Nevşin Mengü [email protected]

Turkey's national women volleyball team: A celebration amid Islamist pressure

This summer, many Turks had their eyes glued onto their TV screens. Turkey’s National Women’s Volleyball team competed in the Olympics and in the European Championships. here was something special about the women’s team for they embodied the westernized side of Turkey. They were the celebration of free, strong women, who continue to prevail despite years of Islamist pressures.

Monday September 13 2021 11:26 am

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, tensions between secularists and Islamists dominated Turkey’s political life. To some extent, today’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power as a result of those tensions. Backed by both Islamists and moderates, the AKP has been in power for almost 20 years. In some regards, Turkey has become more Islamist, but in other regards, it has secularized. Today, the question seems to be whether Turkey will be able to go beyond those tensions in the post-AKP area.

This summer, many Turks had their eyes glued onto their TV screens. Turkey’s National Women’s Volleyball team competed in the Olympics and in the European Championships. Many stayed awake and watched each game the team took part in with much adrenaline. Posts about the players dominated Twitter and Instagram feeds. Ebrar Karakurt, the most popular player with her punkish hair and unusually long legs, became a living legend. So did the team’s captain Eda Erdem. The team has the nickname “Sultans of the net.” If not Sultans, they’ve become champions of women’s rights and freedoms.

Volleyball is not the first sport in Turkey, far from it. The Men’s National Volleyball team is also competing in the European Championships, but they haven’t attracted much attention. There was something special about the women’s team for they embodied the westernized side of Turkey. They were the celebration of free, strong women, who continue to prevail despite years of Islamist pressures.

Everything started with a comment made by Islamist scholar. Referring to the Women’s National Volleyball team, İhsan Şenocak tweeted “The daughter of Islam, you are not the sultan of the game fields, you are the sultan of honor, chastity and morals. You are the daughter of women, who hesitated to even show their noses. Don’t be fooled by the TV screens and the fact that your bearded brothers are calling you sultans, you are our prayers and hope”.

This tweet sparked many reactions. The former imam of Hagia Sophia came to Şenocak’s defense and tweeted “hijab was the order of Allah”. He also called a journalist who was critical of him “a devil”. The fight was on. Islamists sided with the scholars, while the secularists sided with the women. The fight intensified, as one of the top players, Ebrar Karakurt posted a picture of herself with her girlfriend. Islamists flooded social media with comments reminding Muslims that being gay is a sin. Secularists defended Ebrar’s sexual orientation. From then on, every time the “sultans” had a game, half of Turkey stopped to watch them. Every time they won a game, their supporters felt like the win was a slap on their adversaries’ face.

When the Women’s team returned from Serbia with a bronze medal, the people gave them a true hero’s welcome. They came back on Aug. 30, Turkey’s victory day. During the AKP’s tenure, national holidays were undermined, as they weren’t celebrated as buoyantly as religious holidays. But since the opposition won the local elections in Ankara and Istanbul, they’ve organized large festivities for the national holidays. This year, the municipality of Istanbul organized a big stage for Victory Day. One part of the show was dancing. While some groups performed Turkish folk dances, another group performed a Waltz. Though the show only lasted five minutes, it turned into a discussion about the post- Erdoğan period.

The Waltz trended on social media. Some conservative forces, former AKP and newly founded opposition parties, found the Waltz a bit too much, and said it reminded them of a time when hardline secularists ruled. Secularists, meanwhile, mainly said they enjoyed the performance.

But the discussion soon turned into an argument. The leader of DEVA Party, Ali Babacan, who once served as Foreign and Finance Minister under Erdoğan’s leadership, “warned” about the symbols used during national day celebrations. Babacan said they had to do with an “underlying revanchism” and that he would not let pious people be “pushed around” under any circumstances.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk introduced Waltz in the first years of the Turkish Republic. He himself danced the Waltz at official receptions and encouraged his entourage as well as the new republican elites to follow suit. He did so to underline the new gender roles in modern Turkey. The Ottoman Empire was a theocratic state, ruled by Islamic law. Thus, women were nowhere to be found in the public sphere. In fact, they were mostly at home. They did not attend school or go to work. Men and women did not mix in everyday life. Atatürk was decisive to change this. Waltz symbolized this societal change.

Today, Turkish society is mixed. Women are eager to belong to the public sphere, even in the most conservative circles. In that sense, Atatürk’s project was successful. Still, there are so-called “anxious conservatives” who fear they’ll suffer from pressure and discrimination in the post- Erdoğan era. It will be crucial for the anti-Erdoğan opposition to give assurances to pious Turkish citizens that the post-Erdoğan does not herald yet another cycle of revanchism.