Perspectives on gender studies in Turkey (original) (raw)
Related papers
Transformations of the gender regime in Turkey
Les cahiers de Cedref, 2018
This collective work is the outcome of a conference organised by the CEDREF (the organising committee was composed of Azadeh Kian and Buket Turkmen), which took place on the 22nd of March 2017 at the University Paris Diderot, with the financial support of the structuring action PluriGenre. The day was held in solidarity with our Turkish colleagues, all of them gender studies specialists, who signed the peace petition in Turkey and were discharged of their functions by the power in place. The mass firings that followed these brave position statements caused the exile of those who were able to leave the territory2. The authors of this collective work are part of these exiled academics. The present collection offers an occasion, through the prism of gender, to analyse and debate on the connections between political authoritarianism and the gender regime. Authoritative regimes’ first attempts are to erase all of the achievements of past feminist struggles as these advances challenge the patriarchal, conservationist and populist discourses of non-democratic regimes.
BEING A WOMAN IN TURKEY: PERCEPTIONS SHADOWED BY THE BALANCE OF POWER
s The social structure in Turkey is predominantly patriarchal, and this has a major influence on the perception of women. Because of its historical roots and the broad authority that Islam grants men, the preponderant male dominance in the social order in Turkey rests on rather firm foundations. Victimhood is inevitable in a social order where women are deemed as weak compared to men and where their roles and relationships are defined in a way that will perpetuate this weakness. However, it becomes clear that sometimes steps that seem progressive recoil back on women over time or that they are ineffective. The reason for this is that all actions take place in the general melting pot of perceptions, where they are shaped to become acceptable to the hegemonic views. It is vital that perceptions made within a balance-of-power framework where women are disadvantaged be identified and exposed. Furthermore, the struggle to create a Turkey where women and men have equal status should also include the effort to be change the perceptions of women that we have discussed here.
University of Minho, 2024
Political regimes are founded on unequal power relations that shape experiences of citizenship. Drawing upon this claim, we focus on gender relations and analyze the structures and institutions that make up the Turkish political regime, or, to put it in another way, its gender regime. This is a post-positivist feminist-inspired study whose main research question is “How do women interpret the political regime in Turkey from a gender perspective?”. The aims are to interpret whether and how the state under Tayyip Erdoğan’s rule proposes an ideal type based on a national-religious structure; to perceive the relationship between women (citizens) and the political regime (state); and to comprehend the conditions surrounding policy, economy, violence, and civil society. The first chapters introduce the theoretical-conceptual frameworks, which are followed by the topic of study. Then, we conducted a grounded theory study, which is followed by an analytical chapter examining each of the institutional domains of the gender regime. We argue that there is a correlation between opposing gender equality and the nature of the political regime. Afterwards, we contend that this political regime, referred to as ‘New Turkey’, sponsors religious actions and institutionalizes non-equal familialist norms. Thirdly, we assert that this has implications for care policies and is consistent with the ruling party’s economic policy. We aim to produce a discussion of gender and policymaking in Turkey; to contribute to theoretical and methodological fields through the development of specific knowledge on gender and politics and the coverage of a broader insight into political science; and to produce new avenues of research on current Turkish politics: the AKP-era changed the republican paradigm, redefined the role of traditional divisions in Turkey, and the party arose as an anti-gender and familialist authoritarian force on the grounds of a national-religious structure too complex to be limited to conventional cleavages. We discuss this ‘New Turkey’ while proposing a strategy for promoting gender equality in Turkey based on the “theoretical model for the situation and prospects of the gender regime in Turkey”.
Women and Gender Issues in Turkey
Today, in this talk, I will try to address the issue of women killings, the most crucial and immediate problem faced by women in contemporary Turkey. The reason for putting it as the most crucial and immediate problem --even though there are countless other means of violence and oppression women face--is the fact that the right to life is fundamental in such a discussion.
A review by the authors (not myself) of : Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks. Jenny White. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. 261 pages. ISBN 9780691161921 Gendered Identities: Criticizing Patriarchy in Turkey. Rasim Özgür Dönmez and Fazilet Ahu Özmen, eds. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2013. 191 pages. ISBN 9780739175620 Shaping Gender Policy in Turkey: Grassroots Women Activists, the European Union, and the Turkish State. Gül Aldıkaçtı Marshall. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2013. 173 pages. ISBN 9781438447711 And Then We Work for God: Rural Sunni Islam in Western Turkey. Kimberly Hart. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013. 292 pages. ISBN 9780804786607
Falling from Grace: Gender norms and gender strategies in Eastern Turkey
This article calls for a critical scholarly engagement with women’s participation in the Kurdish movement. Since the 1980s, women have appropriated the political sphere in different gender roles, and their activism is mostly seen as a way of empowerment and emancipation. Albeit legitimate, such a claim often fails to account for the social and political control mechanisms inherent in the new political gender roles. This article presents the life stories of four Kurdish women. Although politically active, these women do not necessarily define themselves through their political activity. Thus they do not present their life story according to the party line, but dwell on the different social and political expectations, state violence and the contradicting role models with whom they have to deal on a daily basis. Therefore, the status associated with their roles, especially those of the “new” and emancipated woman, does not necessarily represent their own experiences and subjectivities. Women who openly criticize the social and political constraints by transgressing the boundaries of accepted conduct face social as well as political sanctions.