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Fashion for Veiling in Contemporary Turkey 287

movements and the construction of the Islamic other. We think that a consumer
culture based perspective has been lacking from previous works. Questioning
the mechanism through which the practices of veiling have been articulated
within consumer culture led us to the analysis of the discourses of the news and
articles on fashion that appeared in these magazines, and the emergence of
a ‘fashion for veiling’ in the fashion advertisements. This phenomenon is only
visible in the Islamic women’s magazines and in Islamic fashion catalogues. The
mainstream media in Turkey, which is dominantly liberal and supportive of
Kemalist ideology, regards the fashion for veiling as an ‘exotic’ phenomenon and
covers Islamic fashion shows as tabloid news.
The oldest Islamic women’s magazines are Kadin ve Aile (Woman and Family)
and Mektup (Letter); both were established in 1985. The subtitle of Kadin ve Aile
is: ‘Monthly home magazine’, while Mektup has a more slogan-type subtitle:
‘From women’s pen for everyone including men and women’. The third maga-
zine is called Bizim Aile (Our Family) and it was published between 1988 and
1989. Its subtitle is simply: ‘Monthly women’s magazine’. Later this magazine
ˇ
changed its title to Yeni Bizim Aile (The New ‘Our Family’). Kadin Kimligi
(Woman’s Identity) is the newest of all, being published since 1995 and it has
a much more unusual subtitle: ‘A different perspective on life’. The Kemalist
modernization project conceived women as the symbol of modernization and
encouraged women’s magazines to offer Turkish women new and modern
lifestyles. Similarly, Islamist discourse, following the symbolization of the
women as holders of the veil, has targeted women from various Islamic com-
munities in Turkey through Islamic women’s magazines. These Muslim women,
who have been idealized as ‘the fighters for religion’, have been important actors
in the popularization of political Islam in the attempt to penetrate both the
private and public spheres. These magazines generally take a critical position
against the modern capitalist system and consumer society, which are seen as
consequences of western civilization. More common subjects like clothing,
health issues and childcare are treated from the Islamic point of view. Fashion as
a practice of the consumption culture is criticized as an anti-Islamic ideology in
the articles and by the leading journalists who write for the magazines such as
ˇ
¸
Cihan Aktas¸ and Emine Senlikoglu. But in contrast to these articles, the adver-
tisements appearing in these magazines invite the readers to be consumers in the
fashion for veiling. The articulation of a consumption culture is a somewhat
unavoidable result of the inclusion of the Islamic bourgeoisie into the various
areas of social and everyday life.
The analysis of the articles, interviews and the advertisements published in the
Islamist women’s magazines shows the dominance of a discourse which denies
the fashion phenomenon. The reason for this is inevitably the argument that fashion
is contrary to Islamic principles, which forbid waste (israf) of any kind; and that
fashion is the result of an imposed lifestyle of modern capitalist societies. The rela-
tion between women and fashion as represented in the Islamic women’s maga-
zines is important and problematic in the sense that it shows the conflict between
a lifestyle according to Islamic principles and a modern capitalist lifestyle. The arti-
cles published in these magazines discuss the fashion phenomenon from an intel-
lectual and Islamic point of view, while the advertisements introduce the products