Since the second half of the 1980s social movements, which questioned the legitimacy of the hitherto seemingly stable systems of Kemalist Turkey and socialist Balkans, won ground. Political Islam struck Turkey; in the Balkan socialist countries the dams broke, and parliamentary democracies replaced monolithic socialist regimes. These processes have not been gender neutral. Therefore the central question is-after the abolition of patriarchy and the official installation of gender equality, are patriarchy and female discrimination returning in the region through the backdoor, although in a modernized version?
The author is professor for Southeast European history at University of Graz/Austria. His research has been focussing on family and gender relations in the Balkans.
