The Formation of a Counter Public Through Women’s Pressin the Late Ottoman Empire

Since the mid-nineteenth century the printed press had become a platform for Ottoman men to discuss their plans to build the “ideal society”, which entailed creating the “ideal woman,” since women constituted half the population and raised the new generations. The male intellectuals and bureaucrats had argued, for decades in the pages of newspapers, about what women’s status and roles in family and in society should be. However, the male monopoly on the “woman question” in the public discourse came to an end with the 1908 Revolution, as educated, upper-middle and middle class Ottoman women in urban areas created their own, independent, and free press. In this article, through an extensive study of their writings from the post-revolutionary period, I will explore how women developed an alternative discourse on “the woman question” by formulating a new language based on equality, and constituted a counter-public by propagating their ideas to tens of thousands of people as well as mobilizing public opinion to improve women’s lives and rights.