The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were periods of rapid social change in Ottoman society. Confronted with economic pressures, the impact of the West, the reform of education, and especially the demands of conscription during the Balkan War and the First World War, women began moving out of their domestic realm into the public domain of men.

Not surprisingly, this influx of women into the public realm was accompanied by a debate over their rights. The Turkish nationalists, Young Turks, regarded women's emancipation as one of the major re…