Siyasetin kadınlaşması (İngilizce kavramıyla feminization) üzerine yapılan araştırmalar, kadınların siyasi katılımını ve temsilini ardışık ve ilişkisel bir süreç olarak göstermektedir. Ancak, özellikle muhafazakâr/sağ partiler ve kadınların bu partilerdeki siyasal aktivizmi hakkında yapılan yeni analizler, siyasette giderek artan kadın varlığının kadın sorunlarına feminist bir cevap vermediği gibi hem kadınların hem de kadın sorunlarının temsiline de mutlaka yardımcı olmadığı ortaya çıktı. Bu çıkarımların uyandırdığı merak ile bu makale, Türkiye'deki muhafazakar-sağ siyasetin temsilcisi olan Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) örneği üzerinden siyasetin kadınlaşması ve toplumsal cinsiyet politikaların anti-feminist doğasının nasıl bir arada olabildiğini incelenmektedir. Araştırma, partiye bağlı kadın kolları ve partiye oy veren kadınlar üzerinde nitel araştırma yoluyla kadınların siyasi katılım sürecine odaklanmaktadır. Araştırma bulguları, siyasetin kadınlaşması ve anti-feminist politikaların parti ile kadınlar arasındaki ilişkide birlikte var olduğunu göstermektedir. Parti, anti-feminist koşullar olarak kabul edilen belirli sınırlar ve kısıtlamalar sunarken, kadınlar bunlara uyum sağlayarak siyasi aktivizmlerini kadın kollarına katılarak, burada siyasal yaşamlarını sürdürerek ve partiye oy vererek stratejik bir şekilde sürdürmektedir. Bu bağlamda, kadınların siyasetteki varlığı, kadınlar için anlamlı bir dönüşüm getirmemektedir.
When I saw the announcement for the winter school, I immediately felt that I want to participate in. While I am certain that you will receive many high quality applications, I will take the following paragraphs to show why I, a Ph.D. Candidate at Boğaziçi University Istanbul, am ideally placed to make a valuable contribution to the event. My PhD project aims to understand the relationship between populist mobilization and gender issue by making a qualitative analysis of the motivations for the women voters of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey. Today, all around the world -the USA, Hungary, Poland, Italy, Turkey- has been experiencing the rise of radical right wing populist parties. Thus, when my research has questioned the relationship, it also aims to deconstruct the relationship between democracy and rule of law in the reverse angle. I mean, when populism is chosen a way for holding the power, its occupation into the liberal order is inevitable such as destroying rule of law. When the populism has been defined as a democratic illiberalism, it represents the unlimited democracy's danger clearly by the legitimacy of majority power. Additionally, the situation between the rule of law and democracy should be discussed with awareness of new actors. So, the new actor reminds that the importance of the balance and association between them when it disappeared. Rising support of women to the newly mainstreaming populist radical right wing parties has emerged as a new position in the politics of the 21st century. Therefore, being defined as illiberal democracies, one of the fields that the right-wing populist parties and government has the highest level of suppression is gender issues. When the populist radical right wing constructs the illiberal and conservative norms on the gender issue as desires of majority rules, it undermines the individual liberties, gender equality, women emancipation and progress. Therefore, the populist anti-gender perspective is one of the cases, which has rejected norms of liberal democracy through conservative ideology and populist political actions such as anti-abortion law in Turkey, 500+ subsidization in Poland or banning gender studies in Hungary. By these governments, women are defined over the family and their role within the family such as child bearing, motherhood and housewifery. By this way, their individual existence within the society have been disappeared, because of their familial recognition and connections into the state. Contrary to the aforementioned illiberal gender policies of the governments and parties, many of the populist parties and governments have received more female votes than the male ones. As in the case of Turkey women have tendency to vote the AKP/JDP more than male voters to illustrate that when the AKP's voters' 51% was women, 49% was man in national election in 2009 (KONDA; 2018). Based on this dilemma, my PhD project aims to answer the question of why women have a tendency to vote for radical right-wing political parties, which have anti-gender party programs? To answer this question, I will conduct qualitative research by analyzing the following three angles perspectives: The AKP's and leaders' discourse, political participation process of women as active member; mobilization of women as a constituency. Examining these angles will provide a fertile ground to investigate the relationship between populism and women from a multi-level perspective. Clearly, populism has risen as a challenge against the established democracies and rule of law, yet it has also negative impact on unconsolidated democracies such as Turkey, Hungary and Poland. Even though populism has more or less the same consequences those two type of the states, its impact has been felt deeply in slippery ground of unconsolidated democracies' political and social life, as in the case of gender issue.
Populism has been stormed through the discussion and scope on political science. It has been discussed in many ways and associated with different issues. Even though the abundant of the literature, as many scholars mention, populism and gender have rarely considered (Spierings and Zaslove; 2017). One ofthe first studies has been emerged by Mudde and Kaltwasser (2015), but its conclusion discourages the researchers. The finding said that "the relationship between populism and gender is relatively weak but highly complex" (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2015: 36). This is important and also true because when populism declares itself in the antagonism between the people and the elite, the issue of gender is staying as an invisible topic. However, there is one crucial and certain outcome about the relationship between the populist parties and gender which is that the populist parties receive more male than female support (Spierings and Zaslove 2017; 822). However, there is a challenging situation in the case of Turkey where the percentage of female and male votes are even for JDP which a radical right populist party is also (KONDA; 2018). Therefore, this deviation frames the research question for this paper. This paper aims to answer how does populism mobilize the women in Turkey? I believe that empirical perspective provides a way out from complexity and uncertainty. Beyond the theoretical meaning of populism, I consider using the lens of populism to understand its mobilizational efforts within the society (Jansen; 2011). For this matter, the following questions will be answered to understand the mobilizational efforts of JDP in the level of female constituents. Firstly, "is there any populist organizational link between the JDP and female constituents? I will investigate the organizational structure of JDP women's branches to answer the question. Secondly, "how is populism articulated as a mobilizational tool in the level of women's branch?" For that, semi-structured and in-depth interviews will be conducted to analyze populist appeals in their links with the female. The third question is directly related to the relationship between the party and its women's branches. I mean "how does the party mobilize women's branches in terms of populist perspective? In a nutshell, the rising emanation of populism through political life has influenced various part of society. Even though women are ignored in political life, they have an active role in the case of Turkish populism for the JDP's consolidation. Therefore, as an important part of the JDP, women's branches will be unit of analysis of the research to represent the relationship between the populism and gender.
There are many components and techniques which are driven by populist radical right parties from top to down. The most important issue can be seen here the populist radical right parties' linkages with civil society organizations, especially NGOs and social movements. Therefore, a question occurs from this point of view; How do populist radical right parties manifest themselves over civil society organizations? Does the relationship lead to a top-down mobilization? To address these questions, I need to determinate my framework about far-right political extremism and its populist manifestations. Mudde identifies the three defining features of populism which are also experienced and used in its far-right extremism version. These are antiestablishment, authoritarianism, and nativism. This three features are also crucial points to understand situation of civil society organizations and which are mobilized and organized from above. In first place; nativist character of populist radical right parties provide an identification for represented people, they declare who is "us" and who is "other", and who is "foe", and who is "enemy". This distinction is important, because the most important base and appeal is derived from here. Implication of this distinction to the relationship between the party-civil society organizations can be observed like who is going to be mobilized? Secondly, this party family also manifests itself with authoritarian attitude and it mostly relies on a charismatic leader. This perspective and political style also determinate how relationship will constitute between party and civil society organizations. This is going to bring a new understanding on civil society, social movements and NGOs' literature. How can we identify it as a democratic governance and organization or what? In other words, is there a new way of politics or formation of civil society? Thirdly, the most important onset of the populist radical right parties are derived from their antiestablishment characteristics. In this sense, they represent the voice of ordinary people. From this point, when populist radical right parties destroy established institutions and intellectual ideas in both society and the state level, it generates the new ones to replace them. The civil society organizations are going to be the most important apparatus during this demolition and reconstruction process. The reason why, they are going to use civil society organizations not as an intermediary institution, but also keeping closer to people. In these sense, how should civil society organizations be analyzed; as an objective and non-political institution, or instruments of the populist radical right parties? To develop deeper understanding and apply established research techniques to conduct my research, I will make an empirical study in Turkey and Hungary. With the abovementioned framework, I will analyze the relationship between the governing JDP (Justice and Development Party) and Anatolian Youth Association in Turkey on the one hand and Fidesz and Civic Circle Movement on the other hand. In this sense, 1 aim to put empirical data on my work which is collected by in-depth interviews in Turkish case and secondary material for Hungarian case.
