Contemporary forms of anti-gender mobilizations in the context of democratic backsliding: The case of Turkey

Abstract

Examining the upsurge of anti-gender politics in the context of illiberal populism and democratic backsliding, this panel focuses on the context-specific modalities, developments and strategies of anti-gender politics in Turkey and situates them vis-à-vis the historical, social, and political experiences. The contributions aim to map out the ways in which the processes of democratic backsliding and the rise of anti-gender politics are intimately linked, and stress the centrality of gender as a key epistemic, political and policy field to illiberal agendas. They examine how different actors (social movements, political parties, governmental institutions) mobilize, collaborate and operate by using a wide range of tools (legal action, discursive tools, demonstrations, lobbying, referenda, and governmental decrees) and aim to (re)structure contemporary political and social projects and discussions around gender, women’s rights and LGBTI+ communities along religio-conservative lines. They foreground attention to several key themes such as the complex entanglements between right-wing populism, gender, and Islam, the varieties of opposition to “gender ideology” in reactionary actors’ mobilizations, different modalities of collaboration between illiberal politicians and civil society groups with a socially conservative agenda and the key role of familialism in the construction of anti-gender agendas. An overarching argument in these contributions is that these developments provide illiberal actors key tools not only to enact backlash on the rights of women and LGBTI+ communities but also to restructure politics through crisis-driven imaginaries, post-truth epistemologies, and processes of othering, and thus constitute a central element of the wider attempts to consolidate the political hegemony of the illiberal regime. Last but not least, feminist responses to anti-gender politics also feature as a key topic in the panel with a focus on how the coupling of democratic backsliding and anti-gender mobilizations alter, catalyze and inspire new feminist strategies, tactics and organizational structure.

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