Claiming Rights: Gender-focused Civil Society Organizations in Turkey

Building on the feminist literature, as well as the literatures on civil society, citizenship, democratic backsliding, and women’s empowerment, the study traces the shifting strategies and actions of gender-focused CSOs in response to the current government's approach to civil society and feminist movements. We are interested in understanding the challenges faced and resilience strategies developed by gender-based CSOs in their struggle to enhance women’s empowerment. We investigate how gender-focused CSOs maintain their struggle for women’s economic, social, and political empowerment under democratic backsliding based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with representatives of gender-focused CSOs ranging from LGBTQ+ organizations to Islamist ones so as to capture variation across different perceptions and gains of women’s empowerment (Cornwall 2016).