Blurred Lines on Gender Politics: Changing Government & Opposition Dynamics in the Turkish Parliament on Istanbul Convention

This paper examines the interplay of gender politics at the Turkish Parliament preceding and following the withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention. I will analyze the actions and discourse of the government in the parliamentary context and how the opposition parties react to these. The study focuses on the debates of the Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men (KEFEK) in the Turkish Parliament as well as the much-celebrated inquiry commission on the prevention of violence against women, which was unanimously established days before withdrawal from the Convention. The preliminary evidence from the study suggests that gender politics of the AKP unites opposition regarding women’s rights overarching domestic political alliances (people’s vs. national) in which pro-Kurdish HDP is a party of none. I argue that, despite this formal exclusion of HDP, opposition parties, especially CHP, do not hesitate to side with HDP in the Parliament despite its delicate avoidance to do so in other policy areas. Moreover, the study suggests that the united opposition pushes KEFEK to take action for women's rights. However, in the face of majoritarian understanding of democracy, it does fail to do so, which results in and accounts for different political strategies by the opposition.