‘How can someone be a woman and activist yet be a good citizen?’: Stories of Intimate Citizenship of Activist Women from Poland and Turkey

The late modern political environment has been shaped by growing tensions and differences, which have led to innumerable transformations resulting in consequences for intimate life. The paper focuses on the impact of political changes in Poland and Turkey, particularly the rise of the PiS (Law and Justice) and the AKP (Justice and Development) government, on the intimate lives and citizenship identities of activist women from Poland and Turkey. Poland's and Turkey’s constitutive elements, namely religiosity in the guise of Catholicism and Islamism and a profoundly entrenched patriarchy in the society, have raised the tension between the feminist movement and the populist counter-movement (Acar & Karan, 2018; Paternotte & Kuhar, 2017). Plummer (2003) argues that the emergence of the women and LGBTQI movements brought up a host of potential new identities that demand recognition and lay claim to rights and obligations. The electoral success of the far-right in Poland and Turkey and the consequences of these political shifts have raised violent attacks on women's and LGBTQ rights and bodies. In the paper, Plummer's notion of 'intimate citizenship' will be used to explore how Polish and Turkish activist women are experiencing the tension between being a 'good citizen' and a 'normal/bad citizen' in their intimate lives. The study intends to critique classic models of citizenship by showcasing the gendered nature of the citizenship process and arguing that women are still treated as 'second-class citizens’ (Plummer, 2003). By incorporating life-story interviews of 20 activist women from Poland and Turkey living in 'exile' under the PiS and the AKP government, the paper aims to provide a voice to those affected and demonstrate how social movements contribute to creating solidarity through narratives demanding recognition (Miles, 2022). The study will explore the meaning of 'dissident citizen' (Sparks, 1997) and how people's concrete life stories can be a movement toward 'intimate citizenship' full of sufferings, strivings, tension, and contestations.