Locating the politics of gender: Patriarchy, neo-liberal governance and violence in Turkey

Abstract

This article attempts to demonstrate that the politics of gender in Turkey is intrinsic rather than incidental to a characterization of its ruling ideology. It does so by focusing on three central nodes of ideology and practice in three domains: first, the use of gender as a central pillar of populism and a marker of difference that pits an authentically national ‘us’ against an anti-national ‘them’; second, the marriage of convenience between neo-liberal welfare and employment policies and (neo)- conservative familialism and finally, the ‘normalization’ of violence in everyday political discourse and practice. It concludes that soaring levels of gender-based and societal violence are not indicative of a securely entrenched patriarchy but of a crisis in the gender order and the polity more generally.