Re-making Citizenship and Gender in Turkey

Fourth World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies (Wocmes), Ankara, Türkiye, 18 Ağustos 2014 - 22 Aralık 2023, ss.600, (Özet Bildiri)

Re-making citizenship and gender in Turkey: from the pedagogical state's

desirable citizen to the enacting citizen

Tuba Kancı, Melike Argıt

Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Faculty of Political Sciences, Yıldırım Beyazıt

University, Ankara, Turkey

The growing complexity of Turkish modernity and politics in the last decades in the face of

globalization and Europeanization brought the question of citizenship to the forefront in Turkey. The

consolidation of democracy in Turkey by which state, society and individual relations are regulated

necessitates governance realized through a discourse and regime of citizenship founded upon the

equal rights and freedoms of diverse identities, including gender equality. This paper seeks to

understand the changing conceptions of citizenship in Turkey. It will first consider the concept of

citizenship in Turkey historically, and then analyse the changing conceptions of citizenship by focusing

on the acts of women in Turkey throughout the last decade, which is characterized by the rule of

Justice and Development Party and the European Union candidacy. The official and institutionalized

discourses and acts of citizenship will be compared with the citizens’ discourses and activism, focusing

on civil society and social movements in order to provide insights to the reformulations of citizenship.

Thus the paper will question: How is “the citizen” constructed in relation to place, nation, language,

religion, ethnicity and gender? How are relations between national and global perspective treated in

relation to “the citizen”? How is the “right” citizen is presented and depicted and what values are

highlighted at both national and global levels? How are gender identities narrated? What different

discourses and expectations are involved in citizenship? How do these different expectations are

enacted through civil society and social movements throughout the last decade? Women’s enactments

questioning and challenging the existing citizenship regime will be discussed in order to analyze the

different expectations involved in citizenship in Turkey.