Kurds in Turkey: ethnographies of heterogeneous experiences

0518298 - OÚ 2020 RIV GB eng M - Monography Chapter
Drechselová, Lucie
The Kurdish Women’s Political Organizing from the feminist neo-institutionalist perspective.
Kurds in Turkey: ethnographies of heterogeneous experiences. London: Lexington Books, 2019 - (Drechselová, L.; Çelik, A.), s. 31-46. ISBN 978-1-4985-7524-9
Institutional support: RVO:68378009
Keywords : feminist neo-institutionalism * Kurdish women * Turkey * state repression * political involvement * quotas
OECD category: Social topics (Women´s and gender studies; Social issues; Family studies; Social work)

The chapter analyses state repression in Turkey as a catalyst of Kurdish women’s political participation. It uses a conceptual framework of the feminist critique of neo-institutionalization which put the actors and their agency into the center of the analysis of institutions. Based on the premise of the feminist critique, the political parties are analyzed as gendered institutions and women as actors within them who navigate the intra-party environment. First, the chapter shows that in the course of the last forty years, the repressive environment in Turkey has contributed to politicize Kurdish women. Simultaneously however, most of the female politicians in the Kurdish parties come from families which were politically active within the different components of the Kurdish movement. This means that in terms of profiles, women who get selected as political candidates are chosen specifically for two reasons: having a family heritage of political involvement and an individual experience with state violence. Second, the chapter is innovative since it elaborates on an issue which is glossed over in most of the existing research about the feminization of Kurdish politics in Turkey – the importance of the year 1999. Through a thorough contextualization, the chapter shows that the end of the 1990s and the beginning of 2000s were marked by a concomitant set of developments which all contributed to women massively entering pro-Kurdish political parties and led eventually to the implementation of the unprecedented 40% female quota and the gender-parity in co-chairing system.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0303648