Introduction
Despite the rich constructivist International Relations (IR) literature on norm dynamics, research rarely focuses on cross-cultural norm contestation and resistance. A few recent studies have corrected this oversight, examining the processes of norm contestation and resistance in global, regional, and local contexts.Footnote 1 These studies have highlighted the creative agency of diverse actors, including the agency of non-Western actors, in ‘localizing’,Footnote 2 ‘vernacularizing’,Footnote 3 ‘translating’,Footnote 4 and ‘resisting’Footnote 5 global norms. Much of the literature on norm dynamics, norm localisers, or translators include civil society organisations, social movement activists, local non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and human rights groups rather than pro-government organisations. This article contributes to the emerging literature on norm contestation and resistance by exploring the normative agency of a local actor in the Turkish context, who has contested the global norm of gender equality, advancing an alternative, local norm of ‘gender justice’.
Since its foundation in 1923, the Turkish Republic introduced many legal reforms to promote gender equality. Over the last two decades in particular, the collaborative efforts of a range of institutions and actors, including a vibrant women's movement, resulted in the adoption of women-friendly legislation in the form of a new civil code, criminal code, and a law on preventing violence against women. Despite the adoption of women-friendly legislation, gender inequality still persists. Turkey ranked 130th out of 149 countries in the Global Gender Gap Report in 2018.Footnote 6 Forty per cent of women in Turkey have suffered physical violence at the hands of their partners.Footnote 7 Women's labour force participation rate remained low at 36.1 per cent compared to 77.5 per cent of men in 2018.Footnote 8 A majority of women work in the informal economy with low incomes and without social protection. Women are still underrepresented in the Turkish Parliament. While Turkey witnessed a substantial (13 per cent) increase in the number of women legislators over the past decade, the percentage of women parliamentarians has never exceeded 18 per cent, remaining below the worldwide average of 24.3 per cent.Footnote 9
The Turkish case is interesting for exploring processes of norm contestation as, since the early 2010s, both the government and pro-government women's organisations have framed the debates on gender equality, excluding the women's movement from the process. This article explores the crucial role of KADEM (Kadın ve Demokrasi Derneği [Women and Democracy Foundation]), a pro-government, conservative women's organisation, in promoting the norm of ‘gender justice’ as an alternative to the norm of gender equality, by drawing from Islamic sources. KADEM's religion-based norm of ‘gender justice’ clashes with global gender equality regime as it originates outside the liberal tradition and devalues policies such as equal opportunities and positive discrimination. KADEM's strategic reframing of ‘gender’ points to ‘the natural differences’ between women and men, ignoring the oppressive and hierarchical power relations between them. Discursive interventions of KADEM support pro-family conservative discourses and policies of the government, reinforcing the traditional gender roles and, thus, rendering the existing women-friendly legislation ineffective.
The analysis of the Turkish case reveals the necessity to examine domestic sociocultural and political contexts and the roles and identities of local norm translators or norm makers involved in the processes of norm contestation. In Turkey, over the past decade, gender policies have not been developed through public debate and grassroots struggle as the government has excluded different voices from the policymaking process. In line with its conservative populist discourses and policies since 2011,Footnote 10 the ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party [Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi]) has marginalised civil society organisations, including secular women's organisations and feminist NGOs, which have been increasingly critical of AKP's gender politics. Having close links with the ruling party, KADEM has assumed an influential role in contesting global gender equality norms and legitimising AKP's conservative gender policies and discourses. The Turkish case points to the importance of power dynamics at play in determining whose voices to be heard during norm translation and contestation processes.
Based on an analysis of primary sources, including reports, periodicals, press releases and public statements of independent women's organisations and KADEM, and official pronouncements of political authorities,Footnote 11 this article reveals the ways in which gender equality has been framed in Turkey. The first part of the article reviews the emerging literature on cross-cultural normative negotiation and contestation. The second part briefly discusses global gender equality norms and postsecular feminist interventions into the study of religious women's agency, bringing together insights from cross-cultural norm contestation research in IR and feminist scholarship. These two parts situate this article in the literature on norm contestation and in the broader literature on gender and politics. The third part provides an overview of gender politics in Turkey since its foundation. It also points to the independent women's groups and organisations that adopted a view of gender equality norms in line with international conventions. The last section analyses the way global gender norms have been filtered through the Turkish context since AKP's rise to power in 2002. More specifically, it explores the discourses, strategies, and justifications employed by KADEM to promote its local norm of ‘gender justice’, actively challenging the global norm of gender equality.
Norm translation and contestation
Global norms are defined as ‘ideas of varying degrees of abstraction and specification with respect to fundamental values, organizing principles or standardized procedures that resonate across many states and global actors, having gained support in multiple forums including official policies, laws, treaties or agreements’.Footnote 12 Over the past two decades, constructivist IR scholars have produced substantial knowledge on the emergence, diffusion, and adoption of global norms.Footnote 13 The first wave of scholarship emphasised the role of transnational actors and international organisations as ‘norm entrepreneurs’, who construct global norms and try to persuade states to adopt and incorporate them in their political structures and policies.Footnote 14 This early literature also developed certain concepts and models such as the ‘norm life cycle’Footnote 15 and ‘boomerang’Footnote 16 to describe the process.
More recent scholarship has highlighted the ‘contested’ and ‘dynamic’ nature of norms,Footnote 17 placing greater emphasis on the processes of norm localisation and/or translation involving contestation, reconstruction, and resistance.Footnote 18 The earlier literature is criticised for its focus on a top-down process (norms travelling from the global to the local),Footnote 19 for ‘eclipsing agency’ and ‘power relations central to processes of diffusing norms’,Footnote 20 for downplaying the domestic context and the crucial role of local and regional actors,Footnote 21 and for emphasising the role of Western norm makers in promoting new norms to passive, generally non-Western, norm takers, overlooking ‘non-Western normative agency’.Footnote 22 Recent studies on cross-cultural normative contestation, thus, have unsettled the narrative of linear progress (norms emerging from the West and travelling to the Rest), highlighting the agency of diverse actors, including the agency of non-Western norm entrepreneurs, in normative change.
Norm localisation research points to the crucial role of ‘active localisers’ in reinterpreting global norms to make them congruent with domestic norms, identities, and institutions.Footnote 23 Norm translation encompasses both norm localisation and ‘de-localisation’, a process by which local norms created and espoused by non-Western actors diffuse and may become global.Footnote 24 Norm contestation, which refers to the conflicts and deliberations around the meanings of norms,Footnote 25 occurs both within the same normative communityFootnote 26 and between different normative belief systems.Footnote 27 Norm translation research focuses on inter-cultural encounters between actors situated in different normative contexts and, thus, examines norm contestation between different normative frameworks.Footnote 28 More specifically, norm translation involves a complex and dynamic ‘process of normative transmission between differently situated international actors, whose principles originate from diverse cultural and ethical backgrounds, whether religious, secular, national, ethnic or cultural’.Footnote 29 Nicole Dietelhoff and Lisbeth Zimmermann identify two types of norm contestation.Footnote 30 While ‘applicatory contestation’ refers to the debates and conflicts regarding ‘the application of a norm’,Footnote 31 ‘justificatory contestation’ challenges norm's validity, questioning its meaning and legitimacy.Footnote 32 Justificatory contestation occurs between actors from different normative communitiesFootnote 33 since such actors often have incompatible understandings and positions on values, beliefs, rules, and principles. If a norm's moral validity is questioned through justificatory contestation/discourses, non-compliance with the norm would increase, leading to norm weakening or even norm decay.Footnote 34
Emphasising the dialogical processes of norm negotiation between actors embedded in different normative contexts,Footnote 35 norm translation literature not only opens up more terrain for the exploration of cross-cultural norm contestation but also allows for the possibility of locally constructed, and subsequently delocalised, norms. It allows us to explore non-Western actors not only as norm ‘localizers’Footnote 36 or ‘vernacularizers’Footnote 37 but also as active norm entrepreneurs, who try ‘to internationalize norms beyond their cultural and local context’.Footnote 38
Four insights from the literature on norm translation and contestation are relevant for examining the adoption of gender equality norms. The first is that norms are always ‘contested’ and subject to continuous negotiation and redefinition. The second is that global norms enter a context where they must compete with local norms. The translation of global norms into local contexts may produce diverse meanings, interpretations, and practices as well as contestations. The third is that local agents, as norm translators or as active norm makers, have a crucial role in the process. The fourth is that norm diffusion and translation do not proceed in one direction as norms travel not only from the global to the local and from the West to the Rest, but also from the local and non-Western contexts to the global arena. It is, therefore, important to consider normative agency of non-Western actors who contest Western (liberal) norms, advancing alternative local norms. As ‘intermediaries’, norm translators play a crucial role to help translate ‘ideas from the global arena down and from local arenas up’.Footnote 39 This article builds on and contributes to the recent norm research by exploring the discursive strategies and justifications adopted by local norm entrepreneurs in Turkey upon encountering norms that clashed with their normative frameworks. The analysis reveals the creative normative agency of pro-government KADEM, which employs discursive strategies such as devaluation, reframing, and bending in the process of justificatory contestation of global gender equality norms.
Global gender equality norms, postsecular feminism, and the agency of ‘non-Western’ conservative women
Since the early 1980s, a variety of actors including regional and international organisations, women's movements, and transnational NGOs, have helped to construct gender equality as a global norm. The designation of 1976–85 as the United Nations (UN) Decade for Women and four women's conferences held between 1975 and 1995 raised global awareness of oppression of women, resulting in the development of global norms of gender equality. The components of ‘global gender equality regime’Footnote 40 include ‘formal principles, norms, legal instruments and monitoring mechanisms’;Footnote 41 compliance of states who signed and ratified treaties and platforms of action regarding gender equality; and an emerging global understanding on the value of gender equality.Footnote 42 Gender equality is embodied in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979. States that are party to CEDAW are required to ensure gender equality in every sphere of life by enacting or modifying domestic legislation to harmonise with the articles of the Convention. As Susanne Zwingel argues ‘[t]he normative triad enshrined in CEDAW is elimination of discrimination against women, achievement of gender equality, and state responsibility.’Footnote 43
At the same time, gender equality remains a contested concept. Feminist scholarship has identified three different visions of gender equality: equality as sameness, equality as difference or reversal, and the vision of transformation or displacement.Footnote 44 The first vision does not challenge the male norm or patriarchal values but merely seeks ‘inclusion’ of women in all spheres of life as women are entitled to the rights enjoyed by men. The vision of ‘equality as difference’ proposes to reverse the hegemonic male norms and reconstruct the political to ensure that women are recognised in their differences from men and the ‘transformative’ vision of gender equality suggests problematising and transforming all established gender norms and standards and thus moving beyond the dilemma of equality versus difference.Footnote 45 Other scholars have pointed to the problem of defining gender equality without taking into account differences and unequal power relations among women based on their class, sexuality, age, religious affiliation, and ethnic or racial location.Footnote 46 Contemporary feminist scholarship has recognised intersecting differences among women and has developed work on ‘intersectionality’,Footnote 47 which focuses on both the differences between and within groups and helps scholars not only to avoid essentialising differencesFootnote 48 but also to understand the ways in which multiple intersecting identities shape political actors and institutions and the relationships between them.Footnote 49
Feminist intersectional theorising has opened up a space within feminist scholarship, where feminists of different persuasions have rethought the ‘dilemma’ of women's active participation in religious movements.Footnote 50 Criticising the depictions of religious women either as passive ‘victims’ of oppressive, male-dominated religious institutions or as agents of ‘resistance’ to patriarchal religious norms and/or Western imperialism, studies on religious women's agency have exposed the limitations of ‘colonial/Orientalist’,Footnote 51 ‘liberal’, and ‘secular’ biases underpinning much feminist theorising.Footnote 52 Drawing on the feminist poststructural critique of agencyFootnote 53 and inspired particularly by Saba Mahmood's ethnographic study of the women's mosque movement in Cairo, the ‘postsecular turn’ in feminism has contested the humanist conception of agency as linked to autonomy and resistance, criticising feminist scholarship for ignoring ‘other modalities of agency whose meaning and effect are not captured within the logic of subversion and resignification of hegemonic terms of discourse’.Footnote 54 In other words, by reducing religious women's agency to either ‘subordination’ or ‘resistance’, most feminist accounts have overlooked the agency of non-resistant or compliant, pious women, ‘who may be socially, ethically, or politically indifferent to the goal of opposing hegemonic norms’.Footnote 55
While providing a critical corrective to the scholarship that often portrayed Muslim women as ‘devoid of agency’, Mahmood's work is criticised for giving insufficient attention to the socioeconomic background of pious Muslim women,Footnote 56 for drawing a sharp distinction between (Islamic) religiosity and (Western) secularity and, thus, falling into the trap of cultural authenticity.Footnote 57 Most importantly, Mahmood is criticised for overlooking ‘the larger political meanings’Footnote 58 and implications of Muslim women's practices, by privileging women's pious subjectivity over othersFootnote 59 (most notably religious women's political subjectivity) and by ignoring the historical contexts of particular religious movements and their effects on women's agency. It is necessary to historicise and contextualise the relationship between gender and religion, recognising the many power structures, which intersect together in different ways to inform and shape historically specific gender identities and relations of power as well as resistances. Over the past three decades, the converging political projects of neoliberalism, conservatism, authoritarianism, nationalism and populism in different national contexts have posed serious challenges to gender equality norms. Contra Mahmood (who downplays religious women's political subjectivity), religiously informed conservative women have been actively involved in these political projects, circulating narratives and adopting strategies to counter feminist claims for gender equality.
Turkey provides a perfect case to explore such dynamics and intricacies of the contestation of gender equality norms. AKP's rise and consolidation of power have provided a group of religiously oriented and politically motivated IslamistFootnote 60 women with considerable visibility and power. Access to government institutions, public projects and funding, and the media has provided them with resources to generate discourses in line with AKP's conservative gender politics. These educated, politically active, professional women, who have acquired positions of prominence within AKP circles, have established women's organisations and monopolised the public sphere, marginalising secular women's groups and feminist NGOs.Footnote 61 As the right to be included and to be heard/silenced in the public sphere is connected to matters of power,Footnote 62 it is, currently, only the voices of these pro-government conservative women's organisations that are heard in the public sphere during the translation of gender equality norms. Power positions and organisational capacity of different actors, depending on their access to policymakers and material resources, affects the strategies they adopt in norm translation processes.Footnote 63 Gender and politics scholars have analysed the ways various state and non-state translators have ‘shrunk’, ‘fixed’, ‘stretched’ and ‘bent’ the meaning of gender equality in different countries across different policy areas.Footnote 64 Employing different discursive strategies such as stretching and bending, local actors transform the meaning of gender equality, often to achieve certain political goals. This article addresses such strategies and normative contestation over the meaning of gender equality in Turkey, where KADEM's efforts to promote ‘gender justice’, appropriating the concept of gender, serve the objectives of conservative political elites.
Translations of gender equality in Turkey (1923–2010)
Following the foundation of the Turkish Republic, the Republican elites initiated a project of modernisation/Westernisation. Emancipation of women was a ‘symbolic pawn’ that the Republican elites used in their attempts to break away from the Ottoman-Islamic institutions, laws, and customs.Footnote 65 The new secular education system (1924) recognised equal rights to education for both boys and girls. The clothing reform of 1925 discouraged use of the veil. Outlawing polygamy, the new civil code (1926) gave equal rights to spouses regarding custody of children and divorce. Women gained their political rights in 1934. Symbolising the new Republic, unveiled and educated women were expected to practice their professions in the public sphere without neglecting their responsibilities in the private sphere as mothers and wives.Footnote 66 Thus, while the Republican reforms eliminated sexual segregation and improved women's status, they did not challenge patriarchal relations in the private realm of the family.
The women's movement that emerged in the mid-1980s challenged the sexist practices and codes of society and made public women's oppression despite the egalitarian discourse of the state.Footnote 67 Throughout the late 1980 and 1990s, through several campaigns and protests, the movement made such ‘private’ issues as domestic violence against women and sexual harassment public.Footnote 68 In 1985, Turkey ratified CEDAW albeit with certain reservations, regarding the articles that concern the equality of men and women in the context of marriage and family. While there is no evidence that women's groups pushed the government to ratify CEDAW, their protests drew public attention to women's inequality and increased awareness about CEDAW.Footnote 69 Women activists organised a nationwide petition campaign urging the state to implement CEDAW, demanding amendments to discriminatory laws.Footnote 70 As a result of protests of women's groups, Article 438 of the Criminal Code, relating to rape and reducing the sentence when the victim was a sex worker, was abolished in 1990. Making direct reference to CEDAW, the Constitutional Court annulled Article 159 of the Civil Code, allowing women to work without their husbands’ permission (1990), and Articles 441 and 440 of the Criminal Code, decriminalising adultery both for men (1996) and women (1998). In 1998, a law against violence in the family, influenced by CEDAW, was passed.Footnote 71
After the European Union's (EU) decision to recognise Turkey's candidacy for full membership in 1999, most debates around gender equality in Turkey took place in relation to the Europeanisation process. The urgency to make the legislation of Turkey harmonise with the Acquis Communautaire of the EU provided an opportunity space, which women's groups used to press for gender equality legislation.Footnote 72 In 1999, Turkey withdrew its reservations to CEDAW and adopted a new civil code (2001), which established full equality between spouses in the family.Footnote 73 In 2004, a new criminal code was passed, which included more than thirty amendments to protect women's bodily integrity.Footnote 74
Access to higher education and ability to speak foreign languages (such as English and French) had provided a group of women with resources to mobilise feminist activism and generate discourses with reference to CEDAW, the EU norms, and the human rights framework. The majority of these women were professionals with university degrees (such as academics, journalists, translators, and doctors) and some of them had received their postgraduate degrees in North America or Europe.Footnote 75 These local norm translators, who had ‘one foot in the transnational community and one at home’,Footnote 76 played a critical role to help translate the global gender equality norms into the Turkish context throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. As norm translators they were engaged in making the general public and especially women aware of Turkey's responsibilities and obligations under CEDAW. As Acar's report revealed, well-known women's NGOs with international ties, such as the Association for Support of Women Candidates (KA-DER), the Flying Broom, the Purple Roof Foundation, and Women for Women's Human Rights (WWHR), exhibit greater knowledge and awareness of CEDAW.Footnote 77 These organisations carry out activities (such as public education advocacy, advocacy to increase political participation of women) directed towards the implementation of CEDAW.
While translating gender equality norms into the Turkish context, women's groups challenged the official Republican rhetoric of gender equality, arguing that women's oppression in the private sphere and sexist social codes and norms rendered equality in the public sphere meaningless.Footnote 78 Socialist and radical feminists in Turkey understand equality as related to women's autonomy, bodily integrity, choices and rights and support positive discrimination towards women to ensure gender equality.Footnote 79 While radical feminists have promoted the vision of ‘equality as difference’, socialist feminists have advocated a ‘transformative vision of gender equality’.Footnote 80
The diffusion of global gender equality norms and the Europeanisation process in the 1990s and early 2000s strengthened an already vibrant women's movement, leading activists to monitor and pressure the Turkish state to fully implement regional and international commitments made to gender equality. The rise of conservative and populist discourses over the past decade, however, created a distance between independent women's organisations and the government.
From ‘gender equality’ to ‘gender justice’: Gender politics, KADEM and normative shift under AKP
Established in 2001, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) defined itself as a ‘conservative democratic’ party. After winning a parliamentary majority in the November 2002 elections, the AKP government maintained Turkey's pro-Western stance and introduced a series of ‘harmonisation law packages’ to meet the Copenhagen criteria for accession to the EU.Footnote 81 During its first two terms AKP governments (2002–11) introduced several legislative reforms that improved the status of women. In 2004, parliament passed a new criminal code, which criminalised marital rape and introduced measures to prevent perpetrators of honour killings from receiving reduced sentences.Footnote 82 During the same year, Article 10 of the Constitution was revised to state that men and women are equal and the state is responsible for ensuring the implementation of their equal rights. The Labour Law of 2003 ensured gender equality at work, establishing measures to support and protect female employees in the labour market.Footnote 83 The new law had provisions concerning job security in the case of childbirth and protection from harassment at the workplace. In 2009, the Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men (KEFEK) was founded in parliament to promote gender equality. The government signed the Istanbul Convention (Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence) in 2011 and adopted a law on violence against women in 2012.Footnote 84 In 2010, the Higher Education Board allowed female students to wear headscarves in universitiesFootnote 85 and the ban on covered women working in state institutions was lifted by the government in 2013.Footnote 86
Despite these progressive pieces of legislation, AKP's discourses and actions reflected the party's conservative stance on women's issues. Several studies reveal that since its electoral victory in 2002, AKP has adopted discourses and policies that comprise a mixture of neoliberalism, nationalism, religious conservatism, and authoritarianism, meanwhile reinforcing conservative gender norms and reproducing gender inequalities.Footnote 87 For instance, during the adoption of the 2004 criminal code, a proposal to recriminalise adultery was inserted at the last minute in the reform package by the AKP government to ‘protect the unity of the family’.Footnote 88 Under much domestic, regional, and international pressure,Footnote 89 the government withdrew its proposal.Footnote 90 Similarly, when women's organisations campaigned for the adoption of a legal quota system in the Constitution, the government opposed gender quotas, referring to them as ‘preferential treatment’ towards women, which would discriminate against men. For the government, gender quotas were ‘undemocratic and unfair’, a threat to gender equality and ‘an insult to women’.Footnote 91
AKP's conservative stance on women's rights has become more evident since the early 2010s. There has been a tendency to legitimise traditional gender roles, referring to ‘inherent differences’ between men and women. In 2010, the former prime minister stated that he did not ‘believe in the equality of men and women’, arguing that men and women are different in nature, complementing one another.Footnote 92 On different occasions, the political leadership employed similar discourses on gender equality and aimed to regulate women's bodies, behaviour, and sexuality, emphasising traditional values such as chastity and casting women as guardians of the community's moral order. For instance, complaining about ‘moral corruption’ in Turkey, the then deputy prime minister urged women to behave modestly, stating that ‘Woman will not laugh in public. She will not be inviting in her attitudes and will protect her chasteness.’Footnote 93
AKP questioned the legitimacy of the norm of gender equality not only through discursive tactics but also by initiating laws and policies antithetical to the norm. AKP politicians circulated the narrative that declining birth rates, reproductive rights of women, and the devaluation of motherhood threaten the stability of the family, which in turn threaten the nation's future.Footnote 94 Thus, AKP governments’ policies have increasingly aimed to control women's labour power and regulate women's control over their bodies in order to ensure the reproduction of the national community. Despite high birth rates, viewing women's reproductive rights as a matter of public morality as well as national duty, the former prime minister Erdoğan publicly encouraged women to have at least three children.Footnote 95 The government also attempted to ban abortion, which has been legal since 1983, and to limit Caesarean sections.Footnote 96 Faced with intense domestic and international protests and criticisms, the government shelved its plan to outlaw abortion.Footnote 97 A new law, however, passed in 2012, prohibited C-sections except in medical emergencies.Footnote 98 The opposition to reproductive rights and abortion and the pro-natalist and nationalist discourses have reinforced traditional gender roles and sacredness of the family. Pro-family discourses have also legitimised government's neoliberal welfare approach, which is premised on women's caregiver position in the family.Footnote 99
In 2011, the former prime minister announced the new Ministry of Family and Social Policies, which replaced the Ministry of Women and Family Affairs, saying that ‘We are a conservative democratic party. The family is important to us.’Footnote 100 Independent women's groups and organisations argued that the change constituted a breach of international agreements signed by Turkey and of the Acquis Communautaire of the EU. For women activists, the government fell short of the responsibility to ensure gender equality, viewing women as part of the family rather than as individuals with rights, and encouraging maternal roles for women.Footnote 101 Indeed, the former Minister of Health commented that motherhood is the only acceptable career for women.Footnote 102
Viewing women who ‘reject motherhood’ as ‘incomplete’, President Erdoğan criticised feminists for ‘not accept[ing] the concept of motherhood’.Footnote 103 Feminists were depicted as far removed from Islam, ‘not belong[ing] to our civilization, our belief, our religion’.Footnote 104 Thus, the global norm of gender equality, embedded in a different normative order and promoted by Western norm entrepreneurs and adopted by feminist groups and independent women's organisations in Turkey, was recast as a threat to Turkish religious and national values, to the stability and strength of the family and, thus, to the future of the nation.
Conservative women's organisations as norm entrepreneurs: KADEM and ‘gender justice’
During its third term in office (2011–15) the ruling AKP's populist tendencies became more evident as the party adopted discourses that further deepened the Islamist-secularist divide, depicting the political arena as a battleground between the ‘true’ representative of the ordinary people (AKP) and the ‘corrupt’ secular elites.Footnote 105 Presenting itself as giving voice to the religious masses unrepresented by the secular Kemalist establishment, AKP has increasingly constructed a societal divide between the religious, ‘moral’ AKP supporters and the non-religious, and potentially ‘immoral’, others (for example, leftists, feminists, minorities, environmentalists), often cast as enemies of the nation.Footnote 106 In line with its populist discourses, AKP has regulated the contestation over ideas and norms in the public sphere through newly created pro-government organisations.Footnote 107 Marginalising independent women's organisations, which have been critical of its conservative gender politics, AKP has supported pro-government women's organisations such as Women and Democracy Organisation (KADEM), Women's Rights Organisation against Discrimination (AK-DER), and Women Health Workers Association for Solidarity (KASAD-D). For instance, in 2014, the Ministry of Family and Social Policy announced that KADEM, AKDER, and KASAD-D were the three NGOs to send representatives to a committee that would designate Turkey's nominees for GREVIO – an independent body of experts that would monitor the implementation of the Istanbul Convention. Independent women's organisations were excluded from the GREVIO candidate selection process. The Istanbul Convention Monitoring Platform, which included 85 women's and LGBTI organisations protested the committee established under the Ministry, arguing that it served ‘to exclude women's and LGBTI organizations from the Istanbul Convention process, distort the content of the Convention and prevent its implementation’.Footnote 108 Due to the resistance of independent women's organisations and platforms, Feride Acar, an academic, a member of CEDAW committee, and a women's rights activist, was nominated as Turkey's GREVIO candidate.
Established in 2013, KADEM has close links with the ruling AKP and supports and legitimises the party's views on women's rights. President Erdoğan's daughter, one of the founders of the organisation, serves as vice president. KADEM's founding president was elected to parliament on the AKP ticket in June 2018 elections. KADEM organises ‘Women and Justice summits’ every two years, publishes an academic peer-reviewed journal, and convenes conferences, workshops, and seminars to produce and disseminate its alternative narrative on women's rights.Footnote 109 KADEM has promoted a vision of ‘gender justice’ as an alternative to the norm of gender equality, which has been long supported by women's rights activists and organisations.Footnote 110 KADEM has sought to demonstrate the problems with gender equality norm to highlight the need for a new norm. For instance, KADEM's founding president Sare Aydın Yılmaz has devalued the notion of equality arguing that the continued existence of women's oppression, despite the struggles for gender equality all around the world (through policies such as ‘equal opportunities’ and ‘positive discrimination’), proves that the gender equality norm is not ‘sufficient’ to end women's oppression.Footnote 111 She has also justified the need for a new vision, emphasising that the concept of equality belongs with a different (that is, Western) normative belief system. According to Aydın Yılmaz:
As a modern concept, equality provides standard monotypes [for women] grounded in Western culture by attempting to equalize women and men, whereas ‘justice’ points to a superior concept in which equality is inherent and refers to equity, balance, a higher understanding of fair treatment, and liabilities between men and women … The concept of women's rights developed in a specific region reflects the socio-cultural, political, and religious dynamics of that region.Footnote 112
Aydın Yılmaz has presented the concept of equality not only as an alien construct, a Western import, which does not fit into non-Western normative contexts, but also as an inferior one, as it fails to acknowledge women's fıtrat (inherent qualities). The implication that Western feminists (and their ‘imitators’ in Turkey) cling to an ‘inferior concept of equality’ establishes a power relationship in favour of KADEM. As an active non-Western agent, KADEM in turn, has the power to construct ‘a superior concept’ of ‘gender justice’, which develops from local conditions and acknowledges the feminine qualities of women.
KADEM's discourses have further devalued the concept arguing that feminism's insistence on equality based on sameness places women in a disadvantageous positionFootnote 113 and would ultimately lead to women's ‘masculinisation’ and then women's detachment from their ‘female identity’.Footnote 114 Therefore,
Instead of feminist discourse, which advocates discriminative policies between men and women, a complementary and holistic discourse must be created … for the establishment of social balance and harmony … women and men must be regarded as two equivalent entities with the same essence, complementing each other.Footnote 115
The norm of gender justice is based on the belief that due to their different biological make up, women and men carry out different social functions, and this generates social balance and harmony in society rather than a state of ‘rivalry between women and men’.Footnote 116 The relationships between men and women are understood in terms of difference and complementarity rather than equality.
The proposed norm of ‘gender justice’ is further justified by giving references to some verses of the Koran to demonstrate Islam's view towards women and men.Footnote 117 Islam ‘considers women and men as parts of a whole that complement each other’.Footnote 118 Pointing to the different characteristics of women and men, gender justice:
[A]cknowledges different liabilities between men and women attributed to society and culture, but also notes that there is no hierarchical superiority or inferiority between the sexes.Footnote 119
Promoting ‘a just and fair sharing of social gender roles between men and women’, the norm of gender justice ‘will not be unjust to men, while protecting women, and will bring about constructive practices in developing an order that prioritizes social welfare’.Footnote 120 For Aydın Yılmaz, the idea of gender equality prevents women and men from sharing gender roles in a ‘fair’ way, so in that sense equality may pave the way to injustice.
As the above discussion reveals, KADEM's norm of ‘gender justice’ differs radically from the visions of gender justice promoted by feminist scholars. For instance, Nancy Fraser's conception of gender justice incorporates claims for both socioeconomic redistribution and cultural recognition to remedy the problems of gender-based ‘maldistribution’ and ‘misrecognition’.Footnote 121 KADEM's proposed norm addresses neither a rights-based agenda to ensure women's individual rights nor a distributive agenda that advocates social and economic rights for women. Furthermore, KADEM views the notion of gender equality as ‘unjust’ as it is ‘discriminatory’ towards men and, thus, advocates the norm of gender justice, based on Islam. The norm of gender justice legitimises the government's message on the ‘complementary nature of men and women’ and supports the president's statements. In a speech he delivered at the Women and Justice summit organised by KADEM, President Erdoğan stated:
What women need is to be able to be equivalent, rather than equal. … You cannot bring women and men into equal positions; that is against nature because their nature is different. For example, in work life, you cannot impose the same conditions on a pregnant woman as a man.Footnote 122
The proposed local norm of ‘gender justice’, according to Aydın Yılmaz, ‘brings a new perspective and momentum to the advancement of women's rights worldwide’.Footnote 123 KADEM has called into question the notion of universal sisterhood, criticising ‘classical’ liberal feminism for ‘ignoring differences among women’Footnote 124 and assuming women's experiences and demands are universal. For KADEM, this universalisation served to ignore the local realities of women living in different societies.
The emphasis on universality inherent in classical feminism has been disabled with a simplistic reductionism with generalizing policies that ignore the problems of local cultures and practices faced by women living in different societies, rather than searching for solutions to such problems.Footnote 125
The norm of ‘gender justice’ puts emphasis on the collective good and, thus, is not compatible with liberalism's emphasis on individual rights. How can this local, religious-based norm be ‘delocalised’ and diffused in a liberal international normative setting? As Nilüfer Göle argues ‘[l]abeling an experience, an attitude, a social practice as local means attaching to it a place and limiting its meaning to the particular as opposed to the universal.’Footnote 126 While contesting gender equality, KADEM has employed the term ‘gender’ to establish legitimacy in the liberal international order but it has bent its meaning and content, reconstructing it to match the Islamic normative system. While gender is ‘a primary way of signifying relationships of power’,Footnote 127 Aydın Yılmaz uses the term to refer to fixed, unchanging social roles and biological differences between males and females, which have long served to justify unequal treatment of women. She argues that as Islam considers that ‘women and men complement each other in terms of duties and responsibilities’, ‘it does not demand obedience to men, but to the order’.Footnote 128 For her, Islam's emphasis on responsibilities of men and women rather than on ‘“natural” capacities ceases the question of hierarchy between men and women’.Footnote 129 Yet, the acceptance of fixed masculine and feminine characteristics serves to reproduce the hierarchical positioning of these traits, privileging traits defined as masculine over those viewed as feminine.
Gender's disassociation with power relations coupled with the subsequent reconstruction of the term in association with Islamic principles have allowed KADEM both to legitimise conservative gender regime of the government and to claim legitimacy in the eyes of international and regional organisations and agencies. For instance, KADEM is a member of Turkey's steering committee for Women 20 (W20), which was established as part of G20 to promote economic empowerment of women, with two other NGOs (KAGIDER – Women Entrepreneurs of Turkey and TIKAD – Turkish Businesswomen Association).Footnote 130 KADEM attends the annual sessions of the UN's Commission on the Status of Women where representatives of states, civil society organisations, and UN bodies meet to discuss issues and problems relating to the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.Footnote 131 Furthermore, KADEM has a project funded by the government and the EU to establish a network between civil society organisations in Turkey and in EU to support women's political participation.Footnote 132
KADEM's reframing of ‘gender’ has also affected its approach to the question of violence against women. KADEM, like independent women's groups, highlights the importance of combatting violence against women. But while independent women's organisations view violence as underpinned by unequal gendered relations, patriarchal structures, and male dominance, KADEM views domestic violence as gender-neutral.Footnote 133 For KADEM, violence is ‘a human rights issue’ and the organisation ‘say[s] no to all kinds of violence against everyone’.Footnote 134 KADEM's gender-neutral focus on violence against women, children, and men,Footnote 135 however, glosses over the reality of gender-specific patterns of violence against women, leaving patriarchy unquestioned. For instance, KADEM's campaigns to fight male violence against women, such as ‘Overcome your anger if you are a man!’ (2013) and ‘Be a man first!’ (2014) targeted men,Footnote 136 asking them to control their emotions. Reducing male violence to a personal issue of male anger and aggression, these campaigns not only ignore that violence against women stems from unequal power relations between women and men, but also cast women as objects of male protection, denying them any agency. Refraining from ‘othering men’,Footnote 137 KADEM's campaigns entrust women to men, who are expected to behave in culturally appropriate ways to protect women. Locating the problem of violence in the private realm and viewing it as a personal issue, KADEM's discourses and campaigns subvert the decades-long struggles of independent women's organisations that have exposed domestic violence as a structural problem in patriarchal societies.Footnote 138 Despite such discourse, KADEM publicly criticised a proposed bill, which would have suspended the sentences of men who had sexually assaulted underage girls and then married their victims. Independent women's organisations demonstrated in İstanbul, Ankara, and other cities against the proposed bill, claiming that by exonerating the perpetrators of child sexual abuse, the bill would legitimise statutory rape and child marriage.Footnote 139 KADEM issued a public statement against the bill, arguing that when it comes to underage children it would be difficult to establish consent and this would result in abusers avoiding any punishment.Footnote 140 President Erdoğan called for a broad consensus on the issue and the government withdrew the proposal.Footnote 141
KADEM has employed discursive strategies such as devaluation, reframing, and bending to delegitimise gender equality norms and to justify the need for a new, local norm. Emphasising the importance of ‘gender complementarity’, KADEM criticises independent women's groups for promoting the vision of equality as sameness, which in fact these groups vehemently reject.Footnote 142 KADEM also blames the women's movement for being discriminatory and criticises the movement for ignoring the problems of ordinary women, especially women wearing headscarves (türban).Footnote 143 Presenting itself as the real representative of ordinary Muslim women in Turkey, KADEM casts independent women's organisations as elitist and Westernised (that is, feminist), devaluing their struggles for equality and delegitimising their voices.
While KADEM criticises the women's movement for ignoring differences among women, it is not very clear if the norm of ‘gender justice’ is inclusive of women with different identities and beliefs. The proposed norm recognises differences only between women and men, thus hiding other inequalities intersecting with gender hierarchies and discriminating against women. It also limits sexual identity/difference to two opposing sexes, ignoring gay, lesbian, intersex, and trans individuals.Footnote 144 KADEM does not support LGBTI rights, claiming that ‘homosexuality is contrary to our belief and the values of humanity’.Footnote 145 Furthermore, the norm of ‘gender justice’ constructs women's labour, identities, and bodies only in relation to the private sphere of the family. Thus, it serves to retraditionalise the gender discourse and legitimise the naturalness of women's roles as mothers, wives, and caregivers. It, thus, legitimises AKP's neoliberal approach to social policy in which women play a crucial role as primary caregivers at the household.Footnote 146 KADEM's discourses sanction ‘the marriage of convenience’ between neoliberal welfare policies of the government with ‘a neo-conservative familism that cements ideals of female domesticity’.Footnote 147
Conclusion
This article contributes to recent norm research in three main ways. First, building on the constructivist IR literature on norm translation and contestation, it highlights the creative agency of non-Western entrepreneurs in normative change. Second, it explores the agency of local norm entrepreneurs in the Turkish context, critically examining and identifying the discursive strategies and justifications they have adopted upon encountering norms that challenged their normative beliefs, values, and practices. More specifically, the analysis has revealed the agency of KADEM, a pro-government conservative women's organisation, in contesting global gender equality norms and in advancing alternative understandings of gender, equality, and justice, based on religious values and beliefs. The article points to the power dynamics at play in determining whose voices to be heard/silenced during norm translation and contestation processes.
While the postsecular turn in feminism has enabled us to rethink women's religious agency beyond the binary of submission versus resistance by highlighting women's pious subjectivities and practices, it has downplayed religious women's political agency, which may or may not be informed by religious beliefs, principles, and norms. This article reveals the limitations of postsecular feminist theorising by pointing to the agency of a conservative women's organisation as a non-Western norm entrepreneur. Far from being a ‘docile agent’,Footnote 148 who may accept hierarchies of power in society and ‘who may be socially, ethically, or politically indifferent to the goal of opposing hegemonic norms’,Footnote 149 KADEM, as an active agent, not only challenges Republican secularism and feminism in Turkey but also subverts the norm of gender equality, advancing the local norm of ‘gender justice’ as its alternative.
Finally, the article supports previous research that local actors often strategically and selectively appropriate or ‘bend’Footnote 150 feminist terminology and discourses to achieve their political goals. While independent women's organisations have embraced and promoted global gender equality norms, monitoring and challenging the state to protect and promote women's rights, KADEM has contested the moral validity of gender equality norms. KADEM's norm entrepreneurs have devalued global gender equality norm arguing that it is alien to Turkish society as it is embedded in a different (that is, Western) normative order, and thus, have established the need for a new norm, ‘gender justice’, which is built on the notion of gender equivalence and Islamic culture and tradition. While contesting gender equality norms, KADEM has employed the vocabulary of gender but it has compromised its core attributes to match it with Islamic normative system, ignoring the unequal power relations between women and men. Retraditionalising women's role in the family, KADEM's proposed norm of gender justice serves the objectives of conservative political authorities, who recast the global norm of gender equality as a threat to the strength of the family and, thus, to the strength of the nation. As the government marginalised independent women's organisations, KADEM has assumed the role of representative of Turkey's women's NGOs in regional and international platforms. KADEM has strategically reframed the term ‘gender’ to appeal to various audiences, including international, transnational, and regional organisations, which operate within the liberal international order. KADEM's strategy to employ the term ‘gender justice’ rather than ‘gender-complementarity’, with its particularistic connotations, enables KADEM to claim legitimacy in the eyes of international and regional actors and to promote its local, religious-based norm in liberal international normative settings.
This article, thus, recognises the diversity of actors, who are actively engaged in the processes of contestation over global norms. Power positions of local actors and their relations to political authorities and policymakers as well as their identities and beliefs are among the factors that shape their roles and strategies in the norm contestation process.Footnote 151 These factors determine who would be the local translators or active norm makers during the norm translation process. By analysing the norm contestation and promotion efforts of a local, non-Western actor, this article has contributed to the recent norm research that highlights the normative agency of non-Western actors in contesting global norms, advancing local norms arising from cultural and religious traditions as alternatives. The Turkish case is important as it reveals the agency of a conservative women's organisation as a non-Western norm entrepreneur rather than a passive norm taker.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Rianne Mahon, Aslı Ilgıt, and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and insights. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the International Studies Assocation Annual Convention (2017) and the Canadian Political Science Association Annual Conference (2017). This work was supported by Çukurova University Scientific Research Project Fund (project number SBA-2017-8503).
