THE IDEOLOGICAL CONTESTATION OVER THE ISTANBUL CONVENTION IN TÜRKİYE: ANTI-GENDER MOVEMENTS AND FEMINIST STRUGGLE

Date

2025-4-11

Author

Bozdoğan, Melike

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This dissertation inquiries into the ideological contestation between the gender advocacy movement and anti-gender movement surrounding the ratification of and withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention (IC) in Türkiye. Despite widespread public support and the political will for the IC before and during its ratification, Türkiye became the first country to withdraw from the Convention only a decade after its adoption. Disputes surrounding the IC in this dissertation are analyzed through the lens of the contentious politics framework. This research argues that the anti-gender mobilization in Türkiye has structured itself as an ideological countermovement to gender advocacy. Hence the study problematizes the coordinated discursive efforts of anti-gender activism and the anti-IC campaign, and analyzes how Türkiye's feminist movement has been responding to the anti-gender movement during and after the withdrawal from the IC. To illustrate how anti-gender advocates stigmatized the IC and disseminated this interpretation to broader society, this research employed a critical discourse analysis to relevant news from conservative media outlets between 2020 and 2023. In addition, semi-structured in-depth interviews were also conducted with gender advocacy actors to tap into their perception of the IC and how they have updated their movement repertoires to respond to gender-conservative ideological attacks. Hence, the study also underlined the consequences of the immediate post-IC era, the feminist actors' reflections on the meanings, and legacies of their struggles against gender-based violence and the prospects of gender advocacy as they have resorted to strategies of "cautious activism" and a "silent struggle."

Subject Keywords

Gender-based violence (GBV), violence against women (VAW), anti-gender movement, gender advocacy movement, the Istanbul Convention (IC)

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/114111

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis