Popularizing and Promoting Nene Hatun as an Iconic Turkish Mother in Early Cold War Turkey

Abstract

Abstract This article traces Nene Hatun’s popularity and legacy for women’s image in Turkey. The rediscovery of Nene Hatun and the political construction of her public image during the rule of the Democratic Party (DP), as an icon of anticommunist Turkish mothers, not only maps out the gendered effects of intensified anticommunist policies in Turkey in the period under consideration but also showcases the immediate consequences of the growing conservative discourses and gender anxieties on the public images and roles of women. Exemplified by Nene Hatun’s sudden popularity, the 1950s witnessed a change in the references to motherhood in the discourses of politicians and other public figures. Framing the family roles of women as a question of security, such discourses referred to mothers as the protectors of family values against communist threats, which assigned further domestic duties to women in Turkey, already living in a strongly patriarchal society.