Although women were the political equals of men early on, it took a long time for Turkey’s political parties to begin to incorporate women’s policy needs in their programs. The founding party of the Turkish Republic, the Republican People’s Party, did not have a clear and established women’s program. This picture did not change between 1945 and 1960. The Republican People’s Party and the Democrat Party did not adopt special policies for women. The absence of such specific programs can be explained by the argument that legal reforms are sufficient to implement full equality in social life.Because the number of the women deputies is still limited and the assessment of the woman voter is difficult, it is really hard to describe the real position of Turkish women in politics. However, the orientation of the political parties to incorporate women’s issues after the 1980s in their respective party programs keeps women’s issues hot on Turkey’s agenda. Beginning in the 1983 national election campaign, newspaper political advertisements were introduced and began to influence Turkish political life (Tokgoz, 1990). Political advertisements were also on television during the 1991 national election campaign (Tokgoz, 1991a, 1991b). Analytically analyzing these political advertisements should shed some light on how political parties approach the woman voter to try to obtain her vote.
