Political and military elites have long been given precedence in traditional historiography, which frequently ignores the social customs and daily lives of “ordinary people.” Because of this elite-centered perspective, historical narratives have ignored the general public’s experiences, especially women’s. Since the 1980s, feminist historiography in Turkey has challenged these limitations, shedding light on the lived realities of women and shifting historical inquiry toward the study of women’s social mobility and agency. Sevgi Adak’s 2023 book, Anti-Veiling Campaigns in Turkey: State, Society and Gender in the Early Republic, is driven by a similar motivation to shed light on center–periphery dynamics, everyday forms of resistance among the public, particularly women, and their active agency in these processes. She focuses on changes in women’s clothing patterns by exploring the anti-veiling campaigns of the 1930s through local papers, Turkish state archives, and American and British consular reports. By combining these different sources, the patterns of interaction between societal and state actors are revealed, and the diversity among the provinces are examined more closely.

The first of the book’s five chapters, “The Un/veiling Issue: From the Late Ottoman Empire to the Republic,” focuses on debates surrounding women’s clothing from the late Ottoman period to the early Turkish Republic. The chapter highlights the historical continuity of state regulations on women’s clothing, illustrating how the anti-veiling campaigns of the Republican period were set in motion through developments dating back to the Tanzimat era. It explores the evolution of women’s veiling customs from the late Ottoman era to the early Republic, showing that clothing reforms had historical continuity and were anchored in Ottoman modernity rather than just during the Kemalist administration. In this way, it shows that anti-veiling policies were not a radical rupture, but rather a continuation of the Ottoman–Turkish modernization process.

The second chapter, “Anti-Veiling Campaigns in the 1930s: The Main Wave,” examines how campaigns targeting women’s veiling practices took shape in 1930s Turkey. During this period, the Kemalist regime developed an attitude that associated veiling with a lack of “civility,” explicitly targeting the peçe (face veil) and çarşaf (full body covering). Although it did not outlaw veiling, the Ankara central government urged provincial officials to take the initiative, which resulted in differences in how anti-veiling efforts were carried out locally. The ideological underpinnings that influenced the creation of the “new woman,” who was supposed to have a contemporary and civilized identity, are highlighted in this chapter.

The third chapter, “The Local Elite, Social Opposition and Resistance,” examines how local elites responded to Kemalist policies and how the public reacted to anti-veiling activities. Adak provides a comprehensive analysis of the varying viewpoints of the local elites, demonstrating that although some actively backed the reforms, others opposed them. What stands out in this chapter – echoing a broader theme throughout the study – is that despite these differing positions among local elites, women developed “everyday resistance” strategies in response to these reforms. Some among them, for instance, adapted by replacing the çarşaf with alternative forms of local veiling, allowing them to navigate the imposed dress codes.

The fourth chapter, “Women, the Kemalist ‘Project’ and the Anti-Veiling Campaigns,” which I found to be the most engaging, analyzes women’s responses to anti-veiling campaigns and the ways in which they negotiated their dress and appearance during the period in question. Instead of presenting women as passive objects of these campaigns, this chapter shows how they actively negotiated the anti-veiling campaigns to their benefit, becoming agents who deliberately interacted with social conventions. Crucially, the work emphasizes that women’s responses to these initiatives went beyond simple opposition or complete cooperation. Instead, their responses were much more intricate, involving subtle, commonplace strategies that showed up in many ways. The chapter, thus, provides a crucial understanding of how women exerted agency within the limitations of state-imposed modernity by looking at these complex dynamics.

The last chapter, “The Turkish Case in the Wider Muslim Context,” highlights the broader relationships within the Muslim-majority world by analyzing Turkey’s anti-veiling initiatives in comparison with Albania and Iran. Unlike Iran’s Pahlavi regime, which enforced strict legal bans, or Albania’s direct prohibition of face veiling, Turkey pursued a distinctive strategy, implementing reforms through local administrations and social pressures rather than a central legal mandate. Adak highlights that although Turkey pursued a strategy of using a wide local institutional network to spread reforms, this did not change the fact that it remained a moderate form of authoritarianism. The chapter shows how local authorities, the press, and different facets of society influenced these reforms, making Turkey both an example and a topic of discussion for other Muslim nations. Adak’s comparative methodology makes a significant historical addition by showing that Turkey’s anti-veiling campaigns were considerably affected/influenced by the broader discussions of global modernity. She maintains that the Kemalist regime was relatively adept at negotiating, domesticating, and adjusting diversity without jeopardizing its political power and ideological hegemony.

Overall, this study challenges the widely held belief that the Republic’s portrayal of the “new woman” signaled a significant departure from Ottoman history. Rather, Adak shows that the connection between women’s liberation, modernization, and social advancement was not a novel idea (p. 185). She contends that the Kemalist regime’s decision not to legislate on women’s clothing was shaped by reactions to the hat reform, reflecting patriarchal concerns while reshaping women’s public roles (p. 190). Women were certainly positioned as modernization agents yet a patriarchal gender contract between elite and non-elite men “protected” women’s morality from excessive Westernization (p. 190).

Adak’s analysis of anti-veiling campaigns offers a crucial perspective on the regime’s cultural codes, which sought to create a “civilized” society both visually and behaviorally. As notable feminist scholars such as Deniz Kandiyoti highlight, the “new woman” symbolized modernity, social progress, and cultural purity. The “civilizing” of women – both in terms of their appearance and conduct – was perceived as an achievement on par with infrastructural developments such as the introduction of tractors and the construction of industrial complexes and railways. The idea that the “new woman” represented the achievements of the Kemalist elite was the source of this perception. The rights “granted” to women demonstrated the regime’s modernization aspirations in addition to being instruments of democratization. Adak’s study has critical importance since it reveals women’s reactions to these reforms and their agency in negotiating and determining the course of these changes. In doing so, the study reveals the intricacies of Kemalist reforms and demonstrates how local discussions and agreements influenced their execution.

Although Adak’s work on the anti-veiling campaigns is informed by the approaches of early feminist scholars in Turkey, she goes beyond these approaches. She places women’s reactions to early Republican reforms at the center of her analysis. In this regard, Adak conceptualizes the early Republican period not as a period when an authoritarian state shaped society from the top down but as a process shaped through multilayered negotiations with society. This perspective makes it possible to include the voices of people, the oppressed, and the lower classes in the historiography. On the other hand, similar methodological and theoretical frameworks have been adopted in recent works such as Murat Metinsoy’s book on state citizens or Alexandros Lamprou’s work on citizen petitions. These works show that Adak’s work is not entirely unique in the literature. Nevertheless, Adak’s book questions the reductive dichotomies frequently encountered in post-Kemalist discourses, such as “the state granted women their rights” or “women gained these rights through struggle” and demonstrates that approaching historical narratives without reducing them to fixed categories such as “emancipation” or “oppression” can make it possible to ask new questions and develop alternative interpretations (p. 191).

Moreover, the study’s challenge to rigid discursive and ideological reductions of Kemalist reforms to notions such as “modernity” or “civilization” offers a critical contribution to the literature on Turkish modernization by shedding light on the complex interactions between local actors, gendered subjectivities, and government initiatives. Adak’s attention to local dynamics further underscores this complexity: although municipalities may have been hesitant to fully exercise their legal authority, local sports clubs, newspapers, associations, People’s Houses, provincial branches of the Republican People’s Party, and even individual assembly members played active roles in implementing anti-veiling initiatives. Instead of a monolithic, centrally imposed campaign, what comes into view is a more complex and human landscape where reforms unfolded heterogeneously, shaped by varying degrees of enthusiasm, resistance, and participation across different provinces.

Although the study aims to analyze the anti-veiling campaigns of the early Republican period through local-level negotiation, resistance, and everyday practices, some methodological limitations are noteworthy. In particular, despite references to “history from below” and feminist historiographical perspectives, the use of primary sources that can provide direct access to women’s subjective experiences is very limited. While the study does not include documents such as petitions, supplications, reader letters, or personal narratives authored by women, women’s agency is mostly conveyed indirectly through third-party observations by state officials or journalists. The author draws on previous studies that employed oral history methods in certain sections; however, she does not apply this method directly. Undoubtedly, the inability to conduct first-hand oral history interviews is an understandable limitation, given the historical distance of the period in question.

Nevertheless, this gap could have been partially addressed through second-generation narratives or indirect oral history methods grounded in collective memory. Such an approach could have made the affective traces of women’s everyday life experiences, ruptures in memory, and forms of local resistance more visible, contributing to the interpretation of silences that archival documents fail to represent. However, it should also be kept in mind that the historical belatedness of the early Republican period largely accounts for this gap as a structural limitation.

While Adak’s work does not include direct testimonies of women’s emotional responses to anti-veiling campaigns, the public accounts of women who have recently removed their headscarves suggest that the body and privacy remain deeply entangled with political power. Reflecting on such contemporary narratives may help address the methodological silences in the study and open up new directions for further research.

Adak’s book is a truly significant contribution to feminist scholarship on gender and state-building in early Republican Turkey. The book stresses women’s autonomy/agency and the importance of local actors in creating reform programs, going beyond top-down tales of modernization. The book’s historical comparative perspective and in-depth analysis of crucial documents make it a valuable resource for scholars or researchers studying gender studies, modernization, and Turkish history. The idea of a homogenous Kemalist modernization is ultimately successfully refuted by Adak, exposing the contentious and negotiated character of these reforms locally.