Athlete Queens of Modern Turkey: Beauty Pageants and Modernization

Abstract The early Turkish republic, as part of its hyper‐Westernization policies, sought to include women in social, political, economic, and cultural activities. As part of this initiative, the state sponsored a series of beauty pageants between 1929 and 1934. This article examines these contests to show how they were used to encourage women and girls to be sportswomen, live healthy lives, and serve as symbols of modernization—thus fulfilling the duty of representing a new Turkey in the international arena. The analysis then shifts to a comparison of the pageants of the early republic and those conducted since 1950. This demonstrates that the contemporary beauty contests, now held in the private sector, are no longer seen as necessary for state propaganda but are instead driven by individual desires for wealth and celebrity. And although the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan purports to restore traditional values, today's pageants are part of an accelerating trend in secularization.