Introduction: Quo Vadis Turkey? Encounters with sustainable patriarchy and resistance of women

ABSTRACT

This article introduces a Special Section on sustainable patriarchy in Turkey. It places developments in Turkey within a wider context of global anti-gender movements, in which gender functions as a glue to bond various conservative actors together. It defines what sustainable patriarchy is and suggests why Turkey is a suitable case to examine its various manifestations.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainable patriarchy
• gender
• anti-gender
• women’s resistance
• Turkey

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Goetz, “The New Competition,” 160.

2 Enloe, “Revisiting Feminist IR Theory.”

3 Kandiyoti, “How did gender move to the center.”

4 Paternotte and Kuhar, “Disentangling and Locating,” 6–19.

5 Grzebalska, Kováts and Pető, “Gender as symbolic glue.”

6 Pető, “Resistance Alone.”

7 Paternotte and Kuhar, “Disentangling and Locating,” 9.

8 Korolczuk and Graff, “Gender as ‘Ebola from Brussels’,” 799.

9 Enloe, The Bigh Push, 49.

10 Ibid., ix–x.

11 World Economic Forum. Global Gender Gap.

12 OECD. “Violence against Women.”

13 Enloe, The Bigh Push, 21

14 Ibid., 17.

15 Ibid., 147.

16 “Kadın ve Erkeğin Eşit Olması Mümkün Değil,” Habertürk, July 31, 2010.

17 Günaydın, “Türkiye’de Toplumsal Cinsiyet Karşıtlığı.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Birgül Demirtaş

Birgül Demirtaş is professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Turkish-German University in Istanbul. She completed her BA at Boğaziçi University, MA at Bilkent University and Ph.D. at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research focuses on the Turkish foreign policy, German foreign policy, Balkan politics, and gender. She was a member of the editorial board of the academic journal of Uluslararası İlişkiler (International Relations) between 2004 and 2021 and was deputy editor of the journal of Perceptions between 2014-2018. She has published articles in Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, Middle East Policy, Iran and the Caucasus, Internationale Politik, Femina Politica, WeltTrends, Ankara Journal of European Studies, and Turkish Yearbook of International Relations.

Zuhal Yeşilyurt Gündüz

Zuhal Yeşilyurt Gündüz is professor and the chair in the Political Science and International Relations Department at TED University in Ankara. She completed her BA/MA (1995) and PhD (2000) at Bonn University. Her areas of interest are gender, migration, critical security studies, and the European Union. She is the head of TED University’s Center for Gender Studies. She has articles published in Alternatif Politika, Ankara Avrupa Araştırmaları Dergisi, BOAS insights, Femina Politica, İktisat ve Toplum Dergisi, International Policy Analysis, Internationale Politik, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Merkur: Deutsche Zeitschrift für europäisches Denken, Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine, Perceptions: Journal of International Affairs, Turkish Review of Balkan Studies and WeltTrends: Das außenpolitische Journal.