A Contentious Convention – Istanbul Convention in Croatia and Turkey

The Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combatting violence against women and domestic violence, also known as the Istanbul Convention (IC), has become an object of contention in recent years. The Convention was highly politicized, even in countries in vastly different contexts, with various religious and political actors mobilizing in its opposition, while using similar discourses. In Turkey and Croatia, it was primarily radical right actors opposing the IC, thereby joining the illiberal wave of gender backsliding. Framed as an imposition of a “dangerous gender ideology”, the opposition to the IC was politicized by a coalition of Eurosceptic radical right actors in Croatia. Meanwhile, feminist and left-wing actors favored ratification, stressing the core issue of violence against women. On the other hand, in Turkey, against the backdrop of an alarming increase of femicides, public debates on the IC escalated into street protest after President Erdoğan’s statements contemplating withdrawal from the Convention, claiming it threatens traditional family values. How did similar patterns of opposition to the Istanbul Convention emerge in Turkey and Croatia, despite different actor constellations and highly dissimilar political contexts? To answer this question, we first use Contentious Episode Analysis to investigate the variation in the strategies and action sequences performed by proponents, challengers, and third parties, as actors engaged in contention. We also qualitatively analyze their discourses, focusing on exclusionary frames (i.e., opposing “gender ideology”, advocating heteronormative family values), thus investigating (dis)similar patterns of discourses and actions. Our original dataset consists of articles that mention the “Istanbul Convention”, sampled from daily national newspapers, namely Cumhuriyet for Turkey, and Večernji list for Croatia. Our timeframe covers the latest episode of contention for each country respectively, in Turkey between June 2019 and December 2020, and between November 2016 and April 2018 in Croatia. Hence, by using an innovative interactional approach, our research captures the complexity of (dis)similar radical right actor constellations, strategies, and discursive patterns in Croatia and Turkey, used in opposition to the IC. Consequently, it poses an effort to contribute to a deeper understanding of the recent illiberal turn, focusing on backsliding on gender equality, anti-gender mobilization, and violence against women.