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Fashion for Veiling in Contemporary Turkey 295

Notes

.
ˇ
We would like to thank Stuart Duckworth, Lawrence Raw and Emine Onaran Incirlioglu
for their valuable comments. An earlier version of this article was presented in the Third
International Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference, 21–25 June 2000, Birmingham, UK.
1. Following the military takeover on 12 September 1980, a ‘Dress and Appearance Regulation’
was issued. This regulation prohibits employees while on duty in public agencies and insti-
tutes from wearing, in the case of men, moustaches, beards or long hair; and in the case of
women, mini-skirts, low-necked dresses and headscarves. The regulation applies to students
as well as civil servants. Therefore, the Muslim women’s movement in the mid-1980s targeted
this prohibition and attempted to gain public sympathy towards the use of the ‘headscarf’
in public institutions despite the Kemalist rule.
2. In addition to media and leisure-time activities, since the 1990s Islamist communities have
ˇ
gradually gained an interest in the food sector and opened chain stores like Begendik and
Yimpas¸ in metropolitan areas; and invested in the automotive industry and its subsectors,
founding JETPA Ltd. and Kombassan Ltd. The Islamist bourgeoisie has also invested in
bank-like monetary activities such as Faisal Finans, Ihlas Finans, Al-baraka Turk, Kuveyt-
Turk, where customers are supposed to share the profits not ‘the interest’ in accordance with
Islamic trading principles.
3. Unlike the names of many other hotels or holiday resorts owned by Muslim companies,
which denote an Islamic way of life (see Öncü, 2000).
4. The titles of these special issues are for example: ‘Fashion and Veiling’ (Yeni Bizim Aile, July
1992, October 1994), ‘What Fashion Has Taken Away From Us’ (Kadιn ve Aile, February
1986), ‘Muslim Women and Fashion’ (Kadιn ve Aile, May 1991) and ‘Veiling and Women’
(Kadιn ve Aile, November 1997).
5. There has been a discussion recently among Islamist authors about the fashion for veiling.
¸
The 24 July issue of Yeni Safak, an Islamic newspaper, covers the summer 2001 fashion show
organized by Tekbir Clothing and the clothes are introduced as follows: ‘three pieces are
“in”, one piece is “out”; abstract designs for the scarf are “in”, designs with flowers are
“out”; long jackets are “in”’, etc. The popular colours for veiling are also mentioned.
Although the traditional colour is ‘green’, in summer 2001, the popular colour for veiling
will be ‘red’, which was a very popular colour in 2001 fashion all around the world.
However, this kind of news coverage is severely criticized by Demet Tezcan, woman jour-
nalist for Akit, a pro-Islamist newspaper, in the following headline: ‘Degeneration Is In,
Veiling Practice Is Out’ (cited in Milliyet, 5 August 2001: 17). Tezcan claims that the news
¸
coverage of the fashion for veiling by Yeni Safak is similar to the tabloid newspapers, and she
adds that due to the emergence of the fashion for veiling and its seductive invitation to
Islamic subjects to consume, in the future there will be no real Islamic subject left.
6. We use the term ‘fashion for veiling’ in a double sense. The first meaning refers to the fact
that carrying a veil is a matter of fashion and the term also means fashion as applied to the
actual veils and clothes.
7. The texts of the fashion catalogues are often placed in between the images and give hints
about the new meaning of the practice of veiling, and guide the customer to recognize the
brand name of the product by using common fashion terminology.
8. The current owner of the Tekbir Clothing Company, Cafer Karaduman, explains they are
influenced by the political agenda while naming their products (see Tempo, No. 619, 1999: 56).

References

Acar, F. (1995) ‘Women and Islam in Turkey’, pp. 46–65 in S¸. Tekeli (ed.), Women in Modern
Turkish Society: A Reader. London: Zed Books.
Aktas¸, C. (1990) Tanzimattan Günümüze Kιlιk, Kιyafet ve Iktidar. Istanbul: Nehir.
Aktas¸, C. (1995) Mahremiyetin Tukenis¸i. Istanbul: Nehir.