Women in the 'New Turkey' (2007-2022): Experiences of (political) citizenship and the (gender) regime [tese de doutoramento externa]

Abstract

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”.