Counter-Intersectionality: The Politics of Conservative Women's NGOs in Turkey

Conservative women’s NGOs have mushroomed under the current neoliberal, pro-Islamic AKP government (2002-present) in Turkey. This study focuses on how these organizations work to marginalize intersectional discourses and practices devised by multiply marginalized women to address interlocking structures of inequality. It introduces the term ‘counter-intersectionality’ to describe an ongoing process of reframing women’s issues in unidimensional terms where Turkish-Muslim women are considered paradigmatic while Kurdish, trans, and other multiply marginalized women are forced to the discursive periphery. This study explores the discursive practices and strategies of organized conservative women to disentangle intersecting structures of inequality which is in line with AKP’s patchwork politics of “disintegrating the political space into disconnected spheres of issue and disregarding the axes of junction among these spheres” (Coşar and Özman 2009). The empirical study is based on the analysis of the online materials produced by three Turkey-based women’s NGOs – Women and Democracy Association (KADEM), Women’s Rights Association against Discrimination (AKDER) and Hazar Association Education, Culture and Solidarity – and finds that these organizations contribute to the construction of the Turkish-Sunni and heterosexual woman and family as the norm and marginalize intersectional concerns of Kurdish women and the LGBT community.