Party Politics of the AKP (2002-2007) and the Predicaments of Women at the Intersection of the Westernist, Islamist and Feminist Discourses in Turkey

Date

2008-01-01

Author

Ayata, Ayşe

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

191
views

0
downloads

Celebrating the World Women's Day and initiating a conference for promoting Turkey's integration to Europe on the one hand, and discussing the discrimination against women on the ground of human rights and even harbouring the radical protest from left-wing as well as the Islamist women on the other, the women auxiliaries of AKP (Adalet ve Kalkmma Partisi, Justice and Development Party) seemingly position themselves at the very intersection of various political discourses including Westernism, feminism, liberalism and Islamism. Articulating these disparate discourses, however, requires a meticulous selectivity and a specific political strategy. Is this discursive selectivity inevitable for an overtly religious party in a modern nation-state where secularism and integration into the European civilisation have dominated the state ideology since its foundation? What are the reactions of outsiders, especially of European countries? More specifically, what are the repercussions of this strategic mentality in terms of the women's question? Does it attract various women's groups and thus create solidarity among different voices? Or on the contrary does it not truncate or even silence the demands of women? This paper discusses the women politicians in the AKP as well as its policies on gender equality and relations. It aims to analyze the party on three angles: women's representations and visibility, changes in political ideology and rhetoric, and the adaptation of party organization to the demands of women.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/35032

Journal

BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/13530190802525130

Collections

Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Civil society and state relations in Turkey: Opposing trajectories of two Islamist women's civil society organizations Keysan, Asuman Ozgur; Özdemir, Zelal (Informa UK Limited, 2020-07-01) The Islamic women's civil society organizations (CSOs) in Turkey entered a new phase with the lifting of the headscarf ban, which had long been the focus of Islamic women's activism against authoritarian gender policies in the country. Based on research conducted in 2012 and 2018 on two Islamist women's CSOs that have been active here during the last two decades, AKDER (Women's Rights Organization against Discrimination) and BKP (Capital City Women's Platform Association), this paper aims to understand thes...
Gender politics and education in the Gülen Movement Göktürk Ağın, Duygun (2021-11-01) In Turkey, women’s involvement in the Gülen Movement (known to its adherents as Hizmet (Service)), a global religious movement, contributes to extending the gendered forms of conservative-modern discourses within the practices of everyday life by introducing a new form of Islamic activism. This chapter traces the gender and pedagogical discourses of the Gülen Movement, based on ethnographic analysis of data collected in one of the Movement’s high schools in a conservative, provincial city in western Turkey....
Questioning Perceptions and Suggestions about Violence Against Women: The Case of Women Representatives of Political Parties in GNAT in 2021 Taşcıoğlu Örs, Şule; Beşpınar Akgüner, Fatma Umut; Department of Sociology (2021-8) Since violence against women (VAW) is reflected as one of the crucial social issues in Turkey, this study aims to investigate the perceptions of woman members of political parties which are represented in Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNAT) towards VAW. By examining women’s discourses, the study will demonstrate the similarities and differences between female politicians in Justice and Development Party (JDP), Nationalist Movement Party (NMP), IYI Party, Republican People’s Party (RPP), and People’s De...
Gender Politics Under Authoritarian Populism in Turkey: From the Equal Rights Agenda to an Anti-Gender Strategy Aslan Akman, Canan (2020-12-15) GENDER POLITICS UNDER AUTHORITARIAN POPULISM IN TURKEY: FROM THE EQUAL RIGHTS AGENDA TO AN ANTI-GENDER STRATEGY?This paper has the objective of analyzing thegenderedtransformationof the conservative populist government of the JDP (Justice and Development Party) in Turkeywhich has politicized gender equality issues through specific mobilization strategies over the past decade.At the time of its electoral rise in Turkish politics back in 2002, the JDP projected a ‘conservative democratic identity’ and impleme...
Accomodating Diversity Within Feminism İn Turkey : The Amargi Women’s Cooperative, 2001-2011 Özakın, Ayşe Ülkü; Aslan Akman, Canan; Department of Gender and Women's Studies (2012) In this thesis, Amargi Women’s Cooperative in Istanbul is studied as an example of diversity feminism in Turkey. Its feminist perspective and challenges faced in realizing its objectives in this context are analyzed based on a description of the process of Amargi’s formation, the course of its activities and the debates within the group and especially the in-depth interviews held with ten volunteers. The group’s accomplishments and problems encountered during the last ten years in its quest for “doing polit...

Citation Formats

A. Ayata, “Party Politics of the AKP (2002-2007) and the Predicaments of Women at the Intersection of the Westernist, Islamist and Feminist Discourses in Turkey,” BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES, pp. 363–384, 2008, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/35032.