A pillar of Erdogan’s victory: devout conservative women

Ten years ago, Emine Kilic was focused on raising her two children at home in Istanbul when she decided to start her own clothing company to help support her family.

Her business, which started with an interest-free government-backed loan for female entrepreneurs, now employs 60 people and exports to 15 countries, said Ms Kilic, who has a primary school education. She credited a powerful motivator who inspired her to transform her life – President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – as a champion for women.

“Thanks to my president, I became the boss of my own company,” said 38-year-old Ms Kilic. She said she voted for him for years and did so again to help him securing another presidential term on Sunday.

To counter the most serious political threat of his 20-year tenure as Turkey’s dominant politician, Erdogan counted on the staunch support of an often undervalued constituency: conservative religious women.

Across Turkey, devout women, both professionals and those who don’t work outside the home, were found to not only vote for Erdogan en masse, but also persuade their friends and relatives to do the same. Women are also active across the country in his ruling Justice and Development Party, ranging from activists who spread party messages to their neighbors over tea to the dozens of women who represent the party in parliament.

Uniting these women and Mr. Erdogan is a shared conservative Muslim vision of the role of women in Turkish society, first as mothers and wives, second as members of the workforce. In a staunchly secular country where women who covered their hair have long been barred from universities and government jobs, many devout women look to Erdogan as their protector because he pushed for those rules to be relaxed.

“Voting in Turkey, especially for our community, is not just about choosing someone. It is making a decision about your life,” said Ozlem Zengin, a lawmaker and senior female member of Erdogan’s party.

For many conservative women, the bitterness of having their aspirations limited by public expressions of their faith runs deep, even affecting the children of those who have experienced it, she said. That resentment also fuels the enormous gratitude to Mr. Erdogan.

“Erdogan is so loved because he has changed people’s lives,” Ms. Zengin said.

Tension between Erdogan and his female supporters swept through a conference hall in Istanbul at a women’s rally two days before the May 28 elections. Thousands of women, some with babies or children in tow, filled the room, clapping and waving their arms to shout campaign songs and holding up their mobile phone flashlights to welcome him to the podium.

“Women are the main heroes in our fight to serve the country,” Erdogan said, to loud applause.

He reminded his audience that he had achieved conservative goals by lifting bans on headscarves and building Hagia Sofia, one of Turkey’s architectural treasures, from museum to mosque. And he made another pledge to seek retirement money for women who don’t work outside the home, drawing even more cheers.

“We will burst the ballot boxes,” Erdogan said. “Don’t go alone. You have to make sure that your family, neighbors and distant relatives also go to the polls.”

“The women are with you!” cheered the crowd.

Erdogan’s loyal following among the conservatives is rooted in Turkey’s history.

Although a predominantly Muslim society, the country was founded in 1923 as a secular state. That gave the government oversight of religious institutions and the power to keep open expressions of religiosity out of the public sphere.

Some Turks cherish that secularism as one of the pillars of the republic. But it bothered many devout people, including women who felt it made them second-class citizens. Some women had to take off their veils to go to university. Others wore wigs.

Ms. Zengin, the legislator, said she had worked as a lawyer for 20 years without even entering the courtroom because she covered her hair.

“If you were a defendant or aggrieved party, you could enter the courtroom, but not as a lawyer,” she said. “It was incomprehensible.”

Since Mr. Erdogan emerged on the national scene in 2003 as an aspiring Islamist politician, he has sidelined Turkey’s secular elites and consolidated more power into his own hands. Along the way, he pushed for the relaxation of headscarf restrictions.

Restrictions on university campuses were lifted in 2008, and four veiled women from Erdogan’s party became members of parliament in 2013, a first. Now there are many more, and conservatives are still thanking Erdogan with their votes.

“I feel like I owe him something,” says Eda Yurtseven, a kindergarten teacher. “I owe him a lot, because now I can live freely.”

Mr. Erdogan’s view of the family remains conservative, holding sacred the idea that marriage is only between a man and a woman, preferably with three children. His idea of ​​personal freedom leaves little room for LGBTQ people in Turkey.

“We believe that the family is sacred,” he said at the women’s gathering. “We must now take precautions against these trends that are spreading like the plague.”

The Turkish constitution grants equal rights to men and women, and the labor law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. But women still earn an average of 15.6 percent less than men a United Nations report last year.

In 2021, Mr. Erdogan shocked rights groups Turkey’s withdrawal from an international treaty on preventing violence against women that he signed in 2011. Women’s advocates say the country’s domestic violence laws are strong, but say physical and sexual abuse of women is still common and often goes unreported or properly investigated by authorities.

Female political representation has increased during Erdogan’s tenure, and in this month’s elections, women won about 120 seats in the 600-member parliament. Yet, according to the United Nations report, most women work in campaigning, communications or support roles, not high-level decision-making.

Mr Erdogan has been a pioneer in tapping women’s power into grassroots politics in Turkey, said Nur Sinem Kourou, a professor at Istanbul Kultur University who has studied his party’s women’s groups. Many work in their neighborhoods, she said, spreading party views through informal gatherings or religious activities while gathering information to feed back to the party.

“The fact that the women’s wards are on site every week, every day means that they analyze society very well,” Ms Kourou said. “That data traces back to Erdogan’s speeches on TV.”

Those activists remain fiercely loyal to Erdogan and consider him key to Turkey’s future, she added.

“We have to protect him,” Ms Kourou said, summarizing their views. “Erdogan protects us.”

That bond means that Mr Erdogan’s staunchest female supporters tend to relay to him the country’s problems, including a painful crisis in the cost of livinginstead blaming other members of his party or foreign powers.

Mr Erdogan’s enemies say he has gained too much power and accuse him of pushing the country towards a one-man rule. But his immense control doesn’t bother his loyalists. On the contrary, they say he needs it to do his job.

Mina Murat, 26, said she voted for Erdogan and his party because they protected her right to cover her hair.

“My teacher always wore a wig over her headscarf at school,” she recalls. “Women couldn’t go to university and couldn’t get government jobs because of their headscarves.”

Now Mrs. Murat works in a clothing store aimed at conservative women, wearing headscarves in a wide variety of colors and patterns.

“Now we can dress fashionably and conservatively,” she said.