Women in Radical Left in Iran and Turkey during the 1970s

The beginning of the 1970s marked the fading away of the spirit of the student movements and the flourishing of militant revolutionary activism in both Iran and Turkey. In accordance with their Western Cold War alliances, for the earlier half of the postwar period the Iranian and Turkish regimes followed a policy of brutal suppression of all sorts of social movements with communist tendencies. Convinced that their governments were collaborating with the United States and a comprador bourgeoisie was ruling over their country, beginning in the 1970s numerous left-leaning men and women from Turkey and Iran adopted armed struggle as the only way to get rid of those regimes and eventually establish an egalitarian, independent, and prosperous society. Inspired by the victories of guerrilla struggles in Latin America and the so-called Cultural Revolution in China, they embraced an eclectic mix of Maoist ideals and urban guerrilla warfare. In these unique conditions, the women among them had such extraordinary experiences that challenged not only traditional gender relations in their societies but also the growing sexual emancipation trajectory of the global sixties. There is still a significant gap in our understanding of the history of women in revolutionary movements in particular and women’s experiences in social movements in general in Iran and Turkey due to lack of sources and negligence. In this respect, a comparative study of women’s activism—especially their motivations, perceptions and experiences—in revolutionary movements in these countries will be an important contribution. This study aims exactly at making this contribution through an oral history of the women who were involved in urban guerrilla organizations in the 1970s in Iran and Turkey. Oral histories of these extraordinary women, with a particular focus on everyday life, provide us with invaluable information regarding the consequences of global and local politics on women’s lives, experiences and ways in which gender relations were shaped in these revolutionary movements. In this paper, I examine what sorts of challenges and opportunities women were presented with while pursuing radical leftist activism, especially in the safe houses of their revolutionary organizations. Through the oral history interviews I have conducted with various former revolutionary women, I focus on their everyday lives, which revolved around organizational activities, daily chores, and responsibilities for disguising the house, analyzing the characteristics of gender roles and relations between men and women. With a comparison of Iranian and Turkish cases, this paper questions if we can talk about a common gendered experience for women in underground revolutionary movements in different countries. With a focus on the differences in their experiences as a result of political and social settings, this study presents a multi-dimensional analysis of everyday gendered experiences of women in such extraordinary circumstances.