Research Information System
Historical Materialism Istanbul Conference 2022: Systemic Fragilities and Counter-Strategies, İstanbul, Turkey, 15 - 17 April 2022
This study attempts to examine the masculine public sphere on which the Justice and Development Party (JDP) rule in Turkey is built, and how the society in general, but especially women, have been affected by its dominant masculine politics in the post-2013 period. It is now widely known that authoritarian consolidation is the main characteristic of the JDP rule after 2013, which was embodied in the masculine, cult leader image of ‘Reis’ as of 2015. This authoritarianization process is epitomized as neoliberal with some practices, and as Islamist-conservative with some discourses. In that case, it can be argued that the JDP rule has exposed the masses of people to everyday life practices that pursue to discipline the society within a blend of neoliberal policies and Islamic-conservative discourses. This course of authoritarian rule brought the top elites of the JDP to the point of forming a front with the ultra-nationalists as a result of a series of events in 2015 and 2016. Afterward, the issue of disciplining the society has been increasingly accrued with an ultra-nationalist and militarist security discourse, whereas the women’s movement has taken the lion’s share as the most “obstinate” group of the social opposition. The ruling-alliance’s increasingly militarized method of disciplining the society has fed the patriarchal codes by bringing masculinity to the forefront while removing femininity from the public sphere and squeezing women into the family sanctified by the Islamic-conservative moral understanding. Thus, the JDP-led alliance aims to protect its own masculine rule by targeting women, who are perhaps the last people who insist on not leaving the streets, and by forbidding the streets to all social opposition. These claims will be supported by a discursive examination of the speeches of JDP elites on women, family, and all forms of oppositional practice such as the March 8 protests.