The Rise of State Anti-feminism in Turkey: A Case of Authoritarian Upgrading?

The withdrawal of Turkey from the Istanbul Convention accompanied with outlawing of women´s rights groups struggling against femicide as well as securitization of LGBTQI+ activism has rightfully instigated a public debate on the political significance of these moves taken by the President Erdoğan. The dominant frames of analysis expounded on this anti-feminist turn of the incumbent regime in Turkey in terms of Erdogan’s wish to stay in power. According to this analysis, the President secures the regime by way of appealing to the more fundamentalist sectors of society including small-scale political Islamist parties as well as economically and socially influential religious sects and communities. This strong insight has indeed a conceptual equivalent in political regime studies, which is “authoritarian upgrading”. The term does refer to different tools and mechanisms improvised by authoritarian leaders to expand their societal support without having to solve pending social questions and problems. This paper seeks to question the extent to which the puzzling rise of state anti-feminism in Turkey could be considered as a case of authoritarian upgrading. To do so, the paper will first trace the conflict-laden development of state feminism in Turkey since the 1990s. Second, the paper will specifically focus on conflicts around the family law since 2010s, and intentionally broaden the focus from anti-gender measures taken by the government to all related gender policies. Hence, the paper will both historicize and contextualize anti-feminism. The hypothesis that drives this historical and contextual sketch is that the state anti-feminism in Turkey is not only a regime survival attempt in the limited sense of the term. It is indeed also an attempt at solving social problems and questions, albeit in the form of a passive transformation/revolution. It will be argued that the current modification of course in the tradition of state feminism helps the ruling bloc to contain and control the contradictory social transformations in Turkey without necessarily establishing a hegemonic appeal and power.