{"id":53300,"date":"2012-05-08T10:10:08","date_gmt":"2012-05-08T07:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=53300"},"modified":"2014-01-07T16:43:21","modified_gmt":"2014-01-07T14:43:21","slug":"turkish-beauty-magazine-ties-muslim-veil-to-glamor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2012\/05\/08\/turkish-beauty-magazine-ties-muslim-veil-to-glamor\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkish Beauty Magazine Ties Muslim Veil to Glamor"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Editor
Editor of Ala Magazine Hulya Aslan at her office in Istanbul on March 2. It is exactly the type of challenge posed for a little less than a year by Ala, the first fashion magazine dedicated to Turkish women wearing headscarves. (AFP Photo\/Ala Magazine).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Can the Muslim headscarf be synonymous with glamor? Turkey\u2019s first fashion magazine for conservative Islamic women hopes to prove that it can.<\/p>\n

Launched last June, the monthly Ala, which means \u201cbeauty,\u201d has become a mainstream glossy.<\/p>\n

With a circulation of 20,000, it is only slightly behind the Turkish versions of Cosmopolitan, Vogue and Elle magazines.<\/p>\n

Ala\u2019s pages are splashed with models reflecting a conservative Islamic style, all wearing headscarves and long dresses, with their arms and necks covered.<\/p>\n

Ala\u2019s editor, 24-year-old Hulya Aslan, has first-hand experience with Turkey\u2019s headscarf troubles. Because she insisted on wearing one, she had to give up a university education, instead finding work at a bank.<\/p>\n

Ala, created by two advertisers, offers the usual fare of health tips, travel pages and celebrity interviews, supplemented by a strong dose of loud and clear Islamic activism.<\/p>\n

\u201cVeiled Is Beautiful\u201d proclaims one advertisement, driving home the point with the words: \u201cMy way, my choice, my life, my truth, my right.\u201d<\/p>\n

But such slogans sound more like a reference to the struggles of the past, when secularism monopolized the social scene and the Islamic headscarf, often viewed as a political symbol, met hostile reactions.<\/p>\n

The struggle continues despite the 2002 poll victory of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan\u2019s Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has Islamist roots and many of whose members have spouses who wear headscarves, including Erdogan\u2019s wife, Emine.<\/p>\n

Although the strict application of secularism has been loosened under AKP rule, headscarves are still off-limits for civil servants. It is now allowed in some universities, while many others ban them.<\/p>\n

In Turkey, 60 percent of women wear some type of hair covering, according to a 2006 survey conducted by the Istanbul-based Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are now much prettier things than before,\u201d said Merve Buyuk, a 22-year-old trainee at Ala. \u201cDesigners have now understood that we exist. They\u2019ve started making clothes that are not necessarily black or brown. … I\u2019m pretty happy with this change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Communication scientist Nilgun Tutal of Istanbul\u2019s Galatasaray University said Ala attested to the rise of middle- and upper-class Muslims who were adapting to the consumer society, thanks to almost 10 years of AKP rule and Turkey\u2019s sustained economic growth.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt one time, Islam, to distinguish itself from the West, took a position hostile to consumer society. But today, these people, to express their success, can only do that through consumer society,\u201d Tutal said.<\/p>\n

AFP<\/p>\n

via Turkish Beauty Magazine Ties Muslim Veil to Glamor | The Jakarta Globe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Can the Muslim headscarf be synonymous with glamor? Turkey\u2019s first fashion magazine for conservative Islamic women hopes to prove that it can. Launched last June, the monthly Ala, which means \u201cbeauty,\u201d has become a mainstream glossy. With a circulation of 20,000, it is only slightly behind the Turkish versions of Cosmopolitan, Vogue and Elle magazines. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":53302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[846,2939],"tags":[7902,5085],"class_list":["post-53300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-cultureart","tag-ala","tag-islamic-fashion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}