Gender Activism and Democratic Resilience in Turkey

Democracy worldwide is increasingly challenged by illiberal and authoritarian forces, leading to democratic backsliding. In the past years, studies have extensively analysed the gendered dimensions of democratic backsliding within the European and Latin American context and beyond Europe. While significant research has examined the causes of democratic decline and its impact on gender equality policies and rights, less attention has been devoted to democratic resilience against opposition to gender equality. Drawing on gender, social movement and democracy scholarship, I conceptualise democratic resilience as the dynamic process of critical actors’ mobilisation capacity to resist, adapt, and recover from internal and external threats while actively promoting gender equality and inclusivity. This conceptualisation allows us to understand sources of democratic resilience as well as the role of the political agency in these processes. Using the case of women’s mobilisations in Turkey, I analyse how democratic actors adapt their goals and strategies over time to counteract autocratisation. Instead of failed attempts to counteract ‘anti-gender’ policies and actors, I find evidence for diversification and proliferation of women’s mobilisation across issue areas. This is puzzling given the extent of ‘anti-gender’ democratic backsliding and pressure on women’s mobilisations in Turkey. I argue that this puzzle can be explained by looking at the resilience strategies, particularly framing strategies and diverse alliance formation tactics used by activists. Activists have used intersectional frame bridging; gender-related marginalisation was bridged to and combined with diverse forms of marginalisations and inequalities and formed alliances across movements and with wider pro-democracy supporters such as opponent parties and the media. I query the process of democratic resilience in the women’s movement in Turkey through the cases of recent legislative proposals such as the law requiring women to take their husband’s surname, “Türkiye Century Education Model”, Maarif Curriculum and the “foreign agent” law in 2024 by drawing on different types of data: documental analysis of archival material produced by the movements, ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews with activists that represent various social movements. These cases illustrate that resilience strategies are continuously adapted to gender equality attacks by approximating the intersectional frames and forming alliances across different movements and other democratic forces. Turkey is considered a case of significant democratic backsliding, and anti-gender mobilisations become particularly visible within the polarised political context. Thus, Turkey presents an intriguing case to examine and theorise intervention strategies of the women’s movement and evaluate their resilience effects on democracy, given that the opposition to gender equality and LGBTI+ rights is in tandem with democratic backsliding. The paper also draws attention to the challenges of the women’s movement in polarised contexts dominated by right-wing populism and intersecting crises, which amplify systemic vulnerabilities.