Gülşah Şenkol 

Gender Politics: A Comparative History of Feminism in Turkey and Egypt from the Late Ottoman Empire to the 1930s investigates the interaction between organized women’s movements in Turkey and Egypt, and their relation with global women’s activism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

 

Based on two years of archival research in Turkey, Egypt, and the United Kingdom, my book establishes a dialogue between Egyptian and Turkish feminisms, investigates both the secular and Islamic trends within them, and takes stock of their interactions with and resistances to western feminisms. By bringing the evolution of the feminist discourse in Egypt and the Ottoman Empire in conversation with the secular and religious reform traditions in both countries in a comparative perspective, Gender Politics seeks to encourage a broader and more in-depth understanding of feminism in the Middle East, stripped from the dominant, nationalist narrative of its evolution.​​

​

Image (left) Huda Shaʿrāwī Library and Archives, Cairo,Egypt.

Photo credit: Gülşah Şenkol​