Existing literature on early republican Turkey has been shaped by a state-centric approach, preoccupied with the high politics of the Kemalist political elite in the capital. We know a great deal about the ideals of the regime, but we know little about how these ideals entered the practice of everyday life and how they were consumed in the local level. Therefore, in what ways state policies and reforms were negotiated, compromised and/or resisted in the society remains to be a crucial question. The change of women’s dress is one of the richest sites to study the interaction between the state and societal actors under Kemalist modernization. With the beginning of organized anti-veiling campaigns in the 1930s, women’s clothing became a battleground for various actors to debate the issues of religion, secularism, modernization, and women’s role in the public sphere. In Turkey, in contrast to what is generally understood, anti-veiling campaigns were organized in the local level, mainly by the initiatives of the local elite rather than by the direct involvement of the regime leadership. Mechanisms used to fight peçe (face veil) and çar?af (black full-body cloak) varied significantly in different cities, leaving a space to negotiate the regime ideals. This paper aims to look at domestication of Kemalist reforms and state-society relations in the local level by focusing on the anti-veiling campaigns in the 1930s. Based on an extensive research on local newspapers of five cities, and state and municipal archives, it will explore a) the reflections of Kemalist ideals on women’s dress in the periphery, b) the role of the local elite in shaping the content and implementation of the unveiling reform, c) societal reactions, and d) various ways in which women handled this dramatic change. The focus will be on cities other than Ankara and Istanbul, where state control was harder and less consistent, and conclusions will be drawn based on the anti-veiling campaigns in ?zmir, Bursa, Konya, Adana, and Trabzon. The argument of the paper is that formulation and implementation of the reform included discussions, negotiations and concessions in the local level. This allowed a wide range of possibilities to manipulate or compromise the new dress codes in the public sphere, leaving a space for the local elite to influence the content of the reform, as well as for women’s agency.