Rethinking women's emancipation through Ahmet Haşim: masculinity outside the "brotherhood contract"


ASLAN AYAR P.

MIDDLE EASTERN LITERATURES, cilt.28, ss.40-57, 2026 (AHCI, Scopus) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 28
  • Basım Tarihi: 2026
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1080/1475262x.2025.2612484
  • Dergi Adı: MIDDLE EASTERN LITERATURES
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), Scopus, IBZ Online, Index Islamicus, Jewish Studies Source, MLA - Modern Language Association Database, Religion and Philosophy Collection
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.40-57
  • Kocaeli Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

This article examines the transformations experienced by Muslim/Turkish women during the modernization process from the Second Constitutional Era (1908) to the early Republic by focusing on Ahmet Ha & scedil;im's (1887-1933) essays on women. While dominant political and intellectual male discourses framed women's modernization as a marker of national progress, Ha & scedil;im interpreted this process as a violation of women's "nature" and as a direct threat to masculinity. In his essays, he consistently evaluated women's bodies, public visibility, and intellectual activities within limits shaped by male desire, arguing that women who attained autonomy transgressed these "natural" boundaries and thereby lost their value. By closely reading Ha & scedil;im's essays, the article argues that his discourse can be situated outside the "brotherhood contract" that structured the modernizing male consensus. This position, however, does not indicate an emancipatory or oppositional stance, but rather reveals a distinct form of masculine anxiety produced from within modernity itself.