Gender Politics under Autocratization and Two Decades of Women’s Movement in Turkey

This chapter addresses gender, populism, and religion relationship through the case study of Turkey under the Justice and Development (AKP) rule. The AKP is considered one of the longest-ruling contemporary populist parties (2002-present). The chapter first examines the incremental evolution of the gendered aspects of the AKP’s populist and authoritarian rule. This part mainly focuses on how the AKP ‘sacralized’ women with familial roles by utilizing religious tropes and rendered gender as an essential category of populist polarization between 'venerated women' as mothers, sisters, and wives and 'repudiated feminists'. The former is considered a part of ‘the people’, an allegedly homogenous and organic entity while the latter is depicted as decadent enemies of tradition and values that should be purged from ‘the people’. The second part examines two major actors that diffuse the AKP's gender policy in line with religious-nationalist discourse and populist political strategy: 1) the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) and 2) government-oriented women's organizations. Finally, the chapter turns to the contestations of this gendered polarization strategy by examining grassroots anti-populist responses. The discussion raises two arguments. First, despite populist polarization that targets women’s bodies and socio-economic participation, activists have created a tactical and inventive repertoire of legal activism, local-level deliberation and self-help, contentious action against legislative impositions, and social media campaigns and feminist blogging. They expand this repertoire to different sites (streets, media, courts) and scales (national, local, and transnational). Second, joint efforts of secular and religious feminists have created a culture of solidarity challenging the ‘secular-Muslim polarization’ through emergent norms and political frames developed in the course of collective mobilization.