Geopolitically Motivated Anti-gender Politics in Populist Times in Turkey: Narratives on the Civilizational “Other” at the Intersection of Islam and Gender

In the recent era, global contestations around sexual politics distinguishing between “normal” and “deviant” sexualities have resulted in the international polarization of primarily “liberal states” vs. “illiberal states” over gender and sexuality issues, exemplifying the increasing role of sexual politics in global power constellations. Sexual and reproductive rights, LGBTI-inclusive sexual education, transgender rights, and same-sex marriage in the Global North are understood as evidence of modernity and civilization in international politics and used to distinguish sexual democracies from illiberal states. On the other hand, we increasingly witness the purposeful and deliberate employment of political homophobia in illiberal states to legitimize violations of sexual minorities’ rights, hate speech and gender policy backsliding in the local context, while reifying international polarization in the international system through a boundary making between sexual democracies as avatars of moral deviancy and political regimes adopting state homophobia a guardians of family, culture and humanity’s moral integrity. The populist zeitgeist further feeds into the adoption and reproduction of the narrative of international polarization based on global sexual politics. This article is interested in the ways in which anti-gender politics in contemporary Turkey is framed as a question entangled with global dynamics and transnational struggles over geopolitics and emerged as a symbolic battlefield mapping out the civilizational and national boundaries of “us” versus “them”, distinguishing between “normal” and “deviant” sexualities, and defining what constitutes “tradition” and “modernity”. It scrutinizes the frames, their shifting constructions, and strategic functions embedded in the recent booming of anti-genderism and its civilizational political imaginary on “normal” and deviant” sexualities, intimacies, and family structures intertwined with the global contestations around sexual politics. Examining qualitative data derived from the official discourse (Justice and Development Party's speech acts) as well as the discourses and collective action frames of the growing anti-gender mobilization, it highlights illiberal political actors’ strategic appropriation of the narrative of international polarization and “global gender wars” to assert sovereignty and power in the international arena and redefine tradition, modernity and "ideal" gender norms while remaining attentive to the political opportunity structures in the local context.