Introduction Feminism is not only a struggle for rights but also a comprehensive philosophy and practice of liberation developed against one of the most rooted and widespread forms of oppression in human history, the patriarchal system. This movement began with the realization that the universal promises of equality of the Enlightenment in the West did not encompass women, deepened in the 20th century by problematizing the category of "woman" through the tools of existential philosophy, and simultaneously constructed a unique language and struggle line intertwined with the dynamics of colonialism and modernization in the Islamic world. This narrative deeply examines the multi-layered and universal establishment and popularization process of feminism, centering on the Enlightenment critique of Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the founding precursors of modern feminism, the foundational upheaval of the patriarchal system by Simone de Beauvoir in the mid-20th century, and the organization of Muslim-Turkish women’s voices and rights struggles under the leadership of Nuriye Ulviye Mevlan Civelek in the Ottoman Empire during the same period. 1st Period: The Rebel Daughter of the Enlightenment and the Mother of Modern Feminism: Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) Mary Wollstonecraft is a revolutionary figure who, in the last quarter of the 18th century, during a time when Enlightenment thought was hailed as the "Age of Reason," exposed the gendered nature of this reason and laid the philosophical foundations of modern feminism. Her thought is the product of a rebellion born from her personal pains and intellectual passion. 1.1. Theoretical Rebellion of Personal History: Mary, born on April 27, 1759, in Spitalfields, London, despite being born into a wealthy bourgeois family, was constantly subjected to a cycle of moving and financial decline due to her father's alcoholism and poor investments. The violence within the home was the first systematic oppression she witnessed at an early age. Despite having a deep love for her mother, her mother's passivity towards her father drove her to frustration, and even at that young age, she felt the injustice of the submissive role assigned to women deep in her bones. As a young girl, her planned escape by horse-drawn carriage to rescue her sister Eliza from the clutches of postpartum depression from her abusive husband was the first major example of her bold courage to defy social norms. In the early years of her life, she worked as a governess and a teacher, which were almost the only professions considered "respectable" for a woman. Working as a governess for the Irish Kingsborough family reinforced her hatred for the shallow and ornate world of aristocratic women. She addressed these experiences in her first work, Mary: A Fiction (1788). However, her true intellectual awakening occurred when she returned to London and joined the circle of the radical publisher Joseph Johnson. Johnson's publishing house was the meeting point for all progressive ideas of the time. Here, she met figures such as Thomas Paine, William Godwin, Henry Fuseli, and William Blake. The outbreak of the French Revolution was a revelation for this circle, and Wollstonecraft found herself directly in the midst of the ideological battles created by the revolution. 1.2. The French Revolution and the First Major Reckoning: In 1790, the conservative thinker Edmund Burke published his famous work Reflections on the Revolution in France , which devastated the revolution. Burke argued that the revolution destroyed the organic society and traditional hierarchies in the name of abstract rights. Wollstonecraft, as soon as the work was published, wrote the first major response, A Vindication of the Rights of Man (1790). In this text, she ruthlessly satirized Burke's longing for aristocratic privileges and his contempt for ordinary people. However, this was merely an exercise; her real aim was to expose the deep contradiction she saw in the revolution and the Enlightenment itself. 1.3. "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman": A Revolutionary Manifesto: In 1791, one of the leading figures of the French Revolution, Bishop Talleyrand, argued in the educational report he presented to the National Assembly that girls should receive an education completely excluded from public life, aimed only at "domestic duties" and "obedience to men." This report was the last straw for Wollstonecraft. She immediately set to work and published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, the founding text of modern feminism. The work was a direct confrontation with the misogyny in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's educational novel Emile . While Rousseau raised the ideal man as an autonomous citizen, he envisioned the ideal woman as a being shaped to serve the pleasures of men. Wollstonecraft's arguments were based on the following foundations: The Gender Neutrality of Reason and the Right to Education: The fundamental thesis was extremely simple yet devastating: If it is reason and virtue that make a person human, and God has bestowed these faculties upon women as well, then depriving women of the education to develop these faculties is a betrayal of the Divine Will and the principle of reason of the Enlightenment. The characterization of women as "flighty," "emotional," and "irrational" beings was not a result of their nature, but a direct consequence of the degrading education they received. By defining them as "feathered birds" and "ornate parrots in a cage," she highlighted the harm this situation inflicted on both women and society. Radical Critique of the Institution of Marriage: Wollstonecraft was the first thinker to dare to define the institution of marriage of her time as "legal prostitution." She stated that women were forced to marry for survival, and once married, they became legal slaves of their husbands, deprived of property rights. She argued that for women's liberation, it was essential for them to gain economic independence by acquiring a respectable profession. Women should be able to become doctors, businesspeople, or even members of parliament. National and Mixed Education Model: She proposed that both boys and girls receive education together in secular and state-supported schools. This was essential not only for women but for the moral and intellectual development of the entire society because women were the primary caregivers of children, and she stated that foolish mothers could not raise virtuous citizens. This is one of the first radical formulations of the idea of "republican motherhood." 1.4. Scandal, Death, and Rebirth: Wollstonecraft went to Paris to see the revolution firsthand after publishing her book. There, she had a tumultuous love affair with an American merchant named Gilbert Imlay and gave birth to a daughter (Fanny) without marrying him. Abandoned by Imlay during the dark days of the Reign of Terror, Wollstonecraft attempted suicide twice. She emerged from this deep personal crisis through writing. When she returned to London, she began an affair with her old friend and philosopher William Godwin. Although both were fundamentally opposed to the institution of marriage, they married to protect themselves from social pressures due to her pregnancy. Unfortunately, eleven days after giving birth to their second daughter Mary (the future Mary Shelley), she died of septicemia on September 10, 1797. She was only 38 years old. Godwin hurriedly published Memoirs of the Author to preserve her memory. This candid biography exposed her extramarital relationships, suicide attempts, and illegitimate child in all their nakedness. The conservative press seized the opportunity to label Wollstonecraft as a "whore" and "immoral." This lynching campaign was so effective that her ideas were nearly removed from being a serious feminist reference in England and the United States for almost a century. Nevertheless, traces of her can be clearly seen in the manifesto of the Seneca Falls Convention for Women's Rights held in 1848. Rediscovered in the 20th century by Virginia Woolf and feminist historians, Wollstonecraft is now regarded as the undisputed founding mother of modern feminism. 2nd Period: Existentialism, Otherness, and "The Second Sex": Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) By the mid-20th century, women had gained the right to vote and basic civil rights in many countries. However, these legal gains were not enough to eliminate the deep inequalities in everyday life. It was Simone de Beauvoir, with her monumental work The Second Sex (Le Deuxième Sexe) published in 1949, who redefined feminism by delving into the philosophical, historical, and psychological roots of this inequality and charted the theoretical roadmap of second-wave feminism. 2.1. Constructing a Philosophical Existence: Born on January 9, 1908, in Paris as the daughter of a bourgeois family, Simone de Beauvoir received a strict Catholic education. During her adolescence, she lost her faith and placed philosophy at the center of her life. She studied at the Sorbonne and became the youngest person to pass the philosophy agrégation exam in 1929, ranking second (the first was Jean-Paul Sartre). The intellectual, emotional, and political partnership that began with Sartre lasted a lifetime and mutually nourished both of their thoughts. However, Beauvoir was never a follower of Sartre; her original answers to the fundamental questions of existential philosophy, especially concerning freedom, the body, and the concept of "situation," made her one of the most important independent philosophers of the 20th century. 2.2. "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman": The Revolutionary Argument of The Second Sex: Beauvoir's monumental work titled The Second Sex published in two volumes in 1949, created a seismic effect upon its release. The book was placed on the list of banned books by the Vatican, and Beauvoir was subjected to severe insults, accused of writing pornography. However, the work was an extremely systematic, disciplined, and groundbreaking philosophical examination. The sentence summarizing the book's main thesis became one of the most famous sentences in the history of philosophy: "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." The profound layers of this argument can be analyzed as follows: Reinterpretation of Hegelian Subject/Other Dialectic: Beauvoir shows that throughout human history, man has positioned himself as the absolute "Subject" (I), while woman has always been reduced to the position of "Other," defined in relation to man and differently from him, dependent on him. Man is the norm of humanity, neutral and universal; woman is a deviation from the norm, particular and gendered. This asymmetrical relationship has been naturalized over centuries through narratives such as biology, psychoanalysis, and historical materialism. Biology is Not Destiny, the Body is a "Condition": The first volume of the book critically examines what biology, psychoanalysis, and historical materialism say about women. Beauvoir argues that the biological functions of the female body (menstruation, pregnancy, breastfeeding) have historically been used to condemn her to "immanence" - that is, a repetitive, non-creative existence that serves the species - while man reaches "transcendence" through activities such as hunting, war, and construction - transforming the world, making projects, realizing his freedom. This hierarchy does not stem from biology itself, but from the meanings that man attributes to this biology and the civilization he constructs. For Beauvoir, the body is not a destiny, but a "condition"; that is, the material context in which our freedom exists and transcends. Socialization and the Construction of "Woman": The second volume applies this theoretical framework to the stages of a woman's life (childhood, adolescence, sexual awakening) and "feminine conditions" (marriage, motherhood, social life). This is what is meant by "bec