The Place of Honour Code in MiddleClass Women’s Leisure in Turkey: A High-Security Estate Case Study from Bursa

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of gender in women’s everyday leisure practices in a high-security estate in Bursa, Turkey. Defined as a new type of sub-urbanisation, such residential areas have emerged in Turkey towards the end of the 1990s, and, to date, social class has been the central area of inquiry about high-Esecurity estates in Turkey. Drawing on the findings from qualitative research, the current paper argues that gender plays a central role in middle-class women’s access to and use of neighbourhood leisure spaces. Even though the community values and the middle-class rhetoric of gender equality advocate individuality and the equal use of public leisure spaces, family-level male control shaped by honour code is still dominant, in varying degrees, in preventing women from practising the leisure activities they choose.