From “Family Discourse” to “Family Governance”: Multiscalar Anti-Gender Politics in Turkey

Over the last decade, anti-gender mobilisations in Turkey have shifted from a discursive defence of “the family” to an overt policy architecture that centres the family as an anti-gender strategy. This paper argues that the transformation is driven by coalitions of state and non-state actors whose agency and networked alliances institutionalise anti-gender frames across scales—local platforms, national law proposals and policy-making, and transnational circuits of ideas and actors. In line with Section 06’s emphasis, it demonstrates how these coalitions weave together sovereignty, morality, and social order claims to mainstream anti-gender politics within democratic institutions, intertwining them with state authoritarianism, populist discourse, and democratic backsliding. Empirically, the paper traces a repertoire that moves from culturalist framings and attacks on the Istanbul Convention toward policy instruments that recode gender equality as a threat to national and familial cohesion. It examines high-visibility anti-gender mobilisations (e.g., Büyük Aile Buluşması rallies) and state initiatives such as the 2025 “Year of the Family,” the announced 2026–2035 “Decade of Family & Population,” and Istanbul-based international convenings on “family,” to show how imported scripts are domesticated and local “successes” circulate as models. These developments crystallise how discursive attacks are paired with institutional designs that re-centre the family as a policy instrument against gender and LGBTQI+ equality. Methodologically, the study employs critical frame analysis of policy and public communications, complemented by process tracing, to demonstrate how the concept of ‘family’ transitions from discourse to governance. Conceptually, the paper theorises “family governance” as an instrumented form of anti-gender politics. Building on scholarship on familialism, governance, and anti-gender master frames, I use family governance to denote the bundle of policy instruments, administrative routines, and public justifications that act on gender and sexuality by centring the family as the key unit of rule. Empirically, it offers a fine-grained account of actorness, who does what, where, and with what leverage, and a multi-scalar mapping that situates Turkey within, yet not reducible to, transnational anti-gender networks. The findings clarify how local “successes” circulate as models and how imported scripts are domesticated, with implications for feminist and queer counter-strategies.