Masculinized Populism During the Pandemic: A comparison between Hungary, Poland and Turkey

Turkey, Poland and Hungary have recently -coinciding with the pandemic- come to the fore with the striking similarity of their authoritarian, anti-democratic and populist regimes and attracted international attention. As noted in the report published by Freedom House in 2020, during the pandemic period, the governments of all three countries adopted similar policies targeting women's rights, imposing religious and conservative values, attacking the media and discrediting the rule of law. Following the feminists’ critical approach towards the populist politics in which power-seeking elites are tend to cooperate with patriarchy, this paper aims to scrutinize populist governments’ policies of these countries during the pandemic from the perspective of gender. Considering that gender inequality has grown considerably during the pandemic due to the extraordinary conditions occurred in this era, it is not to be omitted that the patriarchy has taken full advantage of the virus for reproducing its power. In line with the view that the beneficiaries of some ideologies increase the prevalence of ideologies by taking "additional measures" during periods of illness and crisis and gain more benefits from the said ideology, this study argues that the pandemic period offers opportunities patriarchy to reproduce its power and hegemony in various forms. As there is a tendency to increase in the populist rhetoric and populist policies in all of these countries, it is important to analyze how exactly do populist elites and their supporters imagine ‘natural’ or ‘normal’ on which they establish socially constructed gender roles during the pandemic. In other words, how the masculinized governments have benefited from the conditions of the pandemic for increasing its hegemony over society by normalizing or naturalizing its gender norms about men, manliness on the one hand, and women and the femininity on the other. It is also important to ask how the women respond to this populist discourse or construct about what is ‘natural’ or ‘desirable’ for women. This study will focus on the themes such as Istanbul Convention, abortion, religion, family and LGBTI+ issues that have been common topics on which political elites often produce discourse and policy in Turkey, Poland and Hungary during the pandemic period. Besides examining the differences in the gender regime according to the specific conditions of the countries analyzed, to the extent that it reveals commonalities of gender regimes in these countries, this study will go beyond the significant understanding that the personal is political and build a relationship between national and international or domestic and global.