Walking Away from the Headscarf

A public lecture by Semiha Topal

April 29, 2024

Since 2018, an online platform with the name You Will Not Walk Alone (Yalniz Yurumeyeceksin) has been publishing anonymous letters from Turkish Muslims, the majority of whom are young women socialized into wearing the headscarf during the AKP era. The focus of this lecture will be the narratives of deveiling on the platform in the context of the changing dynamics between the Islamist and secularist regimes of power in Turkey within the last decade. By questioning what these young women are walking away from and what they are walking towards with their desire to remove their hijab, this lecture offers a rethinking of the current role of the headscarf as a maker and/or marker of Islamic piety and political subjectivity. 

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