Feminist Politics in Contemporary Turkey: Neoliberal Attacks, Feminist Claims to the Public

Abstract

This article aims to offer a critical reading of the feminist claims to the public sphere in Turkey in the 2000s when there was transformation in the way public and private spheres are defined. We try to link the feminist claims to the public with the shifts in the patriarchal regime of the country in the decade. The main argument of the article is that feminist politics of the 2000s had the potential for an alternative imagination of the public and that they also faced the risk of assimilation into the de-/re-publicization process of the same period. The article starts with a brief outline of the post-1980 period, which hosted both the emergence of independent feminist organizing and the neoliberal restructuration of Turkey's politics. It continues with the analysis of the Justice and Development Party's terms in government, as the consolidation of neoliberal restructuration process. We conclude with the (possible) feminist interventions to the new mode of patriarchy that emerges out of this process.