can never even consider taking it off. So these views are being consolidated through the penetration of the state discourse into the private and domestic spheres of the Turkish families,
Unknown Speaker 57:25
and when they go out to the public sphere, they also find less and less space in the secular
Unknown Speaker 57:33
public sphere. So the secular public sphere is increasingly de secularized by these collaboration between the government and the religious foundations, especially in the sphere of education, as I said, like when they think that they would be free when they go to college, they find themselves being forced to stay in the housing of a religious foundation or religious Community, maintaining the similar practices that they are trying to walk away from. So what we see in the end is there's not really much space for them to walk away. And that can lead to like two things, like, on one hand, this is this unveiling is usually associated with emancipation, liberation and freedom, but within the public sphere and private sphere of Turkey, there's always a limited freedom. That's one thing, and the other is just because there is not a true and absolute freedom and emancipation does not mean these people are not
Unknown Speaker 58:39
exerting their agency or subjectivity, because subjectivity and agency do not mean the same thing with freedom and emancipation. In other words, like we are kind of looking at
Unknown Speaker 58:54
both for
Unknown Speaker 58:57
like subjectivity an agency is something that occurs, usually as a response to different forms of subordination, which is called The Paradox of subjectivation by Saba Mahmood. And what I see here is
Unknown Speaker 59:13
every time these girls ask themselves, who am I? That is their moment of agency. And the question is asked as a result of an oppression. So if they did not see that oppression, they would not search for themselves, like their identity, their selfhood. So they are kind of pushed into this forms of subjectivity while searching for their true self. And also, we also know that they will never find that true self, because we are in that sense, like even when you are liberated from the headscarf, the headscarf still remains on you, because
Unknown Speaker 59:56
it's not just a physical object, it's.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:00
It exists in their minds because we form our identities as a result of these various preconceptions and reflexes that were inculcated with like since we were children of the conditioning and disciplinary techniques that are pervasive in our societies, and they do not magically disappear with a change in clothing, so with headscarf you are oppressed. Without headscarf, you are liberated. Is really too simplistic to understand the transformation these subjects are going through. In my opinion, what these letters and stories show are that interdependency between freedom and submission, agency and subordination, like individual and community, society and state, these are not really mutually exclusive entities. They constantly are in a relationship. They constantly exist in each other, like every act of submission, also like in when you think of the Islamic act of submission, it means true freedom. When you only submit to one God, you become truly free. So freedom and submission really penetrating in that understanding, or when you are oppressed, that pushes you to search for yourself, and that pushes you towards becoming the author of your life. Therefore, creating situations of agency
Unknown Speaker 1:01:29
and the individual can never be separated from the community. Vice versa, the community and the individual. And in the Turkish society, especially, I think the state and the society are not really that separable from each other, even in the most intimate spaces that we think belongs to us, are penetrated by the state discourse and are shaped by the state discourse, and therefore I also count this in part of this scheme of interdependent or mutually dependent relationships. So I don't know how much I have exceeded my time, but that's all from me. Thank you for listening. Bye.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:27
Hi folks.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:30
So thank you so much. Semiha for this really interesting talk. So I was asked to provide comments, which I want to do, like super briefly, to help sitiate
Unknown Speaker 1:02:41
Dr Topaz work and his significance. So as many of you are familiar with, Muslim women are such a loaded subject, overburdened by political objectification and competing political projects. And in these centuries old and still strong Orientalist discourses, she is passive, oppressed, a victim of her society, of her religion, and veil is the visible symbol of her oppression. And of course, this representation has long served and continues to serve today,
Unknown Speaker 1:03:14
the purpose of justifying anti Muslim racism, justifying colonialism, military violence against Muslim majority countries and critiquing the stereotype of oppressed Muslim women. In the last few decades, we have important anti racist, anti colonial, anthropological and feminist work which has been showing us how Muslim women's practice and meanings of veiling are diverse. They change in time and place. And these works have been showing us, as Dr Topol has mentioned, with the works of gelai in Turkey or saba maht In Asia, right, how veiling can be an agentic or even subversive act. For example, in Turkey, this was the case when people were young women were veiling against the state ban against veiling in Egypt, we will were using veiling as part of the Islamist mosque movements as a means of self making. But these works have been in circulation for now a few decades, and the wide circulation of them have created some ways, I would argue, another reductive picture, often this kind of almost counter stereotypes, where you have the figure of the Veiled Muslim woman who is empowered by veiling and piety, and this is like a singular, one dimensional figure. And this picture is important, and has been important, still continues to be important, to push back against Orientalist anti Muslim stereotypes of the always already oppressed Muslim women, right? And that's all true in certain contexts, but if circulated widely and without context and historicity, this picture then can become a reductive thing too, preventing us from seeing the Muslim women.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:00
In their diversity, in historically and politically constituted subjects with various and changing relationships to piety. Unveiling. This is why I am really
Unknown Speaker 1:05:14
delighted to hear this interesting research presentation. And in the interest of time, I would like to open it questions from the audience.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:24
Please write your questions in the Q and A,
Unknown Speaker 1:05:30
and the speaker will address these so I already see there is a question from Janet affari.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:42
And saying that thanks for this wonderful talk. As we were talking, I looked at the website, including the Persian Arabic pages, and Professor is asking, Are these contributors all living in Turkey, or if they're contributing from all over different countries too? I student.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:05
I think they are translations of the letters sent by Turkish women. But because I don't have access to the Persian language myself, like if they see that, they are written by actually, like Iranian women, I would be surprised to learn that. But what I know is there are translations of the letters from Turkish women.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:31
Thank you. Samia, other questions, folks, please write in the
Unknown Speaker 1:06:39
questions and answers bugs, and we will take them. And in the meantime, while we're waiting, I want to take the liberty of asking a question,
Unknown Speaker 1:06:49
so
Unknown Speaker 1:06:51
or two questions, and you can just pick one, whichever one to choose the answer. You kind of mentioned a little bit in your talk that this also resonated with your own personal journey. And I wondered if you wanted to situate more about share with us more kind of self reflexivity, as to like how your goods and your research and stress was shaped by that. And the second thing that I was curious about is like in writing this research, and perhaps in writing your previous research on your dissertation where you kind of looked at the kind of, perhaps the other side of the same coin of the relation between Muslim women and piety,
Unknown Speaker 1:07:30
how, what are the strategies that you use to avoid kind of feeding into this kind of very,
Unknown Speaker 1:07:39
you know, in persistent stereotypes about Muslim women, as you know, look how oppressed they are, right? They're victims, and kind of look how damaged they are by kind of religion, etc, or, on the other hand, just kind of the simplistic move into like, look how like, like, empowered they are already by their religion. So I was wondering like, what are some
Unknown Speaker 1:08:03
strategies that you use in researching and choosing research topics and writing about these issues, presenting, etc, that you're using to avoid the simplistic pictures?
Unknown Speaker 1:08:19
Yeah, I think empathy is the key term for me here. I try to see the actual lived experiences. Most of them are my own experiences. As I said, I happen to live as a hijabi Muslim woman for 20 years, from the age of 14 to 34
Unknown Speaker 1:08:39
and then, you know, since then, I have been experienced experimenting with, you know,
Unknown Speaker 1:08:44
without the hijab. And as I shared in, my conclusion is, by taking it off, you don't really take it off from your your your personality or subjectivity, because it has kind of shaped who you are for such a long time. And that is kind of the key aspect for me, like I try to see that grounded experiences, what it means for the actual person who is going through this transformation. And nothing is simple in life. We all know this. Then, why are we going for this simplistic explanations in our academic you know, studies and analysis and it should look like life, and life looks complicated,
Unknown Speaker 1:09:28
especially in Turkey for Turkish women, everything is complicated. Nothing is just what it is. Unfortunately, everything is highly politicized, and that kind of complicates many things.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:40
So when I read Saba Mahmoud, like studied about the Egyptian women, I can differentiate the experiences of Turkish women from the Egyptian women very easily, because I have that inner knowledge and that I think helps me, and my strategy is to stay close to the experience that I can.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:00
And understand and I can empathize with,
Unknown Speaker 1:10:04
because only with those I can be sure of what I'm saying, and even when, even when I'm talking about them, I use this phrase of like, this can change. This is just what I see right now. And that's also something again, living in Turkey, things change so fast that it's very difficult to make general statements in any time.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:29
Thank you so much. Dr topala, here that you're emphasizing kind of your own standpoint and the subjectivity that comes with the highlighting individuals perspectives and experiences that are diverse and specific and highlighting change and historic statistic.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:46
You know what I'm saying
Unknown Speaker 1:10:49
in thinking about like our work and analysis, I want to see if there are any last questions
Unknown Speaker 1:10:58
that we want to take we are almost at time. So are there any last comments or any last toast that you want to leave us with? Or
Unknown Speaker 1:11:12
there are so many things that can be said about this platform, these letters, as I said, there are now, I think, over 1000 of them. So it's a very new area, and I would encourage people like it's more limited. For English speaking people, as I said, there are 80 letters, but even they kind of give a lot of material. But for Turkish speakers, there is endless kind of data there that open needs to be opened up from different disciplinary perspectives, and I would be really happy to read more research and more analysis about that platform.
Unknown Speaker 1:11:52
Thank you. And I have two questions or one question, one request there that I want to send to you.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:03
One is that gentlefar, and I'm sure others too would be interested in contacting you. So they're asking if could you please share an email address or they could get in touch with you. And also, an anonymous attendee is asking, has there been acts of resistance and subversion against veiling norms in Turkey?
Unknown Speaker 1:12:29
Has there been acts of resistance and subversion against veiling norms in Turkey
Unknown Speaker 1:12:38
at the individual level? I think this is an example of resistance and subversion, but and then political subversion, but that happened mostly within the context of the head scarf ban. So it's problematic because it was a state sponsored and state, you know, mandated subversion of veiling in terms of these independent like women's movements or feminist movements, there have been, like the
Unknown Speaker 1:13:09
feminist studies or movements against forced veiling, mostly by secular, you know, feminist women. So it's kind of all or all around, but there hasn't been any organized like subversion of wailing outside of the authority, the control of, I would say, the state,
Unknown Speaker 1:13:30
at least in the recent history of Turkey.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:34
And can I write my email on the chat or please, if you're comfortable in doing so, if there is an email where you would feel comfortable for
Unknown Speaker 1:13:46
attendees to contact you,
Unknown Speaker 1:13:49
Professor affair is asking for that specifically, you can directly email them, or if you're, I mean, message them. Or if you're comfortable, I'm sure there might be others too. You can share it with everyone.
Unknown Speaker 1:14:06
So folks, the
Unknown Speaker 1:14:08
doctors email is now in the chat. Shared With
Unknown Speaker 1:14:14
Yeah, it is now in the chat for everyone.
Unknown Speaker 1:14:19
Feel free to reach out to me, and I would like to have further conversations. I know I shared too many things in limited time, and I would appreciate the chance to you know, to elaborate on them, on one on one conversations,
Unknown Speaker 1:14:36
I'm checking the question and answers to see if there are any last minute questions, yes, so let me read that to you. This is from isamarell. Thank you so much for this great presentation. If we still have time, we will take a little time in Sam take first question. If Dr topology is fed, I want to ask, how do you see the represent?
Unknown Speaker 1:15:00
Representation of unveiling women in mainstream media in Turkey, in media Atlas or TV series. So do you see the representation of unveiling women in mainstream media in Turkey?
Unknown Speaker 1:15:15
There's again, a history to the depiction of unveiling women
Unknown Speaker 1:15:21
in the 70s, we know this stereotype of the rural woman becoming an Urban one, and the first thing she does is removing her head scarf, like unveiling becomes the first thing she does. And that continued for a long time, because being modern was associated with being uncovered, unveiled. And if a woman was covered, she probably was from a lower class in the city or directly from a rural area, a rural woman. And obviously, with this AKP era, the norms, the power relations, are changing. We don't see veiled women as lower class or uneducated or rural women anymore. They are depicted as these upper class, educated or powerful and
Unknown Speaker 1:16:12
so there. But unveiling, in that sense, is
Unknown Speaker 1:16:17
not the sign of kind of kind of being modernized anymore as a stereotype. It still exists, obviously, but not as, you know, prevalent as it was in the you know 80s and, you know, 70s and but I still think, like these popular TV shows and that their depiction of veiling and unveiling,
Unknown Speaker 1:16:42
they obviously trivialize many aspects of like these practices and not really reflecting how complicated and deep that decision to veil and unveil can be
Unknown Speaker 1:17:00
for. I think that's, at least was my experience. It wasn't really like the I take it on and off, and instantly I became, become a different person, type of change. It's not really reflected, I think, in the mainstream TV and in the secular like news outlets. This, as I said, this blog has been covered as a sign of how people are moving away from the policies of the Islamists and the AKP, and kind of heralding them as these, like secular
Unknown Speaker 1:17:32
heroes or heroines in that sense, and it plays into the polemics and the polarization, But the lived experiences, I would say, are always more complicated and complex than they are. You know, reflected
Unknown Speaker 1:17:50
as
Unknown Speaker 1:17:51
thanks so much. Dr
Unknown Speaker 1:17:55
Karina karakush is asking now, do you think social media challenges these dynamics of commercial media that portray the acts of unveiling as an act of resistance.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:08
I'll read this again. Do you think social media challenges these dynamics on commercial media that portray the act of unveiling as an act of resistance?
Unknown Speaker 1:18:22
I I think, yeah, the social media gives us a more direct picture, direct communication. In the case of this platform, for example, like if they were part of a conventional media outlet, they could turn into,
Unknown Speaker 1:18:42
easily, turn into these stereotypes and political kind of polemics and maybe a strong censoring and editing process like not all types of content would be, you know, shared if it did not fit with their agenda. But what we see in social media is really a direct communication. And there are kind of open communication as well, like in, at least in the comment section, like I also look at them sometimes,
Unknown Speaker 1:19:13
there are obviously people who see unveiling as a form of resistance, as a form of, you know, subverting the norms. And they use these terms very strongly,
Unknown Speaker 1:19:28
but they still don't want to be probably identified as acting on behalf of foreign powers or foreign agents to undermine their culture and religion, like usually it is associated with those kinds of accusations and
Unknown Speaker 1:19:44
the social media that the real voices of the people allow us to see the meaning of these experiences, even these subversions for them. So subversion is not obviously bad in and of itself. We also.
Unknown Speaker 1:20:00
You know, hail these behaviors, but we romanticize it without really touching into the actual experience. So I find social media more reliable in giving me that direct knowledge than relying on the conventional media that gives it filters it through their own political lens.
Unknown Speaker 1:20:23
Thanks so much. Dr Topol, finally, Elif sergeant is asking, I would like to ask how unveiled women and veiled women are perceived differently by different sectors of society. So Elif sergeant is asking how unveiled women and veiled women are perceived differently by different sectors of society.
Unknown Speaker 1:20:48
That I think is
Unknown Speaker 1:20:51
like I again, I experienced myself that after taking off the hijab, I hung out with the
Unknown Speaker 1:21:00
religious friends, and I kind of heard them complaining about their daughters or the young generation unveiling, and that's a horrible thing, and I was just sitting right in between them as someone who has been through a similar process. So yes, the way that they perceive unveiling is so like scary and horrible and terrible, and that should never happen to their kind of daughters, God forbid. And similar thing like it was a similar reaction from secular parents when their daughters decided to wear the hijab, like 10 years ago, in that
Unknown Speaker 1:21:41
period, they considered it as the end of the world, like they would kind of give similar treatment to their daughters for wearing the hijab. So that still continues to some extent, but I think there is an increasing communication, and especially with more and more women are actually unveiling, not just these young women who are moving away from religion and faith altogether, but there are many believing, pious women who are simply deciding that the veiling or the hijab is not what they thought it was, And that does not change their motivation to to achieve closeness with God or to achieve the love of God. So
Unknown Speaker 1:22:27
that is increasing, that is changing with with this generation, but the old habits still continue, I think, like where they consider veiled or unveiled women as like these terrible examples, and that should never happen.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:42
Thank you so much for emizing That kind of family dynamic there.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:49
And you just got another questions, and I want to take this last question with your permission bill, she'll say, thank you so much for your presentation. I was wondering if the women on this platform discuss more recent and somewhat more complex media representations of veiled and unveiled women on shows such as kuzal Chuck sharbiti and kuzal gonjalar. And if so, what are their reactions?
Unknown Speaker 1:23:20
The blog is mainly about the experiences, the stories and the narratives of the girls and the women. So it rarely publishes commentary. And they carry out these types of commentaries on social media platforms, usually through stories section or on Discord, which I you know, did not have access myself, but not within the letters that are being shared. So they are not commentaries, they are experience sharing and personal narratives.
Unknown Speaker 1:23:57
So that's kind of what I can say. They did not they do not openly analyze these shows,
Unknown Speaker 1:24:05
at least in the public face of the blog,
Unknown Speaker 1:24:10
maybe Dr Topal will look into those more closely for us and can let us know in the future, what does New representations look like. Thank you so much, Dr Topol for this amazing research presentation, and everyone in the audience for your questions, I want to remind you all that Dr Topol has generous also shared their email. Should you want to contact them?
Unknown Speaker 1:24:34
Padema,
Unknown Speaker 1:24:38
I think the school everyone, yes. Thank you everyone for joining us today. Thank you, Dr corkman, for moderating this wonderful presentation, and we will see you all next time, hopefully at another CNES event.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:56
Thank you for giving me this chance. Take care. Everyone. Bye.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:00
Bye, bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai