Resisting in Times of Crisis Women’s Organisations in Turkey and Their Survival Mechanism between Anti-Gender Ideology and Securitisation of Gender

During its 20 years of rule, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) predominantly shaped its domestic policies around identity construction. For the sake of “more religious” generations, the supposed transformation primarily focuses on women’s place in society. Design efforts towards this goal materialise in discursive and normative acts. The definition of “proper woman behaviour” or the canonising of motherhood as a sacred place are among the most apparent discursive acts. Although even discursive acts indirectly yet inevitably affect women’s lives, the main difference is expected to be shaped by normative changes. Turkey’s controversial withdrawal from the İstanbul Convention, which is an essential framework for gender equality and combating domestic violence, and the recent bill criminalising any identity counter to heteronormativity are the most striking examples of this pattern. The withdrawal was the latest move in an increasingly oppressive climate for women in which the demands for normative changes against alimony and statement-based investigations in domestic violence cases have become very vocal. Consequently, in addition to the discursive push towards conservative, dependent women, hegemonic politics in Turkey also aims to draw the framework with normative changes. This study proposes to analyse the resistance and survival strategies of women’s organisations across the political spectrum in relation to the aforementioned anti-gender agenda, authoritarianism and the discursive acts that securitise gender. Building on 25 in-depth interviews with NGO workers, we concluded that the oppressive political atmosphere primarily affects large-scale, nation-wide organisations; even so, it confines their activities to mainly reporting and informative sessions, which one of our participants conceptualises as “project feminism.” Conversely, small-scale, local organisations are still more active in their advocacy activities. By foregrounding the differentiated impacts on national and local organisations, the study offers a rare, empirically grounded account of how feminist actors renegotiate agency, solidarity, and survival under tightening authoritarian constraints.