Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Feminist Framing of Europeanisation Gender Equality Policies in Turkey and the EU, Rahime Süleymanoğlu-Kürüm ve Melis Cin, Editör, Palgrave Macmillan, London , Chur, ss.131-155, 2020
This chapter studies the role of the EU in gender
policymaking and the adoption and application of the EU norms in Turkey by
focusing on the political representation of women in the Turkish parliament. It is argued that the causal weight of the EU’s
incentives played a diminished role in comparison to such domestic factors as
political polarization and party ideologies in the adoption of the EU norms. It
relies on novel data regarding the floor-work and parliamentary commission work
of women MPs between 2007 and 2017. These data illustrate that the EU’s
influence on Turkey in terms of gender polices shifted from an interest-driven
to a lesson-driven mechanism. It is argued that norm adoption occurs even in
the absence of EU-level pressure to do so. Specifically, the study illustrates
that when adoption of the EU polices are discussed among the women MPs in the
commissions, only the EU rules and demands that are deemed appropriate
vis-a-vis the majoritarian identity and values are accepted, this due not only
to the majoritarianism and polarisation (secularist vs Islamist) problem in the
parliament, but also principally due to the lack of short-term gains and
rewards from the EU. An important finding is presented here showing that the
numerical augmentation of women’s representation in the parliament since the
2000s has not converted to substantive representation, and moreover has failed
to create cooperation among women MPs in incumbent and opposition parties, even
for issues regarding gender-related problems such as domestic violence against
women and childcare protection concerns. While rejecting the general assumption
that “EU-niversal” and Islamic values are incompatible, the study highlights what
is viewed as Turkey’s “cherry-picking approach” to the EU’s gender policies. For
instance, the policies around LGBTI rights are left out of consideration, and
policies that comply with their neo-conservative agenda are adopted. Whereas,
the EU’s concern is to push the list of gender policies onto the government’s
legislative agenda with few or no initiatives to create a feminist
understanding of the gender policies.