Turkish women committed to Kemalism

A survey conducted by the Science Management Culture Platform of the CHP revealed opinions and attitudes of Turkish women towards the future, life styles, social environments, freedoms, public administration, religion and beliefs.

The face-to-face survey conducted on 2,100 women living in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Antalya, Bursa, Diyarbakir, Erzurum, Gaziantep, Konya, Samsun and Trabzon has revealed different opinions of some 300 kerchief- covered women, 600 women wearing a turban — headscarf that covers all their hair –, 600 women wearing headscarves and 600 bareheaded women.

The survey was prepared to bring up the similarities and differences between the modern, conservative and traditional women.

Solid family structure
According to the survey conducted in Turkey, the Turkish society stands on a "solid family structure." Women are open to the full view of the world, they take pains to provide a good future for their children and they express modern opinions about the future.

The crucial thing is that women should be innovative and modern and not obey their beliefs or values implicitly.

According to the results, religion is one of the main issues dominating people’s life and religious education is prevalent among the family members.

As for education, families put significant pressure on their children. The intervention of families into children’s life should be in a manner suitable for the modern era and education rights should be preserved.

The survey reveals that conservative, traditional and modern women back the modernization ideology of the secular and contemporary Turkish Republic established by Ataturk. They stand ready to adopt the concept of contemporary civilization and a modern life style.

Another important result is that women rarely adopt the opinions some politicians express while debates on families, ethical issues and beliefs and that their attitudes seldom represent women’s opinions.

In Turkey, the most important problems are financial. Turkish women fight obstacles in order to support their family, feed their children and look after their household. According to the results of the survey, if the economic condition improved, other problems would automatically disappear.

The survey reveals that illiteracy and poverty, as well as pressure from family and friends are the main reasons behind why women cover themselves.

Another result of the survey is that women get most of their information from the TV. The study found that the TV was the perfect medium for communicating with women.

General views surrounding Turkey and the world
Terrorism appears to be the main problem in Turkey and remains at the top of the problem list, while poverty is listed at a lower level, according to bareheaded women as well as those wearing turbans and headscarves. While determining the main problems in Turkey, women disregard their own problems such as poverty with the approach of fatalism and individualism.

The results demonstrate that there are problems concerning human rights and those efforts are redoubled in order to decrease the "human rights violations" regarding relations with the European Union and to change implementations as well as thoughts in this perspective.

According to the survey results; 44.3 percent of kerchief wearing women support EU membership while 76 percent of bareheaded women are in favor of integration with EU.

The majority of women oppose the United States occupation of Iraq and 80 percent condemn the invasion.

As far as terrorism is concerned, conservative women harshly reject that terrorism takes its root from fundamentalist organizations, while bareheaded ones agree on this issue.

The CHP survey reveals that the majority of women support the principles of Ataturk as well as secularism and aspire to be governed by rule of law.

While 41.5 percent of kerchief wearing women want Turkey to be governed by religion, this proportion drops to 10 to 12 percent among all women.