Locating Gendered Epistemic (In)Justices: Publication and Citation Patterns in EU-Turkey Studies

The deep-rooted, multifaceted, and complex relationship between the European Union (EU) and Turkey has engendered such a rich body of literature over decades that we can now call “EU-Turkey studies” a niche sub-discipline of EU studies. Taking off from the “gender problem” in EU studies (Guerrina et al. 2018) stemming from the dominance of malestream analyses in the discipline, on the one hand, and high levels of female representation in the sub-departments of Turkish universities specializing on European studies, on the other, this paper seeks to locate gendered epistemic (in)justices persisting in EU-Turkey studies. Specifically, the paper addresses the extent and central traits of gendered division of labor in knowledge production processes in the discipline by drawing on feminist standpoint theory. Employing citation analysis and research synthesis techniques to an original dataset comprising 300 peer-reviewed articles published in 26 SSCI journals on EU-Turkey relations from 1996 to 2020 and 8,494 citations, we systematically map citation practices by female and male authors in scholarly works on EU-Turkey relations, the evolution of (co-)authorship patterns, as well as the distribution of the theoretical/conceptual and thematic foci of the sampled articles across genders. Our mapping discloses two central features of gendered epistemic (in)justices persevering in the discipline. First, the overrepresentation of female authors and the disruption of gender disparities in publishing from 2014 onwards have not culminated in a proportional decrease in the citation gap for women. Second, while atheoretical publications in the discipline have been particularly driven by male authors, both female and male scholars have hardly made recourse to non-traditional, avantgarde research topics, nor did their theoretical takes on the EU-Turkey relationship passably transcend disciplinary boundaries, remaining largely confined to EU (integration) studies.