legal reforms. Nermin Abadan-Unat states that "Atatrk used legal reforms as a revolutionary tool to eliminate the traditional Islamic norms and jurisprudence" (188). She also thinks that this is a kind of state feminism. Zehra Arat critices Swiss code for "failing to establish full equality between the sexes" (63). Zehra Arat states that "in addition to the civil code, unequal treatments of sexes can also be found in the criminal and labor laws" (65). Kumari Jayawardena also talks about the Swiss code, but she doesn't mention the missing points of the code like other writers do.Cem Behar and Alan Duben state that "The Republican Code of 1926, a revolutionary document from an Islamic ponit of view, gives the legal sanction of the modernists to the traditional gender division of labor" (221). Third issue is that whether the rights given to women were fought for or givenby the government. Nermin Abadan-Unat states that "the principal progressive changes were not fought for but were given by the government in order to prove that, in granting equal rights to women, the new Turkey was reaching a level of contemporary civilization and was a symbol to the world" (Jayawardena 41). Nermin Abadan nat concludes that"the major rights conferred on Turkish women were much more the result of unrelentingefforts of a small evolutionary elite, rather than the product of large-scale demands by Turkey's entire female population" (Abadan Unat 1981:12-13). In this point, Fatmagl Berktay thinks that "although the changes were initiated by a modernizing male elite, and although a significant women's movement was absent in the period, to say that the initiative was entirely out of the hands of women underestimates the struggle women waged for emancipation from the Tanzimat onward" (108). Fourth issue is that whether the rights were equally enjoyed by the entire female population or not. All writers here accept ...
