Women's Rights in the Ottoman Empire

Abstract

With the conversion of Turkish society to Islam, they provided the way to seek legal rights through sharia courts. In sharia law, which is known to consist of the provisions that establish the foundation, even if it is said that women are protected in accordance with the conditions of the period such as inheritance, divorce, mahir, etc., the fact that they cannot be fully equal with men has also been recorded in the records that they cannot reveal their existence in the social field. With the effect of its developments in the world and the entry of the Ottoman Empire into a series of wars, the need for women in every field has increased. With the effect of men being at the front, women were active in business life. When women saw that they could sustain their lives on their own, they  were able to make their voices heard in the fields of economy, social, dress code and law through enlightened writers thanks to the societies with the effect of the atmosphere brought by the Tanzimat and the Constitutional Period. They  have been able to continue their fully libertarian and egalitarian struggle at every opportunity.