Anti-genderism as an Authoritarian Instrument: The Case of Turkey

• In Event: Gender and Democratic Backsliding in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)

Abstract

Anti-genderism has become a political tool at the hands of many right-wing, illiberal, and conservative governments in many parts of the world including Hungary, United States, Brazil, and Turkey. Identifying common features of global anti-genderism, this paper will focus on the Turkish case. Under the Justice and Development Party’s rule since 2002 the Turkish state has attempted to found and institutionalize a new gender regime that defines women as mothers and wives, pious, segregated, family-centered, and dependents. This new regime also encompasses overt and covert attacks on the concept of “gender” itself as well as “gender equality.” The paper aims to explain the growing anti-genderism as an authoritarian tool at the hand of the ruling regime to institute its own gender regime and undermine the alternative ones. The JDP government does so through mainly three ways: 1) creating façade civil society organizations that popularize the anti-gender ideology; 2) mobilizing the party’s women’s branches; and 3) using the media. This paper sheds light on each mechanism by utilizing qualitative sources including government documents, publications of so-called civil society organizations, speeches of the top brass, written and visual media sources, and the social media. It argues that while anti-genderism is on the rise at the global level, it also galvanizes up alternative women’s organizations that are mobilized at the local, national, and global levels.

Author

• Gamze Cavdar, Colorado State university