Advocacy in the Face of Government Backlash: Feminist Movements in Turkey and New Avenues of Research in Redemocratization

The scholarship on feminist movements in Turkey shows that, over the decades, depending on the ideological position of the government and the political context, feminist groups have created a multiplicity of strategies to advocate for political, legal, and societal change toward gender equality. Temporal analyses of these strategies reveal a transition from lobbying and active participation in the changing of existing legislation in the 90s and early 2000s to more grassroots organizing as AKP, in power for the last 20 years, consolidated its rule and became more hardliner on issues of gender equality and women’s rights. Studies focusing on the recent decade mention activists’ concentration on strategies such as coalition-building, digital activism, and contentious street protests. These studies also observe intensive efforts for maintaining past feminist gains in a political environment defined by concerted attack against them by government actors as well as anti-gender/anti-feminist forces connected to them. Yet there is little systematic analysis of these strategies, connecting them to organizational models, repertoire of action and discursive frames. While the dual threat of neoliberalism and neoconservatism is discussed, there is also little research into how feminist advocacy responds to the alliance between the two ideologies at the practical level. This paper argues that, there is need for more systematic analysis of these strategies, organizational models, repertoires of action and discursive frames. The broadest question this study seeks to answer is what happens to feminist movements at a time when feminist activism has been criminalized amidst growing political polarization and volatility. How are feminists are individually and organizationally reacting to very violent attacks they are facing in real time, today? How do they respond to the threats posed by the strengthening alliance between neoliberal and neoconservative political agendas? Studying feminist activists, situated not only against an anti-gender and anti-feminist government, but also in an increasingly volatile political and economic environment, is fruitful precisely because of what it can say about various similar contexts across the world. This study approaches women’s alliances as an important democratic model in the making. It aims contribute to existing discussions on the role feminist activism can play in challenging the alliance between neoliberalism and neoconservatism. It seeks to understand how feminist strategies, organizational models, discursive frames and repertoires of action can contribute to expanding and deepening the currently thinned meaning of democracy, inclusiveness and egalitarianism.