Local Power and Female Political Pathways in Turkey: Cycles of Exclusion [1st ed.] 9783030471422, 9783030471439

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GENDER AND POLITICS SERIES EDITORS: JOHANNA KANTOLA · SARAH CHILDS

Local Power and Female Political Pathways in Turkey Cycles of Exclusion

Lucie G. Drechselová

Gender and Politics Series Editors Johanna Kantola University of Tampere Tampere, Finland Sarah Childs Royal Holloway, University of London Egham, UK

The Gender and Politics series celebrated its 7th anniversary at the 5th European Conference on Politics and Gender (ECPG) in June 2017 in Lausanne, Switzerland having published more than 35 volumes to date. The original idea for the book series was envisioned by the series editors Johanna Kantola and Judith Squires at the first ECPG in Belfast in 2009, and the series was officially launched at the Conference in Budapest in 2011. In 2014, Sarah Childs became the co-editor of the series, together with Johanna Kantola. Gender and Politics showcases the very best international writing. It publishes world class monographs and edited collections from scholars - junior and well established - working in politics, international relations and public policy, with specific reference to questions of gender. The titles that have come out over the past years make key contributions to debates on intersectionality and diversity, gender equality, social movements, Europeanization and institutionalism, governance and norms, policies, and political institutions. Set in European, US and Latin American contexts, these books provide rich new empirical findings and push forward boundaries of feminist and politics conceptual and theoretical research. The editors welcome the highest quality international research on these topics and beyond, and look for proposals on feminist political theory; on recent political transformations such as the economic crisis or the rise of the populist right; as well as proposals on continuing feminist dilemmas around participation and representation, specific gendered policy fields, and policy making mechanisms. The series can also include books published as a Palgrave pivot. For further information on the series and to submit a proposal for consideration, please get in touch with Senior Editor Ambra Finotello, [email protected]. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14998

Lucie G. Drechselová

Local Power and Female Political Pathways in Turkey Cycles of Exclusion

Lucie G. Drechselová Oriental Institute The Czech Academy of Sciences Prague, Czech Republic

ISSN 2662-5814 ISSN 2662-5822  (electronic) Gender and Politics ISBN 978-3-030-47142-2 ISBN 978-3-030-47143-9  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47143-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: dancingfishes/Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To my son Benjamin

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Ondřej Beránek and Jan Zouplna from the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences who provided me with supportive environment for writing this book. I am very grateful to my thesis supervisors, Hamit Bozarslan and Jitka Malečková for their guidance and constructive approach in transforming my 640-page French text into a significantly different and largely independent publication. I would also like to thank Élise Massicard, Delphine Dulong, Jean-François Pérouse, Nadje Al-Ali, Hülya Demirdirek and Ahmet Kuyaş as well as the anonymous reviewers for their useful suggestions and comments. In the course of writing, I also benefited greatly from suggestions and support of many friends and colleagues especially from the Center for Turkish, Ottoman, Balkan and Central Asia Studies (CETOBaC) at EHESS. My research would not have been possible without the material support from the EHESS and the Charles University, without the French government’s cotutelle scholarship, the fieldwork support from the Regional Government of Île de France, the Anglo-Czech Educational Fund, and the European Union’s Erasmus+ program. I am truly grateful to all my interviewees and informal contacts in Turkey, mainly in the cities of Izmir, Trabzon and Diyarbakır but also in Istanbul, Ankara, Siirt and Mardin, who devoted time and energy to share their life stories with me. I am indebted to them for receiving me even in the most agitated times. I would like to thank to all my friends who provided me with emotional and logistical support during my vii

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research stays in Turkey. I am also grateful to friends who hosted me on many occasions in Paris and in London while drafting this manuscript. I would like to express my great appreciation for the team at Palgrave Macmillan for their efficient work and assistance since the inception of this book until the final touches on its layout. I also thank my two proofreaders, Jessica and James. Finally, special thanks goes to my family, in particular to my mother for her lasting unconditional support and to my husband for his loving presence and enabling attitude.

Contents

1 Women’s Political Involvement and Local Politics in Turkey 1 1.1 What Is It About Local Politics in Turkey that Makes It Particularly Inaccessible to Women? 2 1.2 Women’s Status and Political Representation in Contemporary Turkey 3 1.3 The State of the Art: A Scarcity of Studies About Women in Local Politics 7 1.4 Qualitative Study Articulating Political Sociology and Gender Studies 14 1.5 The Structure of the Book 28 References 30 2 Contextualizing the “Turkish Paradox” 41 2.1 Historical Perspective on Women’s Political Underrepresentation in Turkey 42 2.2 A Party-Specific Perspective on Women’s Political Exclusion 52 2.3 A Local Perspective: The Closure of Local Politics to Women 63 2.4 Concluding Remarks 76 References 82

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3 The Road Toward Election: Women’s Exclusion from Electoral Lists 93 3.1 The Exclusion of Women by Local Recruiters 97 3.2 The Unbearable Weakness of Women’s Branches 105 3.3 Democracy, Not for Women? 115 3.4 Centralization: A Price for Selecting Female Candidates? 120 3.5 Concluding Remarks 125 References 129 4 Female Councilors: Who Passes the Filter? 133 4.1 The Dominant Profile Among Female Councilors 134 4.2 The Unconventional Profiles 149 4.3 Gendered Resources and Stigmas 162 4.4 Concluding Remarks 174 References 178 5 Constraints on Women’s Political Agency 181 5.1 Social Order and Local Politics 182 5.2 The Party Environment: A Hostile Environment for Women 186 5.3 Gendered Differences of Local Configurations 195 5.4 Concluding Remarks 200 References 202 6 Navigating Local Politics: Women’s Careers and Strategies 205 6.1 Adaptation Mechanisms and the Spirit of Self-Sacrifice 207 6.2 Individual Strategies: Between Ephemeral Change and “Butterfly Politics” 216 6.3 Collective Mobilization and Institutional Change 222 6.4 Concluding Remarks 233 References 237 7 Conclusion: Women’s Representation and the Cycles of Exclusion from Local Politics 241 7.1 Gendering Political Science and Restoring Interest in Women’s Descriptive Representation 242 7.2 Who Succeeds in Turkish Local Politics? 244 7.3 Gatekeepers: The Key Role of Political Parties 252

CONTENTS  

7.4 Constraints on Women’s Collective Action 7.5 Women and Democracy: A Troubled Relationship References

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256 260 264

Index 267

CHAPTER 1

Women’s Political Involvement and Local Politics in Turkey

“Behind every successful man is a woman,” runs the Turkish variant of the famous saying.1 In politics, there is no lack of recognition for the enabling role played by a loyal wife in her husband’s political career; indirectly, though this “wisdom” can be used to delegitimize women’s demands for political representation, since they are presumably present through their husbands. If turned around, the same proverb acquires a very different connotation: “Behind every successful woman is a man.” This inversion suggests that women in politics lack proper agency and are proxies of men. Feminist research on language and gender has shown the impact that such gendered features of language have on the social order (Bucholtz 2014). The shift of the saying from a positive meaning when the woman was in the background to a rather disempowering one when the woman is in the foreground reveals which form of femininity is socially more acceptable and signals the constraints placed on women’s political agency by the social order. In Turkey, discriminatory mechanisms of a social and political nature result in particularly low levels of female representation. While the complete gendered statistics for the March 2019 local election were still not available at the time of delivery of this manuscript, the numbers from 2014 are illustrative of the scale of women’s exclusion from—in particular local—politics. Between 2014 and 2019, women accounted for 10.72% of municipal councilors and less than 3% of mayors (Kadın Koalisyonu 2014). Women’s exclusion from local politics becomes even © The Author(s) 2020 L. G. Drechselová, Local Power and Female Political Pathways in Turkey, Gender and Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47143-9_1

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more apparent when these figures are compared to their parliamentary equivalents. After the 2018 election, women accounted for 17.3% of deputies (TBMM 2019), which is clearly higher than the corresponding percentage of municipal councilors. Ayten Alkan has labeled this situation, which has been visible in statistics since at least 1999, the “Turkish paradox” (2009).

1.1  What Is It About Local Politics in Turkey that Makes It Particularly Inaccessible to Women? Local Power and Female Political Pathways in Turkey aims to uncover the reasons behind women’s local underrepresentation by building upon 200 in-depth interviews conducted with past and present female mayors, municipal councilors, representatives of women’s branches, and local NGOs. The “Turkish paradox” constitutes the initial puzzle that propelled me to engage in the qualitative analysis of profiles, political pathways and experiences of female local politicians that constitutes the core of this book. My assessment provides a “situated” answer to the question of what makes local politics so inaccessible to women. The answer is “situated” on three levels: temporally, because it stems from local political equilibria in place during the study; spatially, because it is anchored in local realities specific to three different cities; and politically, because it distinguishes between the specific contexts of the four major political parties. But Turkey’s case is notable for at least three more characteristic features, which make this book’s exposure of discriminatory mechanisms in politics even more timely. First, the long-serving governmental force, the Justice and Development Party (AKP, Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi), has managed to organize women in particularly extensive and active women’s branches. According to official party estimates, these women’s branches have over 4.5 million members (Selva Çam 2018). They are said to be the largest women’s organization in the world. The branches work tirelessly for the AKP’s reelection, conducting a permanent electoral campaign. They are also very influential because they distribute social benefits, charitable as well as state-sponsored, ensuring the electoral support of underprivileged social groups for the current government. However, this large-scale grassroots activism doesn’t translate into an electoral presence and few women manage to climb the party ladder.

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Second, the gendered panorama of Turkish municipal politics has been transformed and disrupted by the pro-Kurdish political parties. Since 1999, when the parties won major municipal offices in the Kurdish-populated southeast region, they have had the most favorable statistics with regard to the proportion of elected women. This is not only due to the application of the gendered quota on local offices but also thanks to the introduction of the (de facto illegal) c­o-mayorship system in 2014, which meant that the one hundred municipalities won by the party were jointly presided over by a man and a woman. Notwithstanding the removal of pro-Kurdish co-mayors since 2016, the party kept the co-mayorship system in place for the 2019 municipal ballot and still has the highest level of female representation in the country. The gap between the pro-Kurdish parties and other political forces in Turkey in terms of women’s representation keeps opening which propels observers to treat the former as an anomaly. In contrast, I analyze these parties as an integral part of Turkey’s political spectrum while still recognizing the contentious character of their political activity. Third, women involved in local politics in Turkey are associated with numerous stereotypical images: they are seen as proxies of men, as lacking political experience and as being less qualified to exercise a mandate requiring technical knowledge. Compared with female parliamentarians, women in municipal councils are also deemed to be less educated and they are more often lacking in professional standing—more likely to be the ev hanımı, the housewife. Some of these ideas were validated by earlier academic research (Tekeli 1981; Arat 1985; Güneş Ayata 1998) and need to be taken seriously and examined. Even though they may not capture the contemporary situation, they still survive in the form of perceptions related to women in local politics. Thus, the aim of this study is to build upon existing research about Turkey and to underline persistent features as well as significant developments in women’s municipal representation.

1.2  Women’s Status and Political Representation in Contemporary Turkey Women’s political representation is connected both to women’s status in contemporary Turkey and to the country’s overall political context. This segment provides some elements of the bigger picture. It shows, among

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other things, that women’s political representation can grow in parallel with the growth of authoritarian rule and that there is no automatic link between democracy and the proportion of women in electoral politics. The gendered order and the balance sheet of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) from 2002 until today has been the object of abundant research. For Deniz Kandiyoti, gender is the key pillar of the AKP’s discourse (2016, 105). The party’s policies pertaining to women are grounded in religion, nationalism, and neoliberalism (Coşar and Yeğenoğlu 2011, 557; Coşar and Özkan-Kerestecioğlu 2017, 2). Pınar Parmaksız considers them to be a continuation of the paternalist logic of the Kemalist regime (2016, 40). Women are conceived primarily not as individuals but as cornerstones of the institution of the family (Insel 2003, 304). This is why they are key for the social policies of Turkey’s conservative government: they are, for instance, official receivers of social help for low income families (Güneş Ayata and Tütüncü 2008b, 371). In its first years in government, the AKP continued with a reformist approach to gender equality: in line with the previously amended Civil Code, the party spearheaded the remaking of the Penal Code with the (not always smooth) involvement of women’s organizations. Turkey also signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), a key legal instrument— especially in the fight to end violence against women. The AKP’s policies are not without ambiguities. At the same moment the party incorporated the principle of gender equality into the Constitution, it also proposed criminalizing adultery (Ilkkaracan 2016, 41). In 2012, the party proposed banning abortion (Negrón-Gonzales 2016). While the proposal didn’t concretize into a law, abortion became less accessible in public hospitals across the country, impacting low income and less mobile women in particular. In the light of the abortion debate, the question arose whether women’s status is used by the government to divert attention from other events—in this case, the bombing of a group of young smugglers on the Turkish border by the army, which led to the deaths of 34 people and is known as the Roboski/Uludere massacre (Kılıçdağı 2012). However, the watchword for the AKP’s perspective on women’s issues is conservatism. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the founder of the AKP and the president of Turkey since 2014, has declared on multiple occasions that he doesn’t believe in the equality of women and men (BBC Türkçe 2014). He associated abortion with murder and, more recently, has attacked the

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practice of marriage after 30 and delayed child-rearing (T24 2020). In line with the AKP’s conservative political positions, muftis obtained the right to officiate marriage ceremonies without also having to contract civilian marriages (CNN Türk 2017a). The parliamentary commission on family unity proposed several measures, including limiting women’s right to alimony, in order to discourage divorce (Tahaoğlu 2016). The Global Gender Gap Report ranks Turkey 130 among 153 countries in terms of gender equality (WE Forum 2019), an overall drop of 25 places since 2006. In sub-indexes, Turkey ranks better for political empowerment (109/153) while its worst ranking is in the category of women’s economic participation and opportunity (136/153).2 In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Turkey’s standing is higher: it ranks fifth among nineteen countries, and is only outperformed by Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Tunisia (WE Forum 2019, 26). According to Turkey’s statistical office, the women’s employment rate is half that of men, 28.9% (TÜIK 2019), and the proportion of housewives has been on the rise since 2000 (Coşar and Özkan-Kerestecioğlu 2017, 14). Violence against women is a pervasive phenomenon whose scale is better and better understood due to the increase in the rate of reporting. In opinion polls, almost half of female respondents indicate that they have experienced some form of violence in the past (T24 2016). Economic dependence coupled with a lack of wider family support and a scarcity of institutions that support victims contribute to women staying within violent settings. Those who attempt to leave may suffer dire consequences: the majority of feminicides happen at the hands of a current or former partner,3 often in situations of divorce or separation. Deniz Kandiyoti suggests that feminicides mainly occur when women exercise agency and take independent action (Kandiyoti 2016, 109). However, the statistics are still unreliable. For instance, the province of Bayburt was celebrated as having the highly unlikely figure of zero feminicides over a time span of seven years (Yeni Şafak 2017). Moreover, any understanding of violence against women as resulting from the unequal gender order is missing in governmental policy, although audacious legislation was passed to fight domestic violence (Gökçimen 2008, 34). While the law may represent an important tool for women’s organizations, the “reduction of sentence for good conduct” (iyi hal indirimi) has become a widespread and pernicious practice in the courts. Male killers see their sentences diminished for signs of “good conduct” reducible to wearing a tie, according to feminist NGOs (CNN Türk 2019).

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The political context also impacts women’s representation in Turkey. Several qualifiers have been associated with Turkey’s political regime under the AKP: hybrid regime (Akkoyunlu 2014), illiberal governance (Öktem and Akkoyunlu 2016) and competitive authoritarianism (Esen and Gumuscu 2016). Most of the assessments agree on the erosion of the rule of law and on the progressive colonization of the state by the dominant party (Dorronsoro and Gourisse 2014). The criminalization of pro-Kurdish politicians since 2016, the removal of mayors from office and the stripping of MPs’ parliamentary immunity have contributed to the reduction in female political representation. While the 2016 military coup attempt was a clash between two patriarchal religious groups (Arat 2017, 176), gender—and specifically certain forms of masculinity—have marked the most recent sociopolitical developments in Turkey (Korkman 2017; Gökarıksel 2017). These developments also had an impact on the research behind this book. Firstly, my stays in Turkey were punctuated by party congresses, elections and a referendum. In 2015 alone, two parliamentary ballots took place. While this added dynamism to my ethnographic observations, making it possible for me to join the electoral campaigns, it also overburdened my interviewees with tasks and allowed less space for our encounters. Secondly, the renewal of heavy military operations in the southeast region coupled with long-lasting curfews and destruction of the urban fabric obliged me to shorten my stay in Diyarbakır in the first half of 2016. As a consequence, I didn’t have the opportunity to meet with representatives of some political parties in this city. The warfare also shook the priorities of my respondents from pro-Kurdish political parties, who were dealing with forced migration and supply shortages. As tensions within the governing party rose (even prior to the 2016 military coup attempt), it became increasingly difficult to engage with new contacts. Even with recommendations from common acquaintances, the refusals for interviews multiplied. This mainly impacted my research on the AKP in Izmir, where I stayed until two weeks before the coup attempt. Turkey became an increasingly difficult place to conduct fieldwork (Boumaza and Campana 2007). However, I was still able to complete my work before the practical closure of the field. In particular, I witnessed the first years of the co-mayorship system, which brought about important—not merely symbolic—transformations in local governance. From 2016, for two years, Turkey was under a state of emergency and

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in 2020, at the time of the release of the manuscript, the main personalities of pro-Kurdish political parties on both national and local levels were in prison. In 2017, Turkey passed a tight referendum on the adoption of a unique form of an executive presidential regime, while the purges of the Gülen movement—the alleged perpetrator of the coup—continued within state institutions. In 2019, the Future Party (Gelecek Partisi) was created by the former AKP Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and attracted some defectors from the AKP. As a direct consequence of these developments, the cost of political involvement increased and the willingness of politicians from the governing coalition to provide biographical accounts for academic research diminished.

1.3  The State of the Art: A Scarcity of Studies About Women in Local Politics Scholarly attention has traditionally been directed toward national politics. Besides their legislative competences and prestige, parliaments exist in the majority of countries and thus allow for international comparisons. The panorama of local politics is much more diverse. Countries often have more than one layer of infra-national administration (provincial/ regional, municipal/district) and the institutional designs and electoral rules vary greatly. The flip side of this variety is a persistent lack of data, and thus gaps in our global understanding of women’s representation at this level. As a result, this book pursues the path that scholars from other contexts have pursued in the past: it mobilizes statistical data in so far as they are available but focuses on the qualitative analysis of women’s representation. In the upcoming segments, I discuss Turkey’s position with regard to other cases and the state of the art of literature on women and politics in Turkey, with a special focus on the emerging field of research on municipalities. Turkey in Global Trends According to the United Nations, “elections at the local level offer a greater number of opportunities for women simply because of the greater number of elected bodies and positions, and participation at the local level has served as a training ground for many politicians” (UN Women 2005, 5). Even though the available data are hard to compare

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due to the disparities in local-level administration, women’s representation ranges from less than 1% to almost 50% (UN Women 2019).4 The collection of locally anchored data is a recent phenomenon. In European comparisons, the oldest data is from 1999 (European Commission 2009, 23). According to the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR) women accounted for 28.9% of local councilors in 2019, whereas they accounted for 23% ten years earlier (Ceciarini 2019, 2). Turkey is consistently at the bottom of European rankings but displays some similar characteristics to the 41 states included in the CEMR’s report, such as a lower proportion of female mayors than women on the local council. The report also notes that notwithstanding the increase in overall women’s local representation, some countries experienced decline. Interestingly, the European Union member states’ ratio of women (28.9%) is almost identical to that of non-EU countries (28.8%) included in the report (Ceciarini 2019, 22–25). With regard to the “Turkish paradox,” existing research does indeed confirm that the majority of countries register higher women’s representation in local councils than in national parliaments (Sundström and Stockemer 2015), but the situation in Turkey is not unique. Due to Turkey’s geopolitical position, comparisons with the MENA region are at least as relevant as those with European countries. In 2019, women accounted for 17.7% of parliamentarians in the lower or single house in countries of the MENA region (IPU 2019). Women’s parliamentary representation in Turkey is exactly at this average level, while the average local statistics remained unavailable. What characterizes the region is disparity in institutional arrangements, a wide range of measures aimed at promoting women’s local representation (quotas, reserved seats) and dynamic changes in electoral design, especially in the aftermath of the so-called Arab uprisings in 2011. The most illustrative case is that of Tunisia, where women represent 47% of municipal councilors due to the 2016 electoral law instituting parity on candidate lists (UN Women 2018). Legally mandated quotas have an impact not only on the level of women’s representation but also on the discourse and ideology of political parties. Lihi Ben Shitrit has shown that Islamist parties have adapted to obligatory quotas by amending their discourse on women, while in non-quota countries, such as Israel, the Islamist parties continue to ignore the issue of women’s inclusion or even display adversarial attitudes toward it (2016). In Turkey, no legally mandated quota exists

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as the governing conservative Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) refuses to introduce one. While some parties could indeed ignore the issue of women’s representation, at least discursively, none of them chooses to do so, which points to the significance of considering each country’s specific gendered order. A country-specific approach to women’s representation is also needed in order to identify factors leading to reforms, as well as to fluctuations in women’s representation. The case of Egypt confirms this. Women accounted for 13% of legislators in the last legislature under Hosni Mubarak, but the reserved seats system was canceled after the government fell because it was associated with the repressive regime. As a result, in the first post-Mubarak election women were only able to obtain 2% of seats in the new parliament. Women’s active involvement in toppling the regime was not rewarded with more political representation—as Mariz Tadros put it, “the revolution didn’t change how elections are won” (2014a, 199). In the 2015 election, the increase to 14.9% of women was celebrated amid low voter turnout (El-Behary 2016). With General al-Sisi’s appointment of 14 female parliamentarians in addition to those already elected, Egypt has returned to the authoritarian logic of the state promotion of women’s representation. Parties in the Middle East are often weakly institutionalized, which increases the role of intraparty male-dominated networks in the distribution of electoral seats. Proximity to male leaders is thus one of the key resources women can mobilize to get into office (Goetz 2009, 13). Women’s limited room for maneuver within their parties may partly explain the absence of a feminist agenda. On the one hand, the municipal level of politics is supposed to bear special importance for women, since they are most likely to be the direct recipients of municipal services; on the other hand, it can also involve particular difficulties, such as stronger gender norms and stereotypes. Research in the Middle East and on the African continent has shown that women mainly suffer as a result of the informality characteristic of local politics, while institutionalized, centralized norms can be beneficial to them (Manuh 2014). Similarly, decentralizing reforms may have an adverse effect on female candidates as they may strengthen the hand of traditional, patriarchal local leaders (Tadros 2014b, 30). Overall, broader dynamics in each country, such as urbanization, women’s educational levels, or changes in family structure, also hold explanatory value for women’s representation (Moghadam 2010), as was shown above for the Turkish case.

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Women in Turkish Politics: The Prevalence of National Perspective In Turkey, studies about women in local politics remain scarce. Scholarly attention has mainly focused on the parliamentary level. Şirin Tekeli’s Kadınlar ve Siyasal—Toplumsal Hayat (Women and Political—Social Life) is among the pioneering studies about women in Turkish politics (1982). Tekeli analyzes the difficulties that women encounter in politics in close relation to the social order. She considers the hardest part for a woman to be getting a place on the electoral list; once a candidate, the probability of election is higher for a female than for a male candidate (Tekeli 1982, 276). Thirty years later, Serpil Çakır’s book Erkek Kulübünde Siyaset (Politics in the Man’s Club) confirmed the ongoing relevance of the topic (2014). Çakır bases her assessment on oral history interviews with female parliamentarians throughout Turkey’s history and joins Tekeli in many of her conclusions. In the time span between these two seminal contributions, research on women and politics in Turkey expanded and diversified. Yeşim Arat analyzed the difficulties of female parliamentarians during legislatures when the proportion of women didn’t move beyond 3% (1985, 1989, 1987). In her chapter Türkiye’de Kadının Siyasete Katılımı (Women’s Political Participation in Turkey), Ayşe Güneş-Ayata made a distinction between women who get into politics as proxies of their male relatives and those who display independent political behavior (1993). This classification has been influential and relayed by other researchers, such as Songül Sallan Gül (2007). In my analysis, I emphasize women’s political pathways and experiences regardless of where they fall within ­Güneş-Ayata’s classification. Such an approach allows me to avoid questioning women’s political motives, the veracity of which can hardly be determined by means of an interview. A significant body of research focuses on political parties. In the absence of any quota ordered by law, party policies toward women’s inclusion can make a real difference (Sayın 2007; Sancar 2008; Gökçimen 2008; Çağlayan 2012; Cansun 2012; Beşli 2015; Sallan Gül and Altındal 2015). With the firm establishment of the Women and Politics research agenda, the number of theses (including at Masters level) is gradually increasing. Among the most valuable contributions are those student works which dive into the so-far unexplored archives pertaining to women’s political representation throughout Turkey’s history (Duroğlu 2007), some of which are published by the Women’s Status

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Division of the Ministry of Family and Social Policies (for example Çadır 2011). The contribution of women’s associations also needs to be recognized: among them, KA-DER (Association for the Support of Female Candidates, Kadın Adayları Destekleme Derneği) and Kadın Koalisyonu (Women’s Coalition) have been particularly valuable sources. Their statistical data are referenced throughout this book. Finally, TÜSİAD, the Turkish Industry and Business Association, has sponsored several relevant reports by leading scholars in the field (Göğüş et al. 2000; Tan et al. 2008). Local Politics and Women: An Emerging Field of Study The academic interest in women and local politics coincides with the first awareness-raising civil society initiatives. This is not accidental: academics dealing with this research agenda are themselves involved in or maintain close contact with women’s NGOs, which facilitates the convergence of topics on the agenda. This trend also explains why some of the first works were mainly concerned with women’s substantial representation, i.e., women’s impact on policymaking and the impact of policy outcomes on women. Among the factors facilitating the emergence of research on women in local politics was the global increase in attention to local democracy, which was enhanced by international donor schemes as well as the progressive increase in competences of local governments in Turkey (Massicard and Bayraktar 2011; Çiçek 2011; Arıkboğa 2015). Three major works influenced the analysis of Turkish local politics in this book. The first of these was Oğuz Topak and Ayşen Uysal’s quantitative and qualitative research published under the title Particiler (The Party Men—in Turkish without gendered assignment) (2010). Besides sharing several common conceptual references with this book, Particiler is unique in the Turkish context because it covers fifteen provinces and provides a detailed sociological analysis of the profiles of local politicians based on multiple criteria (family background, age, education, profession, and political experience), all distinguished according to party affiliation. In two regards, I offer to go beyond the scope of Particiler: by putting women at the center of the analysis instead of only addressing them in a modest section, and by emphasizing the strategies that local politicians adopt while climbing the party ladder.

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The second reference for the study of Turkey’s local politics was the volume Negotiating Political Power in Turkey: Breaking Up the Party, coedited by Élise Massicard and Nicole Watts (Massicard and Watts 2013b). Considering political parties not as inert monoliths but as spaces of struggle among actors and factions helps to elucidate how the parties function. The contributions to the volume deconstruct political parties, many of them analyzing their local implantation. They question the traditional top-down approach to Turkey’s political parties, demonstrating the influence of intermediary political actors vis-à-vis not only ordinary party members but also—at times—the party headquarters in Ankara. The adoption of a gendered perspective by this book is not a simple add-on to this deconstructing approach; it generates new knowledge about the functioning of political parties by assessing gendered processes within them. Thirdly, Charlotte Joppien’s work on the local political field in the cities of Konya and Eskişehir, Municipal Politics in Turkey, complements the abovementioned perspectives by virtue of the centrality it accords to local political processes (2017). Joppien compares the processes of becoming mayor across the parties in both cities, showing how political parties negotiate with the local realities. This negotiation includes two processes in tension: parties’ homogenizing efforts directed toward the territory and their accommodation to the local political habitus. My gendered assessment of intraparty candidate selection mechanisms enters into dialogue with Joppien’s work and shows that political parties’ negotiations with local realities often result in the minimally acceptable level of women’s representation, which varies across the provinces. In the Gender and Local Politics literature, Ayten Alkan’s research is rightfully considered to be pioneering (2009). It has been refined by the quantitative analysis of Erbay Arıkboğa (Arıkboğa 2009; Arıkboğa, Ekin Erkan, and Güner 2010; Arikboğa 2019), who showed how women’s representation differs between municipalities based on their size. Since then, most research has either focused on female mayors or their impact on policy outcomes (Avşar Negiz 2008; Şirin Pınarcıoğlu 2011; Negiz and Üçer 2012; Sumbas and Koyuncu 2016). This book enlarges the scope to a wider sample of female local politicians, including municipal councilors, heads of women’s branches and female members of local party leadership. It is mostly concerned with the phase which precedes policymaking—women’s entry points into politics, with a core focus on women’s politicization patterns, their modalities of integrating the party

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and their role-learning while in office. In addition, much like Sezen Yaraş (2019), who studied the “making of the new patriarch” through women’s discourse in the AKP, I trace discursive patterns within the AKP as well as other three main political parties in Turkey. Dilek Cindoğlu’s report on women in local politics underlines the heretofore omitted elements in this area of research (Cindoğlu et al. 2011). First, it notes that research has mainly focused on policymaking while women’s political involvement has been neglected. Then, it argues that local politics needs to be differentiated from national politics since it obeys different dynamics. Finally, the report strives to explain the lack of women’s impact on municipal policies with reference to the difficulties women encounter in their political careers. My approach is largely compatible with these considerations. However, my research follows a different logic. Cindoğlu’s research assistants toured 24 cities in Turkey, spending a couple of days in each to cover the widest possible territory within a limited period of time. By contrast, I selected a limited sample of three cities and preferred long stays in each in order to connect local configurations with female political destinies—something that the abovementioned report didn’t intend to do. Young researchers and students have also contributed to the emerging field of Women in Local Politics by producing in-depth analysis of one party implanted in a given city or by comparing two parties locally (Şirin Pınarcıoğlu 2011; Kara 2012; Hızlı 2016; Aymé 2017). Women’s NGOs were among the actors to promote academic interest in the theme of Women in Local Politics, particularly in the 2004 KA-DER’s campaign to support local female candidates. Women’s associations also contributed by providing additional information about the topic (Ersanlı and Mazlum 2008; Bora 2009). Among think tank reports, TEPAV’s (The Economic and Policy Research Foundation of Turkey, Türkiye Ekonomi Politikaları Araştırma Vakfı) series of Equality Booklets stands out thanks to the local-level statistics that it made available to researchers. Hülya Demirdirek and Ülker Şener, whose work was later continued by Asmin Kavas Urul, not only produced gendered data for all Turkey’s 81 provinces in a multiplicity of domains (education, employment, health, political participation) but also developed an index classifying all provinces from the perspective of gender equality (Demirdirek and Şener 2014; Kavas Urul 2016; Kavas Urul2018). In this book, I analyze female political involvement and experiences while distinguishing between cities and political parties. In doing so, I

14  L. G. DRECHSELOVÁ

build upon the seminal works cited above with the aim of examining the relevance of their findings for local politics and situating these findings in concrete configurations. The premise of my argument is that the local political field is very rich and each city confronts women with specific challenges. Local politics is not a parliament in miniature, while the national political field is not a simple sum of local realities. In this sense, each locality is the product of a specific history and is structured by both national and local dynamics. This literature review included some of the pioneering work in the field of Women and Politics and a couple of the most relevant references for the present book. The interested reader may have consulted this section as an initiation into an ever-expanding field, but the panorama of works available on the topic is broad and keeps growing.

1.4   Qualitative Study Articulating Political Sociology and Gender Studies This book results from five years of personal and academic involvement which formed the basis of my Ph.D. thesis (written in French). During this time, I made five trips to Turkey. First, I explored the field during the March 2014 municipal election. I observed the election in Istanbul, Izmir, and Diyarbakır, where I also carried out several exploratory interviews. In 2015 and 2016 there followed two research stays (of five and six months, respectively), in the three cities that were the focus of the study—Izmir, Trabzon, and Diyarbakır. Moreover, I benefited from a month-long research stay at the French Institute of Anatolian Studies (IFEA) in Istanbul and one semester at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. In 2018, I finalized my thesis during a visiting stay at the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, to which I also returned in the final months of the same year to write the proposal for this book. Conceptual Framework This book deals with the issue of female political underrepresentation at the intermediary—local—level of politics, situated between the ordinary party members and national party representatives. I uncover the mechanisms of discrimination against women by offering an overview of the entry points into local politics of those who succeeded and an analysis of

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their profiles and political careers. The conceptual framework combines approaches anchored within political sociology with the feminist ­critique of neo-institutionalism. Turkey is not often studied from this perspective because it is a country without a legally binding gender quota (for “quota countries” see Tadros 2014b). This monograph is meant to bridge that gap. Renewal of Interest in Descriptive Political Representation Political representation is conceptualized in this book as one form of political participation.5 Unlike political participation, representation is more clearly delimited, since it entails holding a “representative” office, through election or nomination, in local government or within a political party. The representation of women has several layers—among them descriptive—numerical, and substantive—effective, pertaining to results (Pitkin 1972). The connection between these two layers is far from clear. According to Drude Dahlerup, effective representation stems from descriptive representation (1988). In this line of thought, women can have a tangible impact on policies in so far as they have reached a specific proportion in the collective: a critical mass. The critical mass serves as one of the arguments of the proponents of female quotas in politics (Freidenvall 2003; Dahlerup and Freidenvall 2005). The idea has been challenged, including by Dahlerup herself, for being taken too literally and for fueling expectations that a specific proportion of women would have an automatic impact on policy outcomes without taking into account women’s perspectives and actions (Grey 2006; Dahlerup 2006). Other research—proposing the notion of critical acts—has shown that in some contexts, women can be more impactful on policies in lower numbers (Güneş Ayata and Tutuncu 2008a), while more women in a legislature can diminish their chances of pursuing feminist agenda (Walsh 2012). In line with these nuanced approaches, for the purposes of this book, I dissociate descriptive representation from other forms of representation, such as symbolic and substantive. I argue for an expanded understanding of women’s descriptive representation as pertaining not only to numbers (the basis for establishing the scale of female underrepresentation) but also to women’s sociopolitical characteristics (Tolley 2011; Franceschet et al. 2012). Furthermore, since most existing research has either focused on countries with legally mandated quotas or on parliamentary representation, this contribution on Turkey—a non-quota

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country—with a focus on municipal politics provides a fresh perspective by exploring political parties within local configurations. Cross-Partisan Analysis Anchored in Localities The relative closure of the political field to women is observable over time and at all levels of politics. It is related to the functioning of political parties, popular images of a “successful politician,” and the gendered division of labor (Achin and Lévêque 2006, 2014). Concrete exclusionary practices materialize within political parties because these parties control the candidate selection processes. This makes political parties privileged objects of gendered analysis (Norris and Lovenduski 1995; Krook and Childs 2010; Bjarnegård and Kenny 2015, 2016). However, parties are secretive about the underpinnings of the recruitment process, which fuels their image as “black boxes” and of the selection procedure as their “secret garden” (Kenny and Verge 2016; Bjarnegård and Kenny 2015). In this book, I deconstruct Turkey’s political parties, conceiving of them as spaces of struggle between actors (Sawicki 1997, 8; Offerlé 2010, 4). The way in which political parties are organized enhances the career prospects of some actors at the expense of others (Lagroye et al. 2012, 228) and for assessment of these effects a differentiation based on gender is necessary. Indeed, the process of candidate recruitment matters greatly to women (Cornwall and Goetz 2005). Melody Crowder-Meyer has shown in the US context that parties tapping into more traditional— intraparty—networks recruit fewer women than parties which mobilize larger networks and draw on their contacts with associations, labor unions, and professional chambers (2013, 391). All politics is local, as Jo Freeman reminds us (1999). Research has demonstrated that locally anchored analysis is key for our understanding of the way political parties function (Massicard 2007). Party members and representatives spend most of their time in the local units which form the organizational basis of the party structure regardless of party centralization. Local politics also presents specific challenges to women’s careers. Whereas media attention may compel the parties to include more women in parliament to ensure their symbolic representation (Leston-Bandeira 2016), the relative lack of media attention reduces parties’ accountability in this regard at the local level. Parties are not immune to local history and sociopolitical context. They work with preexisting relations and power dynamics in the given

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“configuration” (Elias et al. 1994; Lefebvre and Sawicki 2006; Ducret 2011). However, a political party is composed of different sites of interaction—local organizations and the party headquarters—as well as of the interactions between them (Sawicki 1994, 84). There is no clear dichotomy between local and national levels of party politics (Massicard and Watts 2013a, 10). One needs the other: local politics exemplifies specific dynamics of political struggle and of women’s involvement in it, but it also points to the existence of the macro-level political field. On the other hand, the national political field is not simply the sum total of local configurations. The two are interconnected: the micro political field can indeed activate local resources but it cannot forgo the resources of the macro-level or escape the constraints imposed on it by macro-level politics. Sociology of Political Actors and Women’s Political Careers Women’s underrepresentation in politics prompts the question of who are the decision-makers and members of the political elite (Phillips 1995). Michael Woods considers the elite to be a fluid network of actors interconnected by strong social, professional, and political ties (1998). The politicization of the ties among members of the local elite may then lead to their seeking local political mandates. Women’s political underrepresentation can be better understood in the light of women’s relative position within the local elite. The salience of women’s elite belonging depends on a system of resources which they are able to mobilize. But resources—social, cultural, political, and other—are not gender neutral (Verge and Claveria 2016). Educational capital can play out differently for female and male candidates. Research has also shown that while men’s proximity to local party leaders is key for their election, women are mostly included based on their extra-political, associational and charitable involvement (Merritt 1977, 731). This book connects Anglo-American and francophone approaches to the social characteristics and positionality of actors within the political field. The notion of intersectionality influential within the ­Anglo-American academic tradition not only denotes systems of oppression (Collins 1998) but can also signify a combination of identity markers resulting in the intersection of privilege (Weldon 2008). The francophone literature also analyzes the joined impact of multiple identity markers, such as generational belonging, gender, or type of political

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career (Lefebvre and Sawicki 2006, 76). In practice, these approaches are largely compatible. Resources in politics are time-bound and context-specific—thus, a family’s local standing can be an enabling as well as a constraining element for women (Nazneen et al. 2014). Women’s careers develop at the intersection of individual, social, and historical dynamics (Bessin 2009, 13). They are not only a function of individual strategies but also of the structures within which they unfold (Giddens 1987). In line with Éric Agrikoliansky and Florence Haegel, I contend that a study of political careers needs to demonstrate how different sequences of involvement succeed in time and how they articulate with the biographical trajectory of each politician (Agrikoliansky and Haegel 2017, 169). I show how women’s careers develop as well as the bifurcation points which shape them. The political careers of the interviewees are part of their wider biographical pathways. The notion of pathway is borrowed from Pierre Bourdieu as the closest equivalent to the French trajectoire, which denotes a “series of successively occupied positions by the same agent […] within a space which itself is in the process of becoming and is subjected to continuous transformations” (1986, 71).6 Gendered Constraints Within Political Parties Political parties are gendered institutions (Kenny and Verge 2016, 356) and by their functioning they organize and hierarchize genders (Fillieule and Roux 2009; Petitfils 2013, 382). Parties are not only characterized by formal rules but also by concrete practices, by sets of beliefs and by informality. There are instances where formal rules are beneficial to women (Manuh 2014, 43) but informal procedures can weaken these rules considerably (Correa 2016, 7). Consequently, concrete assessments are entirely context-based. Political parties rarely disrupt the existing social order and are unlikely to be receptive to the social transformation of gender hierarchies (Achin and Lévêque 2006, 76; Bargel and Dunezat 2009, 248). Legitimate masculine and feminine behavior in politics is an integral part of the role-learning process of each politician. This includes subtle internalizing mechanisms as well as explicit directives. Conformity is valued while deviation from one’s role is punished. Still, since the roles are learnt they can also be changed. Changing political roles and the deployment of new strategies by actors can also impact political parties as a whole—for instance, by threatening the beliefs and representations which the party conveys (Fretel 2010; Lagroye et al. 2012). This allows

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us to think about institutional change and what impact women can have on it given their intraparty minority and subordinate status. This book identifies factors facilitating and inhibiting female-sponsored change within Turkey’s political parties. All the abovementioned elements of the conceptual framework—the gendered sociology of elites and of political parties, the feminist critique of neo-institutionalism, and the analysis of local configurations—provide a useful perspective on why local politics appears so inaccessible to women even though it is less prestigious than parliament, and supposedly has a significant impact on women’s lives. The analysis of the Turkish case advances existing theories pertaining to different facets of the local descriptive representation of women as well as institutional change from a gendered perspective. The Scope of the Study and Methodological Considerations To go beyond the most obvious indicator of women’s underrepresentation, 10.72% of female municipal councilors in Turkey, the book articulates two perspectives: locally specific and party-sensitive. Such a combination is new in the Turkish context. It allows me to go beyond stereotypical ideas about the profiles and political pathways of female local politicians, to anchor their careers in the given configuration and to insert them into the intraparty processes of which women are both objects and subjects. I do not reduce women to objects or men’s proxies as the thesis of women’s instrumentalization may do. I recognize women’s agency even in constraining contexts, and even when complying with discriminating norms. I compare four main political parties which have both parliamentary and municipal representation: • The Justice and Development Party (AKP, Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi), which has been in power since 2002. It is Islamic, conservative, and neoliberal. • The Republican People’s Party (CHP, Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi), the main opposition party, which claims a Kemalist secular heritage. • The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP, Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi), a nationalist, conservative, far-right party, which is closest to the so-called Turkish-Islamic synthesis pushed for by the perpetrators of the 1980 military coup. • The Party of Democratic Regions (DBP, Demokratik Bölgeler Partisi) and Democratic Peoples’ Party (HDP, Halkların Demokratik Partisi),

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which can both be considered pro-Kurdish left-wing political parties.7 In most of the assessment, if not specified otherwise, they are analyzed jointly due to their identical ideology and rules pertaining to women’s representation. The three cities included in this book are Izmir, Turkey’s third-largest city by size, located on the Aegean coast; Trabzon, one of the regional capitals of the Black Sea; and Diyarbakır, the center of the Kurdish political movement, situated in the southeast region. The choice of these cities fulfills three criteria. First, it reflects diversity—in geographical, cultural, and economic terms,8 but also in the level of women’s political representation (2014 is the ballot of reference), since one city is below the national average of 10.72% female councilors, another above it and the last significantly above it. Specifically, in Trabzon two women were elected to the metropolitan municipality alongside 66 men (Trabzon Büyükşehir 2014); in Izmir women accounted for 16.8% of municipal councilors and specifically for 19.8% of councilors elected on the benches of the winning CHP (Izmir Büyükşehir 2014); and finally, in Diyarbakır 27.8% of all councilors were women, and women accounted for 32.5% of the DBP’s municipal councilors (Diyarbakır Büyükşehir 2014).9 Second, each of the selected cities is a stronghold of a specific political party or orientation: Izmir is the kale (fortress) of the CHP, Diyarbakır of the pro-Kurdish political parties (since 2019 the HDP) and Trabzon of the conservative-nationalist current dominated by the AKP (and since 2019 by the coalition between the AKP and the MHP). Third, amid all the abovementioned differences administrative structure is the unifying criterion. Since 2014, all three cities have been classified as metropolitan municipalities (büyükşehir belediyeleri), which means that they feature a two-level administration model, with a superior metropolitan municipality (and mayor) and inferior district municipalities (and mayors). Metropolitan municipalities cover 51% of Turkey’s territory (the rest is governed by “ordinary municipalities” and the rural areas by Special Administration of the Province) and they are home to 77% of Turkey’s population (Arıkboğa 2015). The choice of three metropolitan municipalities not only allows for enhanced comparisons between the cities based on a common structure but is also timely due to the possible future generalization of this administrative regime to the whole territory. Notwithstanding the abovementioned selection criteria, Turkey’s local realities display such diversity and richness that this might have been a

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very different book were it to analyze three different cities. We could imagine replacing Izmir with Aydın, the neighboring province headed by a woman and traditionally of CHP leaning; replacing Trabzon with Konya, the symbol of Islamic politics in Turkey; and replacing Diyarbakır with Van, less studied yet since 2009 under the leadership of p ­ ro-Kurdish political parties and characterized by the influential presence of the Kurdish women’s movement. While this variety represents a challenge for the localized analysis of Turkey’s politics, it underlines its importance. Inserting women’s careers and difficulties into local configurations provides findings which are locally relevant and yield generalizable patterns even though the selection of the studied cities does not pretend to be representative (Sawicki 1994, 85). This qualitative study mainly builds upon 200 semi-structured in-depth interviews, mostly with female municipal councilors, women in charge of local women’s branches and members of local party directorates. I also met with female mayors, deputies from the selected provinces, heads of municipal departments, female muhtars (elected non-partisan neighborhood representatives) and former elected female representatives. In Izmir and Diyarbakır I had initial contacts thanks to my student years in Istanbul, but in Trabzon I called the municipality, explained my project and received a phone number for one of the female councilors, who then became my first contact in the city. The snowballing method which then led me to other interviewees also contributed to my interviewing women within one of the party factions (Aït-Aoudia et al. 2010, 19). To avoid being enclosed within one single faction, I also made spontaneous requests for interviews, addressing myself to female politicians after a municipal council meeting. I benefited greatly from the cross-country networks among women. I was able to obtain key contacts for Izmir during an interview in Trabzon and I was able to interview three councilors from Diyarbakır on their trip to Ankara thanks to an informal interview in the capital. Even though I also met with several male party recruiters to talk about candidate selection procedures, the following analysis is based almost entirely on women’s accounts. I didn’t use contacts with male heads of districts to solicit interviews with women because I wanted to avoid women being obliged to participate out of respect for their superiors (Aït-Aoudia et al. 2010, 20). Most of the women I solicited agreed to share their life story and political experience. They devoted time to the interview and some of them met me several times and recommended other respondents.

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The contrast between women’s willingness to transmit their accounts and men’s more secretive attitude was already noted by Mine Alparslan (2014), who conducted fieldwork within the headquarters of Turkey’s political parties, interviewing both men and women. This situation is in line with Bourdieu’s assessment that groups involving some kind of collusion require discreet behavior and secrecy from their members (1981, 8). Thus, women’s exclusion from the informal party networks and the backstage of politics would make them less prone to secrecy. Interviews are reflexive and selective accounts that encourage interviewees to present their lives and experiences as consistently as possible (Gerritsen 1999, 255). Official activities are the most likely to be transmitted while micro-practices are silenced—albeit unconsciously. There is also a difference between what the interviewees do and what they say they do (Lahire 2005, 143). That is why I supplemented the interviews with ethnographic observation and with participation in municipal meetings, the public activities of women’s branches and electoral campaigns. I also studied official party documentation and consulted the local press. The methodological articulation of interviews and primary source research with the ethnographic approach is far from systematic in the realm of political science (Boumaza and Campana 2007, 22), but proves to be beneficial in confronting official discourse and self-presentation with concrete practices. The lack of statistical data in the field of Turkey’s local politics and the scarcity of previous studies on the topic led me to multiply f­ace-to-face encounters with politically active women (Beaud 1996). However, I strived to provide statistics where possible. Official requests for information rarely bore fruit. From the moment an employee of the governorate’s Gender Equality Unit in Trabzon told me to petition the governor’s office to request the activity report in the province, I knew that my request would not succeed. Even though this document is supposedly public, it was never communicated to me regardless of follow-up efforts. On the other hand, informal attempts were more successful. In 2015, I was walking in Ankara after one of the interviews when I saw the sign “Ministry of Interior.” I walked in spontaneously, without giving it much thought, and explained my research and the problem with the lack of statistics at the reception desk. After a couple of calls, I was redirected to “Mister Municipal Data” who provided me with a complete, official, and up-to-date file about the gendered composition of municipal councils after the 2014 election. This episode characterizes in many respects

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my access to data throughout my research. Still, even the main quantitative indicator based on the ministry’s statistics—10.72% female municipal councilors—is not unanimously invoked by researchers. Recently, Erbay Arıkboğa published his quantitative analysis of the 2014 election based on the size of municipalities and he operates with a slightly different proportion—10.6% female municipal councilors (2019, 21). In addition, I was able to offer the reader of this book a historical overview of female mayors thanks to the individual efforts of a former mayor of Seyrek in Izmir, Nurgül Uçar. She compiled the list herself and shared it with me as well as women’s NGOs, such as the abovementioned Kadın Koalisyonu. All the statistics related to metropolitan and district councils in Izmir, Trabzon, and Diyarbakır were compiled by me based on information accessible on municipal websites. As there is no standardized mode of presentation, some sources omitted the party affiliation of elected councilors and others didn’t provide pictures, making it hard to account for unisex names even after consulting the local press and the internet for concrete names. In addition, after the 2016 removal of pro-Kurdish mayors, most websites of Diyarbakır municipalities were taken down or the information about the council was removed even though the municipal councilors didn’t officially lose their mandate. The picture of the designated trustee in charge of the Diyarbakır municipality appeared for two years under the title “The Mayors” in the English version of the official website, a remnant of the co-mayorship system put in place by the DBP. I engaged in online archeology of a sort to restore as much of the data as possible10 but I was not entirely successful. In the aftermath of the 2019 municipal election, most of the websites were not up-to-date until the removal of more elected mayors was followed by the appointment of trustees by the Interior Ministry. The most recent statistical data is thus lacking. The Positionality of the Researcher Gender studies literature systematically offers the most thorough analysis of a researcher’s positionality, taking into account both the data collection phase and the dissemination phase of the research. Where authors in other fields limit themselves to enumerating identity markers, gender studies research has recognized the intersectional character of these markers. The salience of elements constitutive of one’s positionality

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changes according to the field (Aït-Aoudia et al. 2010, 17). Some of the markers can be altered, such as clothing style; others are hardly malleable, such as gender or age. Being originally from the Czech Republic but writing my Ph.D. in an international cotutelle between Charles University in Prague and the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris, I was able to negotiate my prominent identity markers. My affiliation with a Western institution added prestige to my research and may have contributed to opening the field. My Czech nationality was mostly a neutral sign until I arrived in Trabzon. Given the particular experience of the city with post-soviet prostitution, being a woman associated with Eastern Europe complicated my research. There I would mainly underline my affiliation with a French institution. Being a single woman and a foreigner and traveling alone were all characteristics that created an image of vulnerability, often ascribed to me from outside. Even though the sense of vulnerability was also an acute personal feeling at times, the ascribed vulnerability led my interlocutors to offer increased hospitality and protection. The hospitality for which Turkey is renowned greatly facilitated all of my stays. I felt I truly belonged to several families who selflessly hosted me. My knowledge of Turkish was an enabling factor for the research since most of my interviewees could not have provided their account in any other language with comparable ease. Speaking Turkish played differently into my positionality in Trabzon, Izmir, and Diyarbakır. In the latter, it meant that I didn’t speak the mother tongue of the majority of my interviewees, which was Kurdish. All of my interviews (except one) took place in Turkish, even when I was interacting with fluent Kurdish speakers. However, returning to the field after acquiring some basis in Kurdish, my position remained ambiguous since I spoke a language in which many of my interviewees were not fluent due to the ban on public education in Kurdish. My use of the kurmanci dialect of Kurdish was a reminder of the consequences of assimilationist public policies. I am convinced that my “outsider” position—being a foreigner—was what allowed me to carry out this research among the four main political forces in Turkey. In contrast to many Turkish researchers, I was not easily classifiable (based on family background, place of origin or clothing style) even though my interviewees would try to categorize me by asking questions. In addition, as a foreigner I wasn’t associated with any “side” in particular. While I constantly fought my shortage of popular

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references which Turkish colleagues seemed to have “acquired by birth,” I also made use of my right to have even the clearest statements explicated with less chance of offending my interviewees. This benefited our exchanges tremendously. I consider that each of my demands for linguistic simplification led to further sincerity with regard to the actual content. My (relatively) young age and the fact of being a student were both great enablers in soliciting interviews. I attribute the high positive response rate to my interviewees’ willingness to help a student with her homework. Being a woman inquiring about the situation of women within the mainly masculine environment of the political parties added a layer of legitimacy to my fieldwork, whose meaning was seldom questioned. Finally, the personal dimension of my research cannot go unnoticed. None of my interviews was unidirectional: I was examined and put in the spotlight. Many encounters took place outside of my comfort zone and my negotiation of my position as a researcher was sometimes difficult (see the ethics section). Emotional involvement during interviews and the establishment of friendships are only two elements that demonstrate how fieldwork leaves lasting imprints on the researcher herself. Challenges and Ethics of the Research Most of the challenges related to the fieldwork that underlies this book were dealt with through long stays in each of the cities. Meeting my interviewees on multiple and informal occasions helped to build mutual trust and to add elements missing from the “formal” interviews. Still, the interviewees would sometimes choose to remain silent on sensitive issues, perhaps because they did not have any incentive to authentically describe processes they were a part of. As a result, the information that was collected was at times scattered or contradictory. The high number of interviews as well as ethnographic observation helped me to at least partially make sense of this data. However, there are three challenges long stays in the field couldn’t fully remedy: factional rivalries restricting my movement within the field, the permanent tension between participatory and non-participatory observation, and the issue of data protection. Given the levels of animosity and power struggle between factions within Turkish political parties (Massicard 2010), it was easier for me to contact people from different political parties in the same city than to talk to people from

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different factions within the same party. I faced open attempts to control my access to other interviewees. One of the municipal councilors explicitly asked me not to contact other people without her knowledge. I decided neither to obey nor to ignore her plea, but to openly state why such behavior would defy the standards of academic research and as such couldn’t be observed. Our relationship—unsurprisingly—deteriorated after that exchange. The following note from my research journal relates an episode when I became acutely aware that my research enters into a set of preexistent relationships which impact my work but remain outside of my control: Upon my return to the field in 2016, I went back to the municipal council meeting in one of Izmir’s districts. I was greeted by several acquaintances from the past year, including one young male CHP member. In the course of our conversation, I told him that this year I was going to meet with members of other political parties as well. I had hardly finished my sentence when he started waving across the room to a fifty-year-old woman inviting her to join us. I briefly presented myself and my research, she agreed to talk to me and we exchanged numbers. The next day, I got a message from her, short and clear: “I cancel our meeting”. I called to ask what happened. She explained to me that she didn’t like the way my friend from the CHP approached her and that the overall aim of the work I do for the party was not clear to her. I apologized on behalf of the young man. I explained the importance for my research not to be associated with any political party which was precisely why I wanted to learn about her experience. The politician agreed to meet me eventually and during our conversation, it became clear that she had recently left her political party and wanted to avoid unnecessary attention. (Research Journal, May 2016, Izmir)

Presence in the field meant being seen and associated with the people I was with at a particular moment in time. On several occasions, this closed numerous doors and constituted an inherent limitation on the conducted fieldwork. Secondly, I experienced how porous the frontier between participant and non-participant observation can be and how constant and imperfect the researcher’s negotiation can therefore become. I didn’t opt for total immersion; neither was I making a strategic choice to “adhere” for the sake of the research. This contributed to the ambiguity in my position. One example to illustrate these ambiguities was my observation of an

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electoral campaign of the pro-Kurdish party in the southeast region prior to the 2015 parliamentary election: During my observation of DBP’s electoral campaign, I was sitting in one of the cars of the delegation with a sound system attached to the roof exclaiming party slogans and songs all the way. The cars were full and every one was waving energetically multiple flags out of the window wide open in the heat of the month of May. I was also assigned a flag which I timidly stuck out of the window but didn’t wave—which was my—indeed imperfect—way of negotiating my level of “participation”. (Research Journal, May 2015)

While taking distance risked negatively impacting the confidence built between me and my interviewees, the moments of the electoral campaign showed that when physically present, some level of participation is unavoidable. Finally, I dealt with the issue of safe storage of the collected data, mostly in form of audio files and written transcripts. With the help of specialized software, I encoded these and stored them on an external hard drive which did not travel with me during most of my fieldwork. While quoting from the interviews, I chose a pseudonym for each of my interviewees. In practical terms, only about 25% of interviews are directly quoted, while all of the interviews contributed to the research findings featured in this book. I strived not to communicate too much specific information which would allow for straightforward identification of any of my interviewees. However, this enterprise is imperfect given the relatively limited size of my sample. This is true for some contexts in particular, such as in Trabzon, where most of the districts only have one elected female councilor, or for some types of mandates seldom held by women, such as MP or mayor. In addition, the systematic pseudonymization made it impossible for me to use press articles about my interviewees more extensively in the book, since these always feature real names. I note in passing that I didn’t escape stereotyping of my interviewees when I too often attributed Turkish and Kurdish pseudonyms based on their ethnic identity.

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1.5  The Structure of the Book This book makes women in Turkey’s local politics empirically visible (in line with Peterson 2005, 501). The pathways and experiences of those who integrated party structures and electoral mandates at the municipal level also shed some light on those who remain excluded. Following these introductory remarks, Chapter 2 contextualizes women’s political underrepresentation from three perspectives—historical, party-specific, and locally based. In doing so, it demonstrates the durability of the closure of the political field to women. It seeks to investigate the validity of the “Turkish paradox” of women’s reduced representation at the local level as opposed to the level of the national parliament. In line with existing research on political parties and its feminist critique, Chapter 3 gauges the impact of candidate recruitment processes on women’s political underrepresentation. It answers a series of questions: What is the balance sheet of intraparty measures aimed at promoting women’s representation? What role do women’s branches play in supporting female candidates? Thanks to these considerations, the differences between Turkey’s political parties become palpable, coupled with the striking feminization of the pro-Kurdish political parties. Gendered assessment of candidate selection mechanisms also reveals important features of intraparty functioning in general, as well as the negotiations between the national headquarters and local party units in particular. It is thus possible to explain why most of the intraparty directives pertaining to women’s representation are not respected even though Turkish political parties are known for being authoritarian structures (Ayan Musil 2011). Does women’s involvement in local politics in Turkey revolutionize the social structure of the municipal councils? Chapter 4 addresses this question through a sociological assessment of who female elected politicians and party representatives are. It reconciles Anglo-American approaches to intersectionality with francophone studies on the multipositionality and resources of the actors. The chapter explores women’s profiles, their family backgrounds, their processes of politicization, and their modalities of entry into their political parties. It questions the salience of “alternative capitals,” such as associational or charitable involvement. Finally, it also discusses the possibility—for some women—of performing “a somersault of stigma” (Achin and Paoletti 2002) and transforming gender from a discriminating element into an asset.

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In local politics, women’s behavior is constantly policed due to their day-to-day proximity to the electorate. Chapter 5 assesses the difficulties women face in their local political careers. Learning to become a “legitimate female councilor” doesn’t start on the day of the election but in childhood, when women are confronted with, and to some degree internalize, gendered prescriptions of legitimate feminine behavior. The social order, the hostile intraparty environment, and the particularities of each of the three local configurations all constitute constraints which result in the current levels of women’s underrepresentation. However, the findings with respect to women’s difficulties do not imply that female local politicians are simple objects of patriarchal oppression. Chapter 6 identifies instances of women crafting their political careers. Are their strategies subversive? How can we explain the variation of women’s strategies based on their party belonging? The chapter also shows that relations of power are not static and immutable (Sirman 1991). It illustrates adaptations by the patriarchal order following numerous failed attempts by women to instigate institutional reforms. The central idea of the book pertaining to Cycles of Exclusion connects all the chapters—first through the contextual assessment of the durability of women’s exclusion from Turkey’s local politics, then through the discriminatory practices during the candidate selection processes and finally through the constraints on women’s political action. Local Power and Female Political Pathways in Turkey provides an empirical study of women’s political underrepresentation. Based on local dynamics and differentiation among political parties, it elucidates gendered modalities of the functioning of the local political field in contemporary Turkey. It offers an in-depth case study as well as comparative material for international assessments.

Notes

1. In Turkish: Her başarılı erkeğin arkasında bir kadın vardır. The saying is not only Turkish; it also exists in other languages and cultural settings. 2.  In the two remaining indicators, Turkey ranks much higher than its overall score: Educational Attainment—113/153, Health and Survival—64/153. 3. Between 2010 and 2017, according to the statistics, 1915 women were assassinated, of whom 60% were killed by their partner (CNN Türk 2017b).

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4.  This data comes from 103 countries and areas where relevant data is available. 5. It should be noted that the link between political representation and participation has been conceptualized differently by different authors. Some see the former as an extension of the later (Davidson-Schmich 2016); others affirm that there is no real representation without participation (Panday 2008). 6. The translation is my own. From the French original: the trajectory is a “série de positions successivement occupées par un même agent […] dans un espace lui-même en devenir et soumis à d’incessantes transformations” (Bourdieu 1986, 71). 7. In Turkey, political parties openly claiming ethnic belonging are forbidden. I use the term “pro-Kurdish” to qualify the DBP and the HDP to de-ethnicize these parties while still recognizing that the equality of Kurds within Turkey is among their main demands. Researchers have made the claim that these parties could be labeled as the New Left rather than using an ethnic marker (Güneş 2017). However, I also use the term pro-Kurdish to stress continuity with the Kurdish parties created from the beginning of 1990s and to underline current parties’ proximity to the Kurdish movement as a whole. It should be noted that other designations exist, such as “Kurdish”, “of Kurdish orientation” (Güney 2002) or “kurdiste” (in French literature; Bozarslan 2010; Grojean 2014; ­Scalbert-Yücel 2017). Other authors also use the term “pro-Kurdish” as does this book (Güneş 2012; Dorronsoro and Watts 2013). 8. The cities are described in further detail in the upcoming chapters. 9. All the statistics were compiled by me based on the information provided on the official website of the metropolitan municipalities. In Diyarbakır, the website was accessed via the time machine instrument archive.org since it was remodeled after the co-mayors were dismissed in 2016 and the list of councilors no longer figured on the website. 10. Archive.org was a key source of websites that are no longer available.

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36  L. G. DRECHSELOVÁ Güneş Ayata, Ayşe. 1993. “Türkiye’de Kadının Siyasete Katılımı.” In 1980’ler Türkiye’sinde Kadın Bakış Açısından Kadınlar, edited by Şirin Tekeli, 2nd ed., 293–312. Istanbul: İletişim. ———. 1998. “Laiklik, Güç ve Katılım Üçgeninde Türkiye’de Kadın ve Siyaset.” In 75 Yılda Kadınlar ve Erkekler, edited by Aksu Bora, 237–48. Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yayınları. Güneş Ayata, Ayşe, and Fatma Tutuncu. 2008a. “Critical Acts without a Critical Mass: The Substantive Representation of Women in the Turkish Parliament.” Parliamentary Affairs 61 (3): 461–75. https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsn012. ———. 2008b. “Party Politics of the AKP (2002–2007) and the Predicaments of Women at the Intersection of the Westernist, Islamist and Feminist Discourses in Turkey.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 35 (3): 363– 84. https://doi.org/10.1080/13530190802525130. Güneş, Cengiz. 2012. The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey, From Protest to Resistance. London  and New York: Routledge. ———. 2017. “Turkey’s New Left.” New Left Review (107) (October). https:// newleftreview.org/II/107/cengiz-gunes-turkey-s-new-left. Güney, Aylin. 2002. “The People’s Democracy Party.” In Political Parties in Turkey, edited by Metin Heper and Barry Rubin, 102–121. London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd. Hızlı, Esen. 2016. “Siyasal Partilerin Sosyal Ağları: Partiler, Kadın Örgütleri ve Sosyal Sermaye.” Unpublished Master thesis, Izmir, Turkey, Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi. Ilkkaracan, Pınar. 2016. “How Adultery Almost Derailed Turkey’s Aspirations to Join the European Union.” In Deconstructing Sexuality in the Middle East: Challenges and Discourses, edited by Pınar Ilkkaracan, 2nd ed., 41. London: Routledge. Insel, Ahmet. 2003. “The AKP and Normalizing Democracy in Turkey.” South Atlantic Quarterly 102 (2–3): 293–308. https://doi.org/10.1215/ 00382876-102-2-3-293. IPU. 2019. “Women in Parliaments: World and Regional Averages.” ­Inter-Parliamentary Union, January 10. http://archive.ipu.org/wmn-e/world. htm. Izmir Büyükşehir. 2014. “İzmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi Meclis Üyeleri.” Izmir. Bel.Tr. 2014. https://www.izmir.bel.tr/MeclisUyeleri/131/tr. Joppien, Charlotte. 2017. Municipal Politics in Turkey: Local Government and Party Organisation. Routledge. Kadın Koalisyonu. 2014. “2014 Yerel Yönetim Seçim Sonuçları.” Kadın Koalisyonu, June 22. http://kadinkoalisyonu.org/2014-yerel-yonetim-secim-sonuclari/. Kandiyoti, Deniz. 2016. “Locating the Politics of Gender: Patriarchy, Neo-Liberal Governance and Violence in Turkey.” Research and Policy on ­ Turkey 1 (2): 103–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/23760818.2016.1201242.

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Kara, Esra. 2012. “Kadınların Yerel Siyasetteki Konumu ve Karar Alma Sürecindeki Rolleri.” Unpublished Master thesis, Istanbul, Marmara University. Kavas Urul, Asmin. 2016. 81 İl İçin Toplumsal Cinsiyet Eşitliği Karnesi—2016. Ankara: TEPAV. ———. 2018. “Comparative Gender Equality Scorecard for 81 Provinces in Turkey.” TEPAV. March 23. http://www.tepav.org.tr/tr/haberler/s/4324. Kenny, Meryl, and Tània Verge. 2016. “Opening Up the Black Box: Gender and Candidate Selection in a New Era.” Government and Opposition 51 (03): 351–69. Kılıçdağı, Ohannes. 2012. “Kürtaj ama Roboski Unutulmaz.” Agos, August 6. http://www.agos.com.tr/tr/yazi/8748/kurtaj-ama-roboski-unutulmaz. Korkman, Zeynep Kurtuluş. 2017. “Castration, Sexual Violence, and Feminist Politics in Post–Coup Attempt Turkey.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 13 (1): 181–85. https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-3728822. Krook, Mona Lena, and Sarah Childs, eds. 2010. Women, Gender, and Politics: A Reader. New York: Oxford University Press. Lagroye, Jacques, Bastien François, and Frédéric Sawicki. 2012. Sociologie Politique. Amphi. Dalloz. Lahire, Bernard. 2005. L’Esprit sociologique. Paris: La Découverte. Lefebvre, Rémi, and Frédéric Sawicki. 2006. La société des socialistes: Le PS aujourd’hui. Bellecombe-en-Bauges: Editions du Croquant. Leston-Bandeira, Cristina. 2016. “Why Symbolic Representation Frames Parliamentary Public Engagement.” British Journal of Politics & International Relations 18 (2): 498–516. https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148115615029. Manuh, Takyiwaa. 2014. “Politics as Service: Pathways of District Assembly Women in Ghana.” In Women in Politics: Gender, Power and Development, edited by Mariz Tadros, 40–73. London: Zed Books. Massicard, Élise. 2007. “L’étude des partis politiques en Turquie: bilan des travaux et pistes de recherche. Pour une sociologie localisée des partis politiques en Turquie.” Halshs.Archives-Ouvertes.Fr, Lille, no. halshs-00164474 (June): 1–38. ———. 2010. “Le factionnalisme comme mode d’ancrage social. Le Parti républicain du peuple à Adana (Turquie).” Politix 92 (4): 53. https://doi. org/10.3917/pox.092.0053. Massicard, Élise, and Ulaş Bayraktar. 2011. La décentralisation en Turquie. Focales 7. Agence française de développement. Massicard, Élise, and Nicole Watts. 2013a. “Introduction: Reconsidering Parties, Power, and Social Forces.” In Negotiating Political Power in Turkey, 1–16. Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Politics. Oxon: Routledge. ———. 2013b. Negotiating Political Power in Turkey: Breaking up the Party. Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Politics. Routledge. Merritt, Sharyne. 1977. “Winners and Losers: Sex Differences in Municipal Elections.” American Journal of Political Science 21 (4): 731–43.

38  L. G. DRECHSELOVÁ Moghadam, Valentine M. 2010. “Urbanization and Women’s Citizenship in the Middle East.” The Brown Journal of World Affairs 17 (1): 19–34. Nazneen, Sohela, Iqbal Ehsan, and Bayazid Hasan. 2014. “Exceptional Women: Reserved Councillors in Municipal Corporations in Bangladesh.” In Women in Politics: Gender, Power and Development, edited by Mariz Tadros, 70–100. London: Zed Books. Negiz, Nilüfer, and Nilay Üçer. 2012. “Yerel Siyasette Seçil(e)meyen Kadın: 2004–2009 Mart Seçimleri Düzleminde Analitik Bir Inceleme.” Çağdas Yerel Yönetimler 21 (2): 1–23. Negrón-Gonzales, Melinda. 2016. “The Feminist Movement during the AKP Era in Turkey: Challenges and Opportunities.” Middle Eastern Studies 52 (2): 198–214. https://doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2015.1125339. Norris, Pippa, and Joni Lovenduski. 1995. Political Recruitment: Gender, Race and Class in the British Parliament. New York: Cambridge University Press. Offerlé, Michel. 2010. Les partis politiques. 7th ed. Que Sais-Je? Paris: PUF. Öktem, Kerem, and Karabekir Akkoyunlu. 2016. “Exit from Democracy: Illiberal Governance in Turkey and Beyond.” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 16 (4): 469–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/14683857.2016.1253231. Panday, Pranab Kumar. 2008. “Representation without Participation: Quotas for Women in Bangladesh.” International Political Science Review/Revue Internationale de Science Politique 29 (4): 489–512. Parmaksız, Pınar Melis Yelsalı. 2016. “Paternalism, Modernization, and the Gender Regime in Turkey.” Aspasia 10 (1). https://doi.org/10.3167/ asp.2016.100104. Peterson, V. Spike. 2005. “How (the Meaning of) Gender Matters in Political Economy.” New Political Economy 10 (4): 499–521. Petitfils, Anne-Sophie. 2013. “Partis politiques.” In Dictionnaire. Genre et science politique, edited by Catherine Achin and Laure Bereni, 382–94. Références. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po (P.F.N.S.P.). Phillips, Anne. 1995. The Politics of Presence, The Political Representation of Gender, Ethnicity, and Race. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. 1972. The Concept of Representation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sallan Gül, Songül. 2007. “22 Temmuz Seçiminin Galibi Kim? Bıyıklı Kadınlar Mı Yoksa Eril Siyaset Mi?” Toplum ve Demokrasi 1 (1): 1–26. Sallan Gül, Songül, and Yonca Altındal. 2015. “Türkiye Siyasetinin Eril Anatomisi: 2015 Seçimlerini Kota Uygulamaları Üzerinden Yeniden Düşünmek.” Toplum ve Demokrasi 20 (19–20): 51–71. Sancar, Serpil. 2008. “Türkiye’de Kadınların Siyasal Kararlara Eşit Katılımı.” Toplum ve Demokrasi 2 (4): 173–84. Sawicki, Frédéric. 1994. “Configuration sociale et genèse d’un milieu partisan. Le cas du parti socialiste en Ille-et-Vilaine.” Sociétés Contemporaines 20 (1): 83–110. https://doi.org/10.3406/socco.1994.1366.

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———. 1997. Les réseaux du Parti socialiste. Socio-Histoires. Belin. Sayın, Aysun. 2007. Kota El Kitabı: “Geçici Özel Önlem Politikası: Kota.” Ankara: KA-DER Yayınları. Scalbert-Yücel, Clémence. 2017. “Guerre, état d’urgence, droits culturels et linguistiques kurdes bafoués. Retour sur le pluralisme selon l’AKP.” Mouvements (90) (June): 101–8. Selva Çam, Lütfiye. 2018. “‘Kadın Kollarımız 4,5 Milyon Üyesiyle Dünyanın En Büyük Kadın Örgütü’.” AKPARTİ, June 1. http://www.akparti.org. tr/kadinkollari/haberler/kadin-kollarimiz-45-milyon-uyesiyle-dunyanin-en-buyuk-kadin-orgutu/96126. Şirin Pınarcıoğlu, Nihal. 2011. “Yerel Siyaset ve Kadın Katılımı: İstanbul ve Kocaeli’nde Niteliksel Bir Araştırma.” PhD thesis, Istanbul, Marmara University. Sirman, Nükhet. 1991. “Friend or Foe? Forging Alliances with Other Women in a Village of Western Turkey.” In Women in Modern Turkish Society, a Reader, edited by Şirin Tekeli, 199–218. London: Zed Books. Sumbas, Ahu, and Berrin Koyuncu. 2016. “Discussing Women’s Representation in Local Politics in Turkey: The Case of Female Mayorship.” Women’s Studies International Forum (58): 41–50. Sundström, Aksel, and Daniel Stockemer. 2015. “What Determines Women’s Political Representation at the Local Level? A Fine-Grained Analysis of the European Regions.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 56 (3–4): 254–74. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020715215595691. T24. 2016. “Türkiye’de Kadın Olmak: Yüzde 44.7 Şiddet Görüyor; Yüzde 68.7 Eşi Tarafından Öldürülmekten Korkuyor.” T24, August 3. http:// t24.com.tr/haber/turkiyede-kadin-olmak-yuzde-447-siddet-gor uyor-yuzde-687-esi-tarafindan-oldurulmekten-korkuyor,331172. ———. 2020. “Erdoğan’dan geç evliliğe tepki: Genç yaşta evlenmiyorlar, çoğu 30’u aşkın evleniyor ya da evde kalıyor; böyle bir şey olabilir mi ya!” T24, September 1. https://t24.com.tr/haber/erdogan-konusuyor,855349. Tadros, Mariz. 2014a. “Ejecting Women from Formal Politics in the ʻOld-Newʼ Egypt (2011–2012).” In Women in Politics: Gender, Power and Development, edited by Mariz Tadros. London: Zed Books. ———. ed. 2014b. Women in Politics: Gender, Power and Development. Feminisms and Development. London: Zed Books. Tahaoğlu, Çiçek. 2016. “Boşanma Komisyonu Raporunda Neler Var?” Bianet, May 17. https://www.bianet.org/bianet/toplumsal-cinsiyet/ 174880-bosanma-komisyonu-raporunda-neler-var. Tan, Mine, Yıldız Ecevit, Serpil Sancar Üşür, and Selma Acuner. 2008. “Türkiye’de Toplumsal Cinsiyet Eşitsizliği: Sorunlar, Öncelikler ve Çözüm Önerileri.” Report TÜSİAD-T/2008-07/468. Istanbul: Tüsiad et Kagider. http://akgul.bilkent.edu.tr/Tusiad/KADINRAPOR.pdf. TBMM. 2019. “Milletvekilleri: Cinsiyete Göre Dağılımı.” Official website of the National Assembly. TBMM. https://www.tbmm.gov.tr/develop/owa/ milletvekillerimiz_sd.dagilim.

40  L. G. DRECHSELOVÁ Tekeli, Şirin. 1981. “Women in Turkish Politics.” In Women in Turkish Society, edited by Nermin Abadan-Unat, 293–310. Leiden: Brill. ———. 1982. Kadınlar ve Siyasal—Toplumsal Hayat. Yerli Araştırmalar Dizisi 6. Istanbul: Birikim Yayınları. Tolley, Erin. 2011. “Do Women ‘Do Better’ in Municipal Politics? Electoral Representation Across Three Levels of Government.” Revue Canadienne de Science Politique 44 (3): 573–94. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0008423911000503. Topak, Oğuz, and Ayşen Uysal. 2010. Particiler. İstanbul: İletişim. Trabzon Büyükşehir. 2014. “Trabzon Büyükşehir Belediyesi—Meclis Üyeleri.” Trabzon.Bel.Tr. 2014. http://www.trabzon.bel.tr/meclis-uyeleri.aspx. TÜIK. 2019. “İstatistiklerle Kadın 2018.” 30707. Türkiye Istatistik Kurumu. UN Women. 2005. “Women in Power and Decision-Making.” Beijing at Ten and Beyond. Geneva: UN Women. https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/ beijingat10/G.%20Women%20in%20power%20and%20decision-making.pdf. ———. 2018. “Historic Leap in Tunisia: Women Make up 47 per Cent of Local Government.” UN Women. August 27. https://www.unwomen.org/news/ stories/2018/8/feature-tunisian-women-in-local-elections. ———. 2019. “Facts and Figures: Leadership and Political Participation.” UN Women. https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/leadership-and-politicalparticipation/facts-and-figures. Verge, Tània, and Sílvia Claveria. 2016. “Gendered Political Resources: The Case of Party Office.” Party Politics (August). https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1354068816663040. Walsh, Denise. 2012. “Party Centralization and Debate Conditions in South Africa.” In The Impact of Gender Quotas, edited by Susan Franceschet, Jennifer M. Piscopo, and Mona Lena Krook, 119–35. New York: Oxford University Press. WE Forum. 2019. “Global Gender Gap Report 2020.” Switzerland: World Economic Forum. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2020.pdf. Weldon, S. Laurel. 2008. “Intersectionality.” In Politics, Gender, and Concepts: Theory and Methodology, edited by Gary Goertz and Amy G. Mazur, 193– 218. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Woods, Michael. 1998. “Rethinking Elites: Networks, Space, and Local Politics.” Environment and Planning 30 (12): 2101–19. Yaraş, Sezen. 2019. “The Making of the ‘New’ Patriarch in Women’s ­Self-Narrations of Political Empowerment: The Case of Local Female AKP Politicians in the Aftermath of 2009 Elections.” Turkish Studies 20 (2): 273– 96. (March). https://doi.org/10.1080/14683849.2018.1543026. Yeni Şafak. 2017. “Kadın Cinayetinin İşlenmediği Tek İl Belli Oldu.” Yeni Şafak, November 26. https://www.yenisafak.com/hayat/kadin-cinayetininislenmedigi-tek-il-belli-oldu-2842766.

CHAPTER 2

Contextualizing the “Turkish Paradox”

Women’s representation in Turkish politics is so low that it would be more accurate to talk about the absence of women, rather than their underrepresentation, remarks Şirin Tekeli (1982, 287). The proportion of 0.61% of female deputies elected in 1950 indeed confirms this assessment. However, Turkey started as a high achiever: not only was it the first independent country in the Middle East to give women political rights but its 18 female politicians (4.5% of the Assembly) elected in 1935 accounted for the highest proportion of women deputies in Europe at that time (Jayawardena 1992, 38). The historical perspective adopted in the first segment of the chapter deals mainly with the early years of the Turkish Republic and the first municipal election in which women took part. It then explains the spectacular and long-lasting drop in women’s parliamentary representation taking place parallel to Turkey’s introduction of a multiparty system. Further, it provides contextual elements for the still lively debate in Turkey of whether women were given political rights by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk or whether they had fought for them since the late period of the Ottoman Empire. The chapter then moves on to review the different policies of the four main political parties with regard to female inclusion. The discrepancies that I identify confirm just how important it is to distinguish between parties in understanding the positions women achieve in politics. Finally, the focus on local politics substantiates the “Turkish

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paradox” of women being even less represented in municipalities than they are in parliament. The assessment of the Turkish paradox needs to be nuanced but women’s local underrepresentation has proven to be lasting.

2.1  Historical Perspective on Women’s Political Underrepresentation in Turkey In Turkey, as in numerous postcolonial contexts, the national liberation struggle brought up the question of women’s participation in the state-building and nation-building process (Jayawardena 1992). Mustafa Kemal, the founder of the Republic of Turkey (Mango 2002), and his close circle reserved themselves the right to define women’s role in the Turkish nationalist project (Abadan Unat 1981). The attribution of political rights to women was part and parcel of the Kemalist project. Note from the Research Journal: In summer 2015, I interviewed Engin, CHP’s municipal councilor in Izmir, aged over 60. As her father graduated from a village institute (köy enstitüsü), prime locus of Republican education and ideology transmission, Engin was brought up with an admiration towards Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.1 During our interview, she referenced the early Republican years frequently. When our conversation turned to women’s political rights, Engin asserted that Mustafa Kemal was the first one in the world to give women the right to vote. Coming from former Czechoslovakia, I argued that my country did so earlier, in the 1920 Constitution. Engin was so convinced that Turkey was the first country in the world that we interrupted our interview to check on the internet.

The conversation with municipal councilor Engin shows that the gendered balance sheet of the first decades of the Turkish Republic is not only of interest for historians. Its heritage was often referenced by female local politicians whom I interviewed. Last but not least, it is also an ideological marker for the Republican Peoples’ Party claiming continuity with the CHP founded by Kemal himself. The historical perspective presented in this section sheds some light on the durability of women’s political underrepresentation in the Turkish context notwithstanding the country’s early efforts at women’s inclusion. The symbolic significance of women’s inclusion in politics and its instrumentalization appear clearly in these first republican decades and can be traced until today.

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State Feminism and Women’s Suffrage All nationalisms are gendered (McClintock 1993, 62) but as Enloe remarks, the majority of voices recorded from these nationalisms belong to men (1993, 250). Since the 1990s, feminist re-readings of nationalisms were instrumental in bridging the gaps of classical nationalist studies which tended to disregard women as active agents of change (Racioppi and O’Sullivan 2003). Nationalist projects inscribe women into founding myths and seize their bodies as markers of the frontiers of the nation and as objects of social engineering. Women are portrayed as symbolic incarnations of the nation (Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1989). The control over access to women’s bodies is of crucial importance and women come to signify the purity of the nation’s blood in ethnic terms (Wilford 1998). Women’s honor stands figuratively for the nation’s honor, to be protected by men.2 In many regards, the Kemalist regime is comparable to other nationalisms of its time. It had an ambition to govern not only the public appearance of women but also the exercise of their domestic duties. In sum, women were supposed to be not only symbolical markers but also material agents of the Turkish modernization project. The reforms did not aim at women’s individual fulfillment and emancipation. Rather, their emancipation was to contribute to the national development (Youssef 1976). Political rights weren’t attributed to women all at once. A closer look at the calendar reveals a rather unique dissociation: on April 3, 1930, women were authorized to take part in local elections, to vote from the age of 18 and to be candidates from the age of 25 (Keskin 2012). On October 26, 1933, women were allowed to become muhtar, elected representative of a village or urban neighborhood (Gökçimen 2008). Finally, the December 5, 1934 parliamentary election and mandate were opened to women. Within the same constitutional modification, the age for voting was increased to 22 and to be elected to 30 years old (Abadan Unat 1986, 22). Why did the Kemalist elite bestow political rights upon women? Why in the first half of the 1930s? This query is better understood in the context of the regime’s modernizing efforts and women’s place within them. Kemal’s regime abolished certain discriminatory practices toward women but didn’t revolutionize women’s subordination to men. Prior to legalizing women’s political rights, the Parliament passed a number of reforms (Browning 1985): the caliphate was abolished and the new

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civil and penal codes were adopted based on examples from Switzerland and Italy, respectively. The civil code outlawed polygamy, made civil marriage compulsory while religious marriage became optional. Inheritance rights of women were equalized with those of men (Arat 1994, 62). In comparison with other countries of the Middle East, these measures were truly radical (Arat 2000, 110). For decades, the regime was praised for increasing women’s access to education and public service. In medicine and academia, the proportion of women surpassed the European average. This phenomenon grew in significance with time: in the 1970s, one in every five lawyers was a woman and one in every six doctors was a woman, while only 10% of women living in urban areas had a job altogether (Öncü 1981, 181). Women’s breakthrough into several professions doesn’t provide a full picture though. Legislative reforms remained discriminatory in multiple regards, among others maintaining the man as the head of the family, granting him the right to determine the household’s address and obliging women to get their husband’s authorization to be able to work (White 2003, 151). The applicability of some measures appeared limited: for instance, the equal pay for equal work principle only concerned women employed in the industry (a small share in comparison with agriculture where 96.6% of women were still active in 1955) and depended in practice on the strength of the labor union at each workplace (Browning 1985, 14; Abadan Unat 1986, 48). The reforms had limited impact, mostly confined to big cities, due to difficulties related to the applicability of the state rules (Çağaptay and Nuhoğlu-Soysal 1991, 265). The differential impact of the reforms of the new Republic also reflects differences within the social category of women. The persistence of the unequal effects of the reforms can also be clearly seen through geographical comparisons. In the 1970s, the female literacy rate was 68.7% in Istanbul and 9% in Mardin in the southeast region. The gap between male and female literacy was 14.4% in Istanbul and 31.1% in Mardin (Abadan Unat 1986, 158). These percentages are telling but they also reflect state policies deployed in the poorer and remote southeast region populated mostly by the Kurds. On the one hand, the Turkish nationalist project encouraged women into the public space and to take up employment and on the other, it tasked women with raising loyal citizens (Kandiyoti 1991, 308). For the ideal Turkish woman, motherhood was supposed to represent the supreme patriotic obligation (Arat 1998, 2). Mothers were to be

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educated, “enlightened” and to manage their households in line with the most modern standards of hygiene. Campaigns were organized to encourage women to consume exclusively national products to enhance the country’s economy (Durakbaşa 1998, 145–46). Kemalists did not combat patriarchy but rather replaced the Islamic patriarchy with a secular one, retaining control over women’s bodies and appearances (Arat 1994, 59). Women marched in stadiums wearing shorts and danced at balls in European-styled dresses while at the same time, in the predominantly male public administration, the new Turkish woman mirrored the men’s style, dressed in a plain suit with no make-up and her hair cut short (Kandiyoti 1991, 315). This corresponded with the imperative of women to appear chaste in the public presence. Such an ideal Turkish woman was a product of the perfectionism of the Kemalist elite (1998, 147). Women who were to embody this ideal were carefully selected, including Mustafa Kemal’s adoptive daughters, one of them becoming the Republic’s official historian and the other the first female military pilot (Browning 1985, 39). One of the most significant features of the early Republic was the close-to-total absence of references to women’s organizing during the Ottoman Empire (Arat 2000, 111).3 Not only were women’s activities of the early twentieth century forgotten, but women’s mobilization from the 1920s and 1930s was ignored by the official discourse which insisted that women were granted political rights by Mustafa Kemal without having to fight for them. This created a sense of indebtedness of women toward Atatürk which only came under the scrutiny of the feminist movement in the 1980s (Altınay 2004, 55). The Kemalist regime didn’t refrain from eliminating any organization that could endanger its monopoly on power (Çağaptay and ­Nuhoğlu-Soysal 1991, 267); this included women’s associations. Moreover, the associations that were allowed to function had to remain loyal to the modernizing project of the Kemalist elite and not to go against the conservative morality dominant in the society (White 2003, 153). Women’s initiative to create a political party, the Women’s Populist Party (Kadınlar Halk Fırkası), predates the creation of the Populist Party (Halk Fırkası), which later became the Republican Peoples’ Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP). In June 1923, the project of creating a women’s party was announced in the press and the founding documents were sent to the Ministry of Interior (Toprak 1994, 5). However, the women’s demand was rejected after eight months of waiting (Zihnioğlu

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2003, 119–49). Instead, the proponents of a women’s own political party founded the Turkish Women’s Union (Türk Kadınlar Birliği) in February 1924 under the direction of the Ottoman feminist Nezihe Muhiddin. The Union presented a couple of female candidates to the Parliamentary election in 1925. Even though women did not yet have political rights, the writer Halide Edip, one of the candidates, got several votes (Yaraman 2015, 45). The Union was also active internationally: in 1926 its members took part in the congress of the International Women’s Union in Italy (Libal 2008, 36). Later the same year, the statutes of the Turkish Women’s Union were amended to explicitly demand women’s political rights. All these steps were concomitant with elections or major legislative changes aiming at retaining the issue of women’s suffrage on the agenda (Zihnioğlu 2003). The closure of the Turkish Women’s Union coincides with the election of Turkey’s first female deputies. The achievement of voting rights is stated among the official reasons for the Union’s self-dissolution and it can to this day be found on the Union’s website (Kendirci n.d.).4 However, alternative explanations circulate: the Union was “invited” to dissolve itself by the regime because its members took pro-pacifist stands at the 1935 congress of the International Women’s Union hosted in Istanbul. Pacifism calls not only contradicted the country’s search for its place in the changing world order but was also considered as a transgression of the loyal role that this women’s organization was meant to play (Zihnioğlu and Toprak 2009). Thus, for more than a decade, any form of women’s political organizing was prevented. The Forgotten Ballot of 1930 The issue of women’s suffrage was on the agenda of the Turkish National Assembly prior to the first legalization in 1930. In 1924, debate was sparked about article 10 of the Constitution which stated that every Turk has a right to be a candidate to the Parliament. After one of the deputies remarked that the wording could be interpreted as including both men and women, the article was modified to explicitly exclude women (Tekeli 1982, 206). During the 1920s, a group of conservative deputies expressed occasionally their opposition to women’s suffrage; however, the government didn’t present a bill until 1930. Very few researchers tried to explain why women’s political rights were not legalized at once but in stages (1930, 1933 and 1934); Şirin

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Tekeli, a notable exception to this trend, offers an explanation of why women were allowed to enter the municipal race specifically in 1930. First, the Kemalist elite sought to limit the influence of religion in politics by including women, while it also sought to send a message abroad about its progressive non-dictatorial nature (1982, 210). In another article on the topic, Tekeli concluded that women’s suffrage was a form of democratic compensation for the failure of another democratizing attempt by Mustafa Kemal—the short-lived experience of the Free Republican Party (Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası, SCF) (Tekeli 1996). After the SCF was closed, Mustafa Kemal fearing Western criticism of his undemocratic conduct granted women voting rights to improve his image. If Tekeli’s explanation appears logical and has the virtue of being one of the few reflections on the topic, it is anachronistic. Women’s participation in municipal elections was legalized in April 1930 while the SCF was established in August 1930. Thus, the municipal election organized later that year is special not only because it was the first one with female participation but also because it was the first competitive election in Republican Turkey. Female candidates were divided on the ballots of the two parties. Tekeli’s anachronistic interpretation has remained largely unchallenged, probably because it can be supported by other arguments as well: women’s suffrage was merely a matter of political communication as it wasn’t coupled with women’s inclusion in decision-making nor were female candidates encouraged to run in high numbers (1982, 215). In addition, authorizing women to run only for the municipal councils allowed the regime to introduce women’s parliamentary representation later and to score political points again. Tekeli interprets the 1934 adoption of women’s full political rights as the willingness of the Turkish regime to distance itself from Hitler, who was on the rise in Germany. Yeşim Arat also considers female suffrage as a marker of the regime’s democratic aspirations (1997, 99), while according to Hamit Bozarslan’s periodization, women’s suffrage was realized during two distinct phases of the Kemalist regime: as part of its civilizational project (part of regime’s reforms) as well as its illiberal turn (authoritarian rule going hand in hand with the enhancement of women’s rights). Indeed, in the single-party regime spearheaded by its eternal-like ruler, the elections did not have the same significance as in a multiparty democracy (Bozarslan 2006, 99). It is symbolically significant that the first female member of the Kemalist CHP was Afet İnan, Atatürk’s adoptive daughter, even though

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several other women applied before her (Kartal 2005, 130). However, Afet İnan was not a candidate in the upcoming elections which took place between September and October 1930. The absence of gendered statistics makes it hard to estimate how many women were elected that year. It is also impossible to say who they were. The available information is scattered but we know for instance that one woman was elected in Mersin (Mediterranean coast) and three in Şebinkarahisar (in the Black Sea region) (Duroğlu 2007, 68; Keskin 2012). In Istanbul, women’s candidacies underlined the multiparty character of the ballot. Women were candidates both from the CHP and the SCF and the dividing line reflected their preexisting rivalries. Nezihe Muhiddin, founder of the Turkish Women’s Union, who was later expelled from the association and was at odds with its current leadership, was a candidate of the SCF, a party that promised in its electoral manifesto the attribution of full political rights to women. The new president of the Turkish Women’s Union, who advocated for patience and trust in the regime with regards to women’s rights, was the candidate of the CHP. Interestingly, Makbule Hanım, the sister of Mustafa Kemal, was also the candidate of the SCF (Üstel 1990, 75). The candidacy of someone so close to Kemal’s inner circle reveals the initially non-subversive character of this short-lived multiparty experience of the new Republic. For the members of the Turkish Women’s Union, the alliance with the CHP proved fruitful. In Istanbul, six women were elected in Eminönü, Fatih, Beyoğlu, and Beykoz, while a seventh female candidate of the CHP in Istanbul was eliminated because of the votes received by the political competitor, the SCF (Gökçimen 2008, 21; Çolak 2007, 123). The histories and trajectories of these women remain largely to be uncovered. Besides master theses based on local journals of the 1930s, the National Assembly annals represent a modest source of information because three out of these municipal councilors became deputies in 1935. With prominent family background and privileged educational and professional pathways, all of the women elected in Istanbul can be considered as members of the elite (Altındal 1977, 156–57). The figures emerging from the ballot mostly correspond with the regime’s image of the ideal Turkish woman—modern and educated but at the same time loyal to the regime and ready to affirm maternity as the supreme female duty. Nakiye Elgün, councilor and later deputy stated famously that women were not granted full political rights because they were not yet apt (Tekeli 1982, 125; Yıldız 2015, 61). Women who were vocal

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on women’s issues during the Ottoman era were not represented in the Republican parliament, nor were oppositional voices. No records exist about women who may have been elected from the oppositional SCF which closed down two months after the municipal election. A comparison with the parliamentary election five years later gives us a clue about the differences in recruitment of female candidates for local and national ballots. In 1935, the geographical distribution of 18 female deputies equally covered all of Turkey regardless of their origin (Başeğmez 2013, 135).5 This fact strengthens the idea that they were handpicked by Mustafa Kemal and his close entourage. It is hard to imagine that Ankara would be able to handpick female candidates for all municipal councils in the country. Thus, the 1930 ballot seems to mostly obey to local dynamics. It has been a lasting feature of the Turkish electoral landscape that most of the attention is focused on the parliament while women’s local representation becomes an issue only at the beginning of the 2000s. Female Absence from Politics: 1946–1990 To get a sense of the absence of women from politics throughout the Republican era, it is enough to browse the booklets of the National Assembly (“TBMM Albümü” n.d.). These brochures feature all elected deputies with pictures and short biographies. It is a parade of black and white male faces in which women’s photographs are extremely rare. This reflects the very low levels of women’s representation during the decades following the acquisition of political rights. In 1935, women represented 4.5% of deputies, the highest proportion in Europe at the time, while in 1946, women accounted for 0.3% of the members of Parliament (Başeğmez 2013, 140). Representation of women in the Parliament oscillated between 0.3% and 4.4% for decades and Turkey had to wait until 2007 to register a higher representation of women than in the first assembly in 1935. The drop in women’s representation is widely associated with the coming to power of the Democratic Party (Demokrat Parti, a right-wing party with religious references) in 1950. DP’s conservative character is deplored as the reason for women’s exclusion. However, the drop in the number of female deputies happened already in 1946 and coincided with Turkey’s transition toward a multiparty regime (in 1946, nine women entered the Parliament). The multiparty system replaced women’s

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representation as the marker of democratic aspirations of the regime. Among the cities involved in this study, only Izmir had sustained female representation until the 1960s, with Diyarbakır being markedly left out (the second female deputy after the one elected in 1935 was only elected in 1991 and the third in 2007). Trabzon’s situation is somewhere in between with occasional female representation during these decades. During the 1950s, when women’s representation hit its lowest level, a concentration of female deputies in the biggest cities is visible—this trend favors women’s inclusion in Istanbul and Ankara, but also Izmir. These cities not only had more eligible places on the lists but also offered the political parties a bigger “pool” of female candidates with high educational capital and professional careers. A significant feature of this period is the creation of women’s branches of political parties enabled by the new Constitution of 1961. The Constitution written in the aftermath of a military coup overthrowing Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, paved the way for the foundation of labor unions, associations as well as women’s and youth branches as auxiliaries of the political parties (Parla 1991, 45). The CHP was the first party to institutionalize these auxiliaries since it already envisaged their creation by the end of the 1940s (Kumaş 1999, 120). CHP women’s branches held eight congresses before they were banned following the military coup of 1980. In 1964–1965, the right-wing Justice Party (Adalet Partisi) also created women’s branches and tasked them with establishing links with organizations in Turkey and abroad, spreading party ideology and enlisting new members (Altındal 2007, 93). Women’s political activism, especially on the radical left, was on the rise during the 1960s and 1970s coupled with the proliferation of legal and illegal political structures. In 1965, Behice Boran, the female leader of Turkish Workers’ Party (Türkiye İşçi Partisi, TİP) was elected to Parliament. However, women’s parliamentary presence appeared to be lagging behind their extra-parliamentary investment. Between 1961 and 1977 no female deputy was elected in any of the three cities studied (Izmir, Trabzon, Diyarbakır). Neither had they a senatorial female representative during the twenty years of the Senate’s existence (1961–1980). The low levels of female representation in the Parliament were accompanied by low numbers of female candidates. Even though women accounted for 2.6% of candidates in all elections between 1961 and 1977, men only had twice as big a chance of getting elected (Tekeli 1982, 302). It means that once on the list, women were likely

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to be placed in an eligible position. The resulting level of women’s representation is minimal but reflects the conscious act of women’s inclusion by political parties. It is also notable that the biggest rivals, the centrist-Kemalist CHP and the right-wing religious AP feature rather ­ similar numbers of female candidates (42 and 35, respectively, between 1961 and 1977). The radical right-wing conservative Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP) which became known in the 2000s as the “men’s party,” due to the low number of women that it elects, presented more female candidates than the mainstream parties in the 1960s and 1970s. Şirin Tekeli explains that the smaller the party is, the more women candidates it presents in order to convey a political message or to simply fill the candidate lists in situations of a shortage of party members (1982, 303). Eslen-Ziya and Korkut highlight the 1960s and 1970s as a period of transition from “state feminism” toward “party feminism” (2010, 320). While this assumption seems exaggerated in light of the low levels of female political representation, it is also true that during the 1970s, parties for the first time included references to women’s rights in their programs. In my view, women’s—albeit limited—advancement results from a double logic—first, from the intraparty mobilization of female politicians, second, from the fear among party leaders that smaller parties reserving a bigger say for women may attract more female voters. Women elected between 1935 and 1977 were elite within elite. Their profiles reveal a high level of university graduates (68% of all female deputies) and of professionally active women (only 10% of deputies are housewives) (Tekeli 1982, 305). Not only are they not representative of the average female population but they are also more educated than male deputies. Women were always largely absent from government but the 1990s mark the term of Tansu Çiller as Turkey’s first and only female Prime Minister. Çiller’s mandate has come to be associated with deep state and the state’s links with the mafia to such an extent (Akdemir 1996) that many of my interviewees were hesitant to praise women’s presence at the top governmental level. The feminist movement has developed in Turkey since the 1980s. It was the first social movement born after the 1980 military coup, a coup that forced an end to the civic and political organizing of the 1970s. First feminist circles focused on the issue of violence toward women and started to question the notion of namus (chastity, honor). In contrast with “state feminism” of the Kemalist era, feminist women questioned

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the gendered hierarchy within the private sphere. They also remained relatively far from party politics (this may be partly due to the limited political offer of the 1980s), which may in turn have influenced the lack of emphasis on gender equality in politics. The creation of KA-DER, the Association to support female candidates (Kadın Adayları Destekleme Derneği), in 1997 is a milestone in this regard. KA-DER became the first association to work to increase the visibility of women in politics and to provide support and training. At the national level, KA-DER conducted campaigns to pressurize the party leaders and increase women’s inclusion on the party lists. The campaigns generally received favorable media coverage (Arat 2000, 122). Initially, KA-DER focused solely on the Parliament. The 2004 municipal ballot was the first one when the association started paying attention to women’s—even more pronounced— underrepresentation in local politics.

2.2   A Party-Specific Perspective on Women’s Political Exclusion In Turkey, it has since long been established that the political parties are gatekeepers of the entry points into politics (Frey 1965). That is why their policies toward women’s inclusion have such a significant impact on women’s representation. In addition, Turkey doesn’t have a legally mandated gender quota, a situation which gives even bigger say to political parties. The comparison among parties reveals that great variations exist in the levels of women’s political representation. Looking at each party separately allows us to deconstruct the national average. As argued by Miki Caul who compared parties in twelve industrialized countries, the infra-national level of analysis enables a better understanding of mechanisms of women’s inclusion (Caul 1999). After the 2018 general election, women’s ratio in the Turkish Parliament is 17.29%. The conservative Islamic AKP elected 53 female deputies (18.21% of the total of its deputies), while the Kemalist CHP elected a much lower proportion of women (12.14%). The pro-Kurdish HDP became the party with the highest-ever proportion of female deputies (40.32%) while the two Turkish nationalist parties were significantly lagging behind: MHP elected 4 women (8.16%) and İyi Parti (headed by a woman) elected 3 women (7.69%)6 (TBMM 2019). While the pro-Kurdish parties clearly stand out, the Turkish nationalist parties confirm the trend of having the lowest proportion of women.

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Most of the Turkish political parties have some sort of formal and informal provisions regarding women’s representation. Although these are often disregarded in practice, the measures still merit to be mentioned because they set a baseline against which the actual practices can be compared. Textual analysis of party programs and documents reveals a rich panorama of party engagements toward women. While the Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP) and the pro-Kurdish political parties (HDP and DBP) have a women’s quota, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) refuses to introduce a quota but has several internal party directives dealing with the placement of female candidates on the lists; and the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) makes no provisions for women’s representation what so ever. The previous section already underlined the ongoing exclusion of women from the political field. The present section shows the scarcity of women-friendly measures as well as the sidelining of women by political parties. Token Women in Conservative Parties The Justice and Development Party, AKP, has a dominant position in the Turkish political landscape. It has been in power, without interruption, since 2002, mostly alone but recently also in coalition with the nationalist MHP. The party’s founder and leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was elected Turkey’s president in 2014 and reelected in 2018. The AKP was born out of a scission within the Islamic Virtue Party (Fazilet Partisi). Many of its founders come from the National Outlook movement (Millî Görüş) of Necmettin Erbakan,7 including R. T. Erdoğan, mayor of Istanbul between 1994 and 1998, and Melih Gokçek, mayor of Ankara between 1994 and 2018. The AKP sought to distance itself from political Islam from its inception. The ideological remodeling toward a “conservative democratic party” and cutting the links with its predecessors were a strategic move shielding the party from closure. Since 2002, the AKP has managed to gather the support of the conservative electorate which brought to power mass parties in the previous decades, such as the Democratic Party (DP) in the 1950s, the Justice Party (Adalet Partisi) in the 1960s and 1970s as well as the Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi, ANAP) in the 1980s (Dagi 2008, 27). In the first years of its government, AKP openly pursued Turkey’s membership in the EU and spearheaded numerous reforms. But the party was purposefully unclear about a range of issues to avoid closure

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and polarization, notably about the veil ban in universities (Tepe 2005, 77). Over the years, the AKP’s success was possible thanks to the weakening of other influential actors such as the Constitutional Court and the army. The party also tapped into the majoritarian identity markers of Turkish society (Turkishness, Sunnism, conservatism) (Grisoni and Landel 2017). It became the dominant party in the Turkish political system and increasingly grew into the state structures (Dorronsoro and Gourisse 2014). It shouldn’t be forgotten that the AKP also harvests electoral support due to its charity work and loans (Pérouse 2014). For a growing segment of Turkey’s population, the personal debts are such that their support for the government appears as an imperative for the family’s material survival. In the AKP’s political program and electoral pamphlets, the title “Women” is included in the chapter dealing with social policies. The party program mentions the themes of female employment, social security for housewives and prevention of violence against women (AKP 2015). All documents avoid the word “eşitlik” (equality), associated with the vocabulary of the left. Instead, the party pushes for the concept of “adalet” (justice) building upon the religious notion of the complementarity of genders. The “Political vision for 2023” is a document which lays down AKP’s broader visions for the country’s development. The social policies section begins with: “as a democratic conservative party, we accord big importance to the family” (AKP 2014). Women are essentially seen as the founding stones of the family institution and their role as mothers and wives is underlined across all party documents. The importance of family is also understood from the pro-natality policy of the AKP. Young couples are promised leveling of their student debt if they get married within one year of their college graduation. Women are asked to have three children or more. At the same time, not everybody is invited into this “reproductive scheme”: in 2010, the Ministry of Health only reserved the aid of assisted procreation for married heterosexual couples. The procedure is supposedly interrupted in the case of divorce. Little public support for institutional care for children and the elderly renders women’s entry into the workforce particularly difficult. In this sense, family and charity are meant to represent compensatory mechanisms for the neoliberal economic policy of the government. Finally, women are also tasked with maintaining public morality via restraint and chaste behavior in the public space (for more see Çitak and Tür 2008; Acar and Altunok 2013; Cindoglu and Unal 2017).

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The AKP’s refusal of introducing a quota is notorious. For the party founder and leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the quota equates women to goods and as such is viewed as an insult (Karakuş 2007). On the contrary, the competition for electoral seats is supposed to take place in an “environment of free competition” (serbest rekabet ortamı) (“AKP Parti Programı” n.d.). Women in high party offices share the president’s discourse on the refusal of quotas. Fatma Şahin, former head of women’s branches, former minister of Family and Social Affairs, and since 2014 mayor of the city of Gaziantep, stated that “instead of on quota, […] women should focus on political education” (in Güneş Ayata and Tütüncü 2008, 375). At the same time, Şahin herself, as well as her predecessor Güldal Akşit, recognized the existence of a “de facto quota” (fiili kota) within the AKP which is supposed to be around 25–30% female candidates (Cumhuriyet 2011). This seems to roughly apply within the party organs: it has not been accidental that among the founding members of the party 20% were women (12 out of 60) (“AK PARTİ Kurucu Üyeler” 2016).8 The number of female members of the Central executive committee (Merkez Yürütme Kurulu, MYK) has progressively risen from 15% in 2009 (Çadır 2011, 46) to 24% in 2018— out of 25 members of the MYK 6 were women (“AK PARTİ Merkez Yürütme Kurulu” 2018). As a general rule, the AKP offers the first “female seat” on the candidate list to the head of its local women’s branch. Women’s representation in AKP’s municipalities shows that not many more women make it to the lists. As a result, the party’s de facto quota is rarely implemented in local elections. In 2009, allegedly (the directive was not made public), the party was aiming for 25% female representation in municipal councils (Negrón-Gonzales 2016, 204). It wasn’t met by a big margin as the overall women’s ratio in the municipal councils at the time was 4.2% (Üste 2017, 115). Recep Tayyip Erdoğan even considered these levels of women’s representation to be a party failure (“Erdoğan: O Konuda Başarısız Olduk” 2013). Prior to the 2014 municipal ballot, the head of the national women’s branches called for the inclusion of one woman per every three candidates (Can 2013). Notwithstanding these discursive strategies, the implementation of the informal 30% quota has been mostly sidelined. In the aftermath of the 2014 election, no woman entered municipal council in 10 out of 18 districts of the Trabzon province where the AKP overwhelmingly dominated all the councils, while in Izmir the AKP, the first opposition party, elected 20% of women among

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its municipal councilors.9 This means not only that the party adapts to local realities but also that the non-application of the internal guidelines is a widespread and paradoxical phenomenon for a party reputed for its hierarchical structure and heavy-handed leadership. The Nationalist Action Party, MHP, is another right-wing Islamic political force in Turkey’s political landscape. Comparing the MHP and the AKP on the basis of their conservative ideology toward women should not overshadow the striking quantitative differences among the two in terms of female membership: the AKP claims that its women’s branches represent the largest female organization in the world with 4.5 million members, while the MHP is considered to be a “men’s party,” even by its members. However, the similar ideological standpoint placing women firmly into the family unit as well as the electoral alliance between the two parties since 2017 makes the comparison relevant. The MHP was founded by Alparslan Türkeş in 1969 in line with the pan-Turkist reactionary parties of the 1950s (Erken 2014, 201). Some of MHP’s executives were recruited from the Grey Wolves far-right youth organization (Ülkü Ocakları). The Grey Wolves represent radical nationalist structures, perpetrators of street violence, and are responsible for murders of radical leftist activists as well as leftist intellectuals (Bora and Can 2004, 1991). The MHP is a nationalist, Turkist party with religious references and radically anticommunist and anti-Kurdish stands (Arikan 1998, 128). According to Tanıl Bora and Kemal Can, the popularity of the MHP in the 1990s rose with the intensification of the search to arrest of Abdullah Öcalan, the founder of the Kurdish guerrilla organization, the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) (Bora and Can 2004, 543). In 2016, the party experienced a period of major internal turmoil resulting in massive expulsions of dissidents and eventually in the creation of the İyi Party (the Good Party), comprised of MHP outcasts and led by one of the rare MHP female politicians, Meral Akşener. Besides its regional strongholds in the south Mediterranean, it seldom places itself as the first party in municipal elections. In Izmir, it is the third political force but in Trabzon it experienced a spectacular rise in the 2014 ballot, finishing second in the city. The MHP elected 7 women in the Izmir province who represented 13.2% of the total of its councilors.10 It elected 4 women in Trabzon where its vote share was 21.8% (Habertürk 2014).11 Similar to the AKP, the MHP seems to elect fewer women in Trabzon as compared to Izmir given the party’s vote share in both cities.

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The MHP is labeled as the “men’s party,” a trope that was often mentioned by my interviewees from this party. Thus, the comparison between the MHP and the AKP yields interesting results. Both are nationalist-conservative right-wing parties and their stands on women’s representation display major similarities but also differences. To start with, the major distinctive feature is the size of women’s branches. While the AKP prides itself with the 4.5 million members of its women’s branches, the MHP’s women’s coordinators take turns in the media to explain that it is not the quantity that counts (Şenel 2011). With regard to rules and measures, the AKP has an unofficial female quota while the MHP explicitly refuses any prescription of this kind. In the context of the non-application of the quota in the AKP, I argue that the absence of it in the MHP doesn’t change that much because the underlining logic of women’s representation in both parties is tokenistic. As one of the AKP local party leaders in Trabzon put it “there should be a woman, otherwise it’s a shame” (Kadın olsun, ayıp olmasın). I term this widespread logic as a “syndrome of only one woman.” Because womanhood is perceived as an identity marker, similar to origin, ethnicity, or religious belonging, one woman is perceived as “enough” to represent the category of women among the candidates. That is why women are tokens on the AKP and MHP’s party lists. Turkey’s conservative parties do not find themselves pushed to alter their discourses with regard to women’s political representation, contrary to several Islamic-conservative parties in the Middle East that justify women’s political inclusion once mandated to include them by a legally enforceable quota (Ben Shitrit 2016). As the AKP has been the chief legislator in Turkey since the early 2000s, no legally mandated quotas could be imposed, even though a certain understanding of the necessity to include women has been acquired. Kemalist Heritage and Moderate Women’s Inclusion The remaining two (center-left, CHP, and leftist pro-Kurdish) parties both have a quota for the less represented gender, which is known as a female quota even though party representatives underline that it may one day apply to men. The Republican People’s Party, CHP, claims continuity with Mustafa Kemal’s single-party era. However, this political strategy brushes over the multiple ruptures in the party’s history—notably, it was closed down

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by the 1980 military coup and was only re-created by a fusion of two center-left parties in 1992. CHP is often seen as statist and elitist (Güneş Ayata 2002, 105) and its founding principle of secularism is used by its political opponents to label the party as “dinsiz” (without religion, being connoted as anti-religious). According to Ziya Öniş, the attraction of a secularist social-democrat program is limited in the Turkish context which negatively impacts on CHP’s vote share. An average CHP voter is a city dweller and a middle-aged, well-educated public employee (Turan 2006, 573). The party gathers support from the alevi vote in Turkey and maintains close ties with several associations and trade unions (among these are associations with high female participation: Association of Atatürkist Thought, Atatürkçü Düşünce Derneği, and Association for the Support of Modern Life, Çağdaş Yaşamı Destekleme Derneği). In 1999, for the first time in its existence, the CHP didn’t cross the electoral threshold of 10% and was not represented in the Turkish Parliament. Since 2002, CHP is the “main opposition party” in the Assembly, headed since 2010 by a former prominent bureaucrat, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. However, the party sided with the AKP on several key issues, such as stripping the pro-Kurdish deputies of their parliamentary immunity in 2016 and in 2018 supporting Turkey’s military invasion of Northern Syria (Zeyrek 2018). Even though the women’s branches in the CHP are rather weak, the party has had several women to lead its provincial party units (il başkanlığı). Notably, in 2015, five women presided over provincial party units which equates to a proportion of 6.17% (Beşli 2015, 10). In this, CHP distinguishes itself from the MHP and AKP where women only rarely qualify for such offices. The women’s branch of the Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP) states in its documents that the equality between women and men is a founding principle of the party. It perpetuates the rhetoric that women were liberated by Mustafa Kemal but at the same time underlines that more needs to be done (CHP Kadın Kolları 2012, 3). In 1995, CHP put in place the quota of 25% on women’s representation in party organs which was later extended to candidate lists. The quota was increased to 33% in 2012 and was partially implemented in the 2014 local election. Article 58 of the party statutes stipulates that while selecting its candidates, the party should “show special attention to the parliamentary representation of women, youth and persons with handicap” (CHP 2018, 92).

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The quota’s impact differs from province to province mostly based on the party’s local vote share. In Trabzon, the CHP vote has been on steady decline and only one female councilor has been elected on the party’s benches since 2014 in the whole province. In Izmir, the party’s stronghold, the quota count holds in the majority of districts: women account for 25 to 30% of elected councilors.12 It is noteworthy that in Izmir the center-left progressive CHP elected a proportion of women which is not strikingly different from the Islamic-conservative AKP: the former elected 25% of women in Izmir overall, while the AKP elected 20% of women on its lists. This led some researchers, such as Şebnem Cansun, to conclude that the existence of quota in party statutes doesn’t matter for women’s representation in Turkey (Cansun 2012). This conclusion, however, is convincing when the comparison only draws upon the CHP and the AKP. If the comparison contained the MHP and the HDP as well and compared the “non-quota parties” and the “quota parties,” the differences would be more pronounced.13 Secondly, this similarity does not necessarily in all Turkish provinces. Local dynamics thus need to be considered before drawing such a conclusion. The Road Toward Parity in the Pro-Kurdish Parties The pro-Kurdish political parties implement not only the 40% quota but also the co-chairing system (eşbaşkanlık)—a joint presidency by a woman and a man. Pro-Kurdish political parties are part of the Kurdish movement in Turkey. The Kurdish movement is a network of interconnected actors, including the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) who has been waging a guerrilla war on the Turkish state since 1984. The PKK’s founder, Abdullah Öcalan, enjoys an undisputed authority within the movement with his writings defining the contours of the ideological doctrine. The PKK retains its armed power as well as the capacity to set ideological pillars of the whole movement. However, it doesn’t completely control the other actors of the movement, such as the political parties, media, human rights associations, women’s associations, and trade unions (for more see Dorronsoro and Watts 2013). Pro-Kurdish political parties have developed since the early 1990s.14 Even prior to that, Kurdish candidates entered the Parliament thanks to the electoral alliance with the leftist SHP (Social-Democratic Peoples’ Party, Sosyaldemokrat Halkçı Parti). The deputies were soon expelled

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from the SHP over a controversy regarding their participation at a conference organized by the Kurdish Institute in Paris (Watts 1999). The first pro-Kurdish political party, People’s Labor Party (HEP, Halkın Emek Partisi) was created in 1990 and had its first deputies in the 1991 assembly. The election of Leyla Zana, the second female deputy elected from the city of Diyarbakır since the acquisition of women’s political rights in 1934, marked a durable imprint on Turkey’s political landscape. Zana, wife of the imprisoned Diyarbakır’s mayor Mehdi Zana and one of the 22 elected pro-Kurdish deputies, spoke a few words in Kurdish during her parliamentary oath. This episode contributed to her being convicted to years in prison (while incarcerated, she received the Sakharov Prize for human rights from the European Parliament). The HEP was closed down by the Constitutional Court and most of the six following political parties met the same destiny.15 The main charge remained the same: collaboration with an armed organization, the PKK, and posing a threat to divide the country. Involvement with the pro-Kurdish political parties always meant a high-risk activity. 57 members of the HEP and 24 members of its successor, the DEP (Demokrasi Parti, Democracy Party) were assassinated mostly by “unidentified perpetrators,” marking the state’s complicity with these crimes (Erdoğan 2006, 82). The assassination of Vedat Aydın, the head of the HEP’s Diyarbakır unit, and fourteen months later of Musa Anter, renowned Kurdish poet aged 72, became symbols of the extra-judiciary executions targeting prominent Kurds (Gülcan 2012). The state persecution also took the form of large-scale arrests of pro-Kurdish activists. In 2009, during the trial called KCK (based on the name of the urban extension of the PKK), over 2000 people were imprisoned (Marcou 2012). Since 2016, the arrests of pro-Kurdish politicians and activists have reached a new peak.16 Two political parties represented the pro-Kurdish political tendencies during the time of my research: the Democratic Peoples’ Party (HDP, Halkların Demokrasi Partisi), a formation mostly active in the Western provinces of Turkey and represented in parliament; and the Party of Democratic Regions (DBP, Demokratik Bölgeler Partisi), its regional component mostly active in the southeast region with a Kurdish majority.17 Ideologically, both parties are leftist but the DBP’s program reflects more closely the doctrine of the democratic autonomy embraced by the whole Kurdish movement. Both parties call for decentralizing reforms and aim at becoming an ecological and gender-equal alternative to the

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centralized government. The principle of gender equality was inscribed into statutes and programs of the pro-Kurdish parties in the early 2000s. It progressively gained a central place but this process was not devoid of internal party opposition (for more see Drechselová 2019). In 2002, the electoral manifesto of the DEHAP, Democratic People’s Party, included the title of “Women’s Liberation” among the top party goals, right after the “Peaceful Resolution of the Kurdish Problem” (Çağlayan 2007, 134). The DEHAP statutes increased the women’s quota, forbade polygamous men from entering the party and made violence against women punishable by disciplinary measures. The DTP, Democratic Society Party, was the first one to introduce the co-chairing system (eşbaşkanlık) establishing a joint presidency of a man and a woman at all levels of the party. The eşbaşkanlık has been in place since 2005 but was only legalized in Turkey in 2014 as part of the so-called “democratizing measures” (CNN Türk 2014). While it became legal for parties to be simultaneously headed by a man and a woman, the pro-Kurdish political party made another leap: it introduced this system to the 101 municipalities it won in the 2014 local election. However, unlike the co-chairing of the political party, the co-mayorship was persecuted by the central government. By the end of 2016, the system has been forcibly dismantled with many co-mayors still in prison as of 2020. The most recent party, DBP declares in its program to be a “women’s party” (kadın partisi) and stipulates that in the case of equal vote share, priority is to be given to a female candidate (DBP 2008). The DBP’s program is based on much closer reading of the official doctrine of the Kurdish movement, it takes on an essentializing approach to women, containing multiple mentions about what constitutes “women’s nature.” The text also evokes the Neolithic era as an idealized period of human social organization. These mentions are hardly intelligible to outsiders of the Kurdish movement. On the contrary, the HDP’s program is conceived as an all-encompassing universalistic text, underlining the universal character of the search for liberty and equality. It denounces structural inequalities and openly criticizes patriarchy. It is also the only party program openly defending the rights of the LGBTQi community (HDP 2014). The quota was first introduced in the year 2000 and was gradually increased from 25 to 40% (Çağlayan 2007, 133–34). The statutes of the HDP even aim for parity (HDP 2014). As a result, the pro-Kurdish parties feature unprecedented levels of women’s inclusion. Their

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difference doesn’t only lie in numbers of elected women though; several other organizational elements enhance women’s intraparty participation such as the independent status of the women’s assembly, the capacity of women to select female candidates as well as the thorough application of the co-chairing system in the municipalities. Local representation has traditionally been of particular importance for the Kurdish movement in Turkey because its deputies were absent from the Parliament between 1994 and 200718 and even when the pro-Kurdish parties had parliamentary representation, their electoral scores were higher in municipalities. The city of Diyarbakır can be considered as the heart of the Kurdish southeast. In 2004, women accounted for 18.1% of municipal councilors in Diyarbakır’s districts but for only 9.4% of councilors (three women) in the hierarchically superior Diyarbakır’s metropolitan council (büyükşehir belediye meclisi) (Arıkboğa 2009, 38). Interestingly, the city displayed the biggest discrepancy between the proportion of women in the districts as compared to the metropolitan council. After the 2014 local election, female councilors accounted for 27.7% of the Diyarbakır’s metropolitan councilors (Diyarbakır Büyükşehir 2014) while they simultaneously represented 28.35% of municipal councilors in all Diyarbakır’s district municipalities combined (Kavas 2018, 37). The increase of women in the metropolitan council means that the pro-Kurdish party started consciously including female candidates higher on its candidate lists to ensure their representation in the metropolitan municipality. The left-wing gender-equal ideology as well as the contentious character of their political involvement make the pro-Kurdish political parties distinct political actors in Turkey’s political spectrum. However, they are not just anomalies and their analysis should not be solely the domain of Kurdish studies. On the contrary, their comparison with other parliamentary parties, such as the CHP, the AKP, and the MHP, is important since it reveals the mechanisms of the functioning of the political field in Turkey. Moreover, women’s mobilization within the pro-Kurdish parties has a potential contagion effect and can represent a toolkit for female politicians in other parties as well. What conclusion can be drawn from this panorama of political parties and their formal rules related to women’s representation? Notwithstanding the differences in their internal functioning, even parties’ formal organization is not uniform, contrary to what the rigid post-military coup Turkish Law on Political Parties (1983) may suggest.

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Although all parties follow the same hierarchical structure, they differ significantly in measures regarding women’s representation. The broad spectrum goes from no measures at all, through informal guidelines, to the quota and the co-chairing system.

2.3   A Local Perspective: The Closure of Local Politics to Women So far, this chapter has illustrated that not only have women suffered from political exclusion historically but that they also continue to be sidelined by their parties. The following pages will show that women’s underrepresentation is even more pronounced in local politics. Notwithstanding this fact, feminist scholars as well as sociologists of political parties tend to privilege the analysis of the party headquarters (Massicard 2010, 54). The researchers thus mirror the popular belief that Turkish political parties are hierarchical entities within which the national headquarters dominate over the local party units. Localized analysis of politics helps to uncover the functioning of political parties from another angle and thus yields relevant findings for the overall understanding of Turkey’s politics. Especially in the case of women’s representation, local politics seem to contain a paradox. It is claimed that local politics is more accessible to women because it is a lower echelon of decision-making and because it concerns issues closer to women’s household experience. However, if this is the case, how do we explain women’s representation bordering only 10% in Turkey’s recent municipal ballots, especially since this proportion is significantly inferior to that of female Parliamentary representation? The Inertia of the Local Political Field and the “Turkish Paradox” As Ayten Alkan, author of the pioneering article on the “Turkish paradox,” writes, women’s underrepresentation in Turkish local politics is neither time-specific nor locality-specific (Alkan 2004). Between 1930 and 1932, shortly after getting political rights, the first female mayor came to office: Sadiye Hanım, allegedly the Istanbul-educated daughter of the district governor of Artvin, came to head the village (belde) of Kılıçkaya in the Artvin province. She was not elected in a popular ballot since the direct election of mayors was only introduced in 1963. In 1968, the first four women were elected mayors. The growth in the

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numbers of elected female mayors is far from linear. On two occasions, in 1963 and 1984, no woman became mayor in Turkey. As for the remaining ballots, not much more than just numbers and names are available and even these were reconstructed by individual efforts.19 Women accounted for 0.6% of mayors in 2004 and 0.9% of m ­ ayors in 2009. The percentages of women in municipal councils reached 2.3% in 2004 and 4.2% in 2009 (Negiz and Üçer 2012). The provincial councils (il genel meclisi) registered particularly low levels of female representation: 1.7% in 2004 and 3.3% in 2009 (Üste 2017, 115). The gendered analysis of the 2014 municipal ballot, which is central for the assessments in this book, has to take into consideration all the different offices for which electors cast their ballots on the election day: the voters in metropolitan areas (all of the three cities in this study), voted separately for the metropolitan mayor (büyükşehir belediye başkanı), district mayor (ilçe belediye başkanı), district council (ilçe meclisi), and muhtar (the neighborhood representative).20 The members of the metropolitan council, not directly elected, consist of all the district mayors and a proportion of the district councilors. Depending on the size of the council and their position on the candidate list, only the best-positioned candidates from the districts gain a seat on the metropolitan council. As women are often ranked lower on the candidate list, their chances of entering the metropolitan council are not particularly high. That is why women are generally better represented at the district councils than at the metropolitan level even though many cities are closing the gap between these two levels (Izmir and Diyarbakır are both examples of this trend). In 2014, women accounted for 3.3% of candidates for the mayorship. According to the final results, 37 female mayors were elected (2.93%) and 10.72% of councilors were female. The AKP elected 7 out of its 18 female candidates to the office of the mayor, the CHP elected 7 out of 53 candidates, the MHP elected one out of 37 female candidates, and the BDP (pro-Kurdish party of that time) elected 24 out of 31 official female candidates and 70 out of 137 unofficial female candidates to the co-mayorship (Kadın Koalisyonu 2014).21 These numbers confirm the extent to which the pro-Kurdish parties shape the gendered patterns of local representation in Turkey. In 2019, the percentage of female candidates to the mayorship rose to 7.9% while the interparty differences remained significant: based on the statistics of Kadın Koalisyonu, women accounted for 21.37% of candidates in the HDP (in addition, the unofficial co-mayor candidates

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were presented in all municipalities for which the party run), 5.67% in the CHP, 2.8% in the MHP, 4.8% in the İyi Parti, and 2.02% in the AKP (Kadın Koalisyonu 2019).22 As a result, out of 1389 mayoral positions 45 female mayors were elected, most of them at the level of district municipalities: none from İyi Parti, 1 from MHP, 8 from AKP, 10 women from the CHP, 24 officially from the HDP with co-mayorship practiced in each won municipality (this amounts to a total of 58 female co-mayors),23 finally, 2 women were elected as independents (Eşitlik, Adalet, Kadın Platformu 2019). Among the female mayors, four preside over metropolitan municipalities (one from the AKP, one from the CHP, and two from the HDP). In absolute numbers women mostly occupied the position of a district mayor but, relatively, they were more likely to hold the prestigious office of metropolitan mayor. According to Ayten Alkan’s pioneering article, women face specific hardships while entering local politics (2009). Firstly, the patriarchal and conservative social norms weigh particularly heavy on women in smaller cities (as discussed in relation to the case of Trabzon in the following chapters). Secondly, the image of municipal politics as technical work is detrimental to women who are less likely to deal with infrastructure, water sewage, roads, and urban planning in their professional life. As one male aspirant to the mayorship in 1960 put it: “as a person who doesn’t know how to drive cannot be put behind the wheel, in the same way, a person who doesn’t know how to deal with infrastructure cannot become mayor” (Çitçi 2001, 18). This understanding of municipal politics as necessitating technical skills is still dominant today. Thirdly, women have suffered from the neoliberal influence on municipal decision-making: with rising competences of local political actors and enhanced municipal budgets, the speculative pressure of lobbyists has also increased. With higher stakes, the mandates of the local political level have become even more lucrative and thus less accessible to women (see also Massicard and Bayraktar 2011). Finally, less media attention on local politics means, according to Alkan, that political parties have lower incentives to include women on their list. In the case of women’s non-inclusion, the parties are not “punished” by a loss of votes and even the media attention isn’t there to provide at least some incentive for inclusion. The “Turkish paradox,” however, needs to be contextualized. On a broader scale, it becomes clear that the “paradox” does not just apply to Turkey. Greece, Belgium, Spain, Finland, and South Africa are only

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some of the countries which have noted a similar trend of higher proportions of women in the national parliaments than in municipalities in their recent history. This has partially been due to quotas legislated at the national level but other explanations also exist (see for example Gidengil and Vengroff 1997; Smith et al. 2012). Within Turkey, the paradox also has some nuance. Historically, it is possible to hypothesize that women were not always fewer in local governments. Especially during the 1960s and 1970s when the levels of parliamentary representation were very low (such as 0.9% in 1977) at least some municipalities may have featured higher percentages. The lack of statistics makes it impossible to identify a specific number but Şirin Tekeli has shown that in the Istanbul municipality between 1969 and 1977, women accounted for between 7.7 and 9.8% of councilors (Tekeli 1982, 297). Besides the historical nuance, the Turkish paradox acquires more specific meaning when the different mandates of local politics are considered. According to the “law of growing disproportion” (also called the “law of the leaky pipeline”) (Putnam 1976, 33), with growing prestige and importance of a mandate women are less likely to be represented. The Turkish case doesn’t confirm this trend. If we consider the boost in budgetary capacity and decision-making power of the metropolitan mayors in recent years, one can conclude that the office of metropolitan mayor has become more influential than the office of the deputy. This should make the metropolitan mayorship relatively inaccessible to women. In reality though, women are better represented proportionally at these prestigious offices rather than as mayors in ordinary cities. Still according to the law of the leaky pipeline, women should be most represented in the district councils, less in the Councils of the Province (il meclisleri), and even less at the hierarchically superior metropolitan council. Practically, women are systematically the least represented in the Councils of the Province. This may be due to the fact that these councils deal with rural areas where women have to confront particularly strong conservative social norms. To capture why, among all the different offices of the local, the Councils of the Province feature the lowest female representation (4.7% in 2014), I would call this a “reverse cosmopolitism effect.” In line with the “cosmopolitan effect,” women are more likely to be elected in big cities where they are also more likely to be educated and have a job. In the reversed situation, in rural areas, women are less likely to be elected also due to the smaller size of the potential candidate pool. Finally, as Bulut notes, the 45 provinces in which no woman

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entered the Council of the Province were also among the poorest in the country (2014). The political economy analysis is needed to uncover the concrete link between the economic level of the province and women’s underrepresentation. As far as the municipal councils are concerned, the size of the municipality has an impact on numbers of elected women. In 2004, a majority of Turkish municipalities were “small” (two-thirds of councilors were elected in a municipality with less than 10,000 inhabitants) and 86% of municipal halls had no female councilor (Arıkboğa 2009, 15, 23). In the same period, 78.3% of municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants had at least one female councilor and all of the metropolitan municipalities (with over 500,000 inhabitants) had women represented. Between the 2004 and 2009 elections, the municipalities with 20,000– 50,000 inhabitants experienced the biggest increase in new entries by women—37.4% among them had at least one woman in 2004, while this proportion rose to 70.6% in 2009 (Arikboga et al. 2010). I argue that besides the “effect of cosmopolitism,” the “effect of the dominant party” should also be considered to better understand the Turkish paradox. The pro-Kurdish political parties have since the beginning of the 2000s displayed higher levels of elected women than the national average—in 2004, when women accounted for 1.7% of municipal councilors, they were 7.76% in Diyarbakır with a pro-Kurdish majority in the council (Çağlayan 2012, 122). Since 2009, the municipality of Diyarbakır also featured higher female representation than the parliament. On the contrary, numerous Anatolian municipalities were not only lagging behind the parliamentary female levels but also behind the overall average of female councilors (such as Trabzon). Local Configurations and the Transformations of Local Authorities in Turkey The 2014 municipal election marked the coming into effect of a significant reform of local government. As a result, more municipalities gained the status of a metropolitan municipality and in parallel, their competences and budgets increased. This development is in line with the local government reforms that the AKP enacted since its rise to power. In Turkey, the strengthening and autonomization of local governments have been impeded by the so-called “separatist threat,” alluding to the Kurdish demands for recognition and independence. Thus, AKP’s hands

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have been tied in the enactment of local government reforms that on several occasions were vetoed by the Constitutional Court “protecting the unity of the state” (see Massicard 2008). The history of the metropolitan municipalities dates back to 1984 and to the creation of the first three—Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir (Heper 1987). After conferring upon them the competences in the domains of infrastructure and transport, in 2010, metropolitan municipalities gained the central responsibility for urban planning (Massicard and Bayraktar 2011, 47). With these changes and others to come into being in 2014, the status of the metropolitan municipality increased significantly. The case of Trabzon shows the lengths to which the local leaders went to make sure that the province population is over 750,000 inhabitants, a condition for acquiring this desired status. The government even announced plans to decrease the population criteria to 500,000 inhabitants which would mean adding 12 new provinces to the status of metropole (Siyasi Haber 2018). However, the project didn’t come to fruition before the 2019 local election. In the meantime, some of the new metropoles were experiencing difficulties with partitioning the prerogatives between the metropolitan administration and their central districts. In Trabzon, for instance, the split between the central district and the metropolitan administration had not been finalized during the time of my research in 2016. The 2014 reform suppressed the legal capacity of about 1500 municipalities and 16,000 villages, bringing down the total number of municipalities to 139724 (Arıkboğa 2015, 56). The most essential feature of the reform was the enlargement of responsibilities of the metropolitan municipality to the whole province, including its rural areas. This entailed the closure of the bureaucracies which had dealt with the rural areas so far—the il özel idareleri, the Special Administrations of the Province, as well as the elected representative bodies, il meclisleri, Councils of the Province. The villages were attached to the nearest district and the metropolitan municipality has been tasked with responsibility for the whole territory. According to Arıkboğa, this marks a departure from the logic of “metropolitan” governance toward “regional” (bölgesel) governance (2015, 56). The adjustment to the new system has been far from smooth, with municipalities held by the opposition parties protesting the modalities of the transfer of personnel and equipment between the administrations.25

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The 2014 reform modified the local hierarchies: the figure of the metropolitan mayor, elected on a separate ballot, dominates the local politics (Yüksel 2011, 439). Still, women appeared slightly better represented at this level than in the municipalities overall. While 3% of women were mayors after the 2014 election, they accounted for 10% of metropolitan mayors. However, it is striking that all three women were previously active in national politics: Özlem Çerçioğlu resigned from her parliamentary seat to become CHP’s mayor of Aydın in 2014 (she was reelected mayor in 2019). Gültan Kışanak, former head of the party and deputy, was elected the pro-Kurdish party’s co-mayor of Diyarbakır (Kışanak was arrested together with dozens other pro-Kurdish representatives in 2016 and was still in prison at the moment of writing in 2020) and Fatma Şahin, former minister of Family and Social Policies and head of AKP national women’s branches, became mayor of Gaziantep (she also was reelected in 2019). The concentration of power in the hands of the metropolitan mayor weakens the district municipalities but also the metropolitan councilors—bound to respect the party group’s decision taken behind closed doors prior to the council’s meeting, most of the voting is a formality, especially when the same party controls the majority in the council and has the mayor’s office. The councilors have only limited individual leverage which generally depends on their personal relationship with the mayor. All three cities that are part of this study share the status of metropolitan municipality, even though they acquired it at different times—Izmir became metropolitan municipality from the inception of the system in 1984, Diyarbakır joined in 1993 while Trabzon is the most recent one joining in 2014. The administrative unity allows for comparisons of women’s local representation in the metropolitan and district councils among these cities. However, in all other aspects, these cities are very different. Two are coastal—Izmir is situated at the coast of the Aegean Sea and Trabzon of the Black Sea. Diyarbakır is inland, the “capital” city of the Kurdish southeast. In terms of the size of the population, Izmir is the largest and in terms of wealth, it is the richest of the three. Trabzon is in the lower mid-range with Diyarbakır in the final third in terms of national economic comparisons (SEGE-2011 2013; TÜIK 2016). The cities experience migration with very diverse patterns. While Izmir attracts intra-national migration from all of Turkey, it also counts high numbers of refugees. Trabzon has mostly received migrants from the Black Sea region with families retaining their properties in rural areas but

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moving to the city for the main part of the year. On the other hand, Diyarbakır was the destination of forced migration throughout the 1990s from the whole southeast region and more recently since the warfare resumed in 2015. Trabzon has acquired a reputation of being dominated by a conservative-nationalist consensus. The daily interventions by ordi­ nary citizens against any “wrongdoing” are often relayed by the press. A disarray caused by a Portuguese tourist is one of the examples. When the female tourist leaned on the plastic replica of the Al-Aqsa mosque displayed on Trabzon’s main square, dozens of people gathered and “intervened” to ensure that the non-understanding tourist ended her act of religious disrespect (Cumhuriyet 2017). During my field work in Trabzon, events of this kind were numerous, including ­opposing students from left-leaning groups and the government supporters on the university campus. Forms of left-wing political expression face resistance in the city. The HDP couldn’t hang a party emblem or open its electoral office prior to the 2015 legislative election. Its members were attacked during the Labor Day march. The former female co-chair of the party moved out of the city. With the murder of Christian priest Santoro in Trabzon in 200626 and the Trabzon roots of the murderer of the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul in 2007, researchers even compiled a publication called “Understanding Trabzon”— “Trabzon’u anlamak” (Bakırezer and Demirer 2010). Much could also be said about Diyarbakır, the Kurdish “capital” and the largest city of the southeast region. Pro-Kurdish parties’ sustained presence in Diyarbakır has offered a space for integrating the movement’s ideological doctrine into governing practices and to gain international recognition and visibility (Watts 2006). According to Nicole Watts, the Kurdish politicians were engaging in “as-if politics,” acting “as-if” the environment around them was democratic (Watts 2010, 140). By renaming streets and squares, building statues and organizing language and cultural festivals, pro-Kurdish municipalities conducted symbolical politics and modulated the urban space to their image. According to Zeynep Gambetti, the party at the municipality acted as a social and cultural agent alleviating the impacts of the war that the Turkish military wages against the PKK in the region (Gambetti 2004, 8). However, the subsequent electoral victories also posed the question of accountability of the party leadership and local representatives which were not without critics (Yılmaz 2019).

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The life in Diyarbakır as well as women’s political presence were deeply affected by the resumption of the armed struggle between the PKK and the Turkish military. The curfews that were imposed on the cities throughout the region in 2016 caused death of civilians, tremendous material damage and the UNESCO protected Sur neighborhood was partly destroyed27 (UNHCHR 2017). The state crackdown on Kurdish political representatives intensified after the 2016 coup attempt. Pro-Kurdish mayors were dismissed and imprisoned. Appointed trustees governed the municipalities until the 2019 election took place and were quickly appointed after the 2019 election to replace newly elected mayors. The actions of the appointed trustees aimed often systematically at dismantling the memory of the pro-Kurdish municipal experience. In 2017, the pro-Kurdish party counted 10,000 of its members imprisoned (Şur 2017). Gendered comparisons among provinces are very rare in the Turkish context. The think tank TEPAV pioneered in this regard with its 2014 publication on Gender Equality in the 81 provinces. TEPAV republished the report in 2016 and 2018 in a reduced form, also including the results of the 2014 local election (Demirdirek and Şener 2014; Kavas Urul 2016; Kavas Urul 2018). The report developed two indicators: the Local Gender Equality Index and the Local Gender Empowerment Index (the latter is put together by comparing women’s situation across cities without comparing them to men). Izmir registered a spectacular rise in the ranking, moving from the 24th position in 2014 to the 6th position in 2016 but then falling to the 13th place in 2018. Kavas, the author of the second and third reports, indicated that fluctuations in the ranking are mostly due to variations in local women’s political representation rather than to changes in order indicators (health, education, employment) (Kavas 2018). While the rise of women’s political representation can explain Izmir’s growth in ranking between the two reports, the reasons for the final drop are not provided—since the women’ representation in the city didn’t change, it is most probably a function of betterment in other provinces which had the effect of offsetting Izmir in the ranking (for more see Drechselová 2020). Izmir is the province with some of the highest proportions of female university graduates and female employees among the municipalities. Diyarbakır, on the other hand, occupies the first place nationally with the numbers of elected female deputies and the proportion of female councilors. Finally, Trabzon appears as one of the provinces with the lowest

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proportion of early motherhood—it registers the lowest numbers of women giving birth between the ages of 15 and 19 (Demirdirek and Şener 2014). Izmir and Trabzon are both part of the United Nations sponsored program Women Friendly Cities (Kadın Dostu Kent) which started in 2006. This means that the local actors, including the governor’s office, municipalities and other stakeholders elaborate and regularly revise the Action Plan for Local Equality (Yerel Eşitlik Eylem Planı). As an outcome of the project, several women’s structures appeared and were institutionalized over time in these cities, such as Women’s Coordination Committees at the level of the province, Women’ Committees in the municipal councils and Women’s Assemblies (Kadın Meclisleri) as part of the NGO-vested City Councils (Kent Konseyi). Although the presence of these structures can be beneficial in providing a platform for voicing women’s demands, their operationalization is not always smooth and they face difficulties in terms of budget and impact. The three cities feature different levels of women’s representation. In Izmir, in 2014, the CHP won 22 out of 30 districts, but the AKP came second, winning almost all remaining seats. In 2019, the CHP occupied 53% of the metropolitan seats, while AKP got 36% (completed by a minor presence of the MHP, the İyi Parti and one member of the DSP, Democratic Left Party) (Hürriyet 2019). In 2014, all districts taken together, the CHP elected 25% of women. The difference in women’s representation between the urban and rural districts of the province was rather small. In total, eleven districts displayed a level of women’s participation surpassing or close to 20%.28 In absolute numbers, Bayraklı was at the top of the ranking (out of 10 elected women 8 were from CHP), followed by Balçova, Gaziemir, Karşıyaka, and Konak (with CHP electing over 80% of all female members of the council). However, there were also four districts in Izmir where women represented less than the 10.72% national average (Bayındır, Kemalpaşa, Kınık, and Selçuk).29 In Beydağ, no female councilor was elected (the 8 councilors from the CHP were all men). The municipalities won by the AKP displayed lower levels of women’s representation with the exception of Torbalı (5 women from AKP in the council) and Ödemiş (3 women from AKP in the council). Overall, the AKP elected 20% of women among its Izmir councilors which is not significantly lower than the CHP. In the 2014 municipal election, four women competed for the offices of mayor in Izmir. Out of these, three were elected, two from the CHP (in Konak and Urla) and one from the MHP who later transferred to

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the AKP (in Kiraz). It should be noted that in 2014 the HDP didn’t get municipal representation in Izmir (mainly due to the 10% electoral threshold) but it should be also noted that in all districts, the party presented two candidates to the mayoral office, a man and a woman, in line with the co-chairing system. In 2019, only AKP’s female mayor (former MHP) was reelected. The other three women were from the CHP (which thus increased the number of women in the mayor’s seat) but didn’t reelect any of the former female politicians. As all CHP female candidates to the office of mayor were elected, this means that all were presented in areas where the party could reasonably expect to win the seat. On the contrary, the AKP ran female candidates in the CHP’s strongholds, such as in the central districts of Konak and Karşıyaka. In Balçova, three female candidates competed for the office (the winner was from the CHP, and her competitors from AKP and from the Turkish Communist Party). In addition, the AKP also presented women candidates to mayorship in Güzelbahçe and Dikili. In total, six women competed for the mayoral seat in AKP’s colors in 2019. In 2014, the metropolitan municipality counted 16.8% of women, but the dominant CHP elected 19.8% of women (the party got 67% of seats), almost 10 percentage points over the national average. Thus, the presence of other parties brought down the average women’s representation in Izmir’s metropolitan council. This was no longer the case in 2019 when the metropolitan council counted an overall lower representation—15.34% of female councilors, an almost identical proportion of those elected from the CHP—15.65% (18 women out of the party’s 115 councilors). The AKP is represented by a higher proportion of women than the CHP, with 18.37% female members (9 out of 47 members of the council are female) (Izmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi 2019).30 This confirms the trend observed during the legislative elections of 2018 where AKP elected 18.21% of female deputies and CHP elected 12.23% (TBMM 2019). However, the two bodies have different majorities—in the national assembly, the AKP is in majority, while at Izmir’s metropolitan council it is the CHP. In Trabzon, women’s representation was significantly below the national average. In ten out of its eighteen districts, no female councilor was elected in 2014. In the metropolitan council, two women sat alongside 66 men (a ratio of 2.94%). Most of the elected councilors came from the AKP which is mainly due to the fact that the party dominated all the districts besides one. For example, in the district of Maçka, AKP

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won 12 seats out of 15 but the only female councilor was elected from the 10th position on the party list. Except for Ortahisar and Çaykara, AKP’s female members of the council were elected as tokens. Compared with the previous municipal elections of 2004 and 2009, the 2014 ballot confirmed the homogenization of the province in the hands of the AKP, in parallel to the rise of votes of the MHP. I could identify 4 female councilors from the MHP, in Akçabaat, Çarşıbaşı and two in the central district of Ortahisar. In 2014, there was no female mayor in Trabzon but the CHP presented three candidates to the office (all with small chances to succeed). In 2019, three women made it to the metropolitan council, representing the AKP, the MHP and the İyi Parti (all from the peripheral districts of the city, one from Arsin and two from Yomra). The fact that the members of the metropolitan council didn’t come from the largest and central district of Trabzon signals that women who got elected there were further down on the lists and didn’t qualify for the metropolitan councillorship (Trabzon Büyükşehir Belediyesi 2019). In Ortahisar, featuring previously by far the highest female presence in the council, female representation remained at 10.8% but mostly because of the fact that all represented parties elected one woman (AKP, CHP, MHP, and İyi Parti) (Ortahisar Belediyesi 2019). This situation is strikingly different, especially for the AKP which sent five female councilors to Ortahisar’s council in 2014 and just one in 2019. It is remarkable that even though women’s representation in the Trabzon districts remained limited to 1 or 2 councilors, the number of districts with no female councilor fell significantly from 10 to 5 between 2014 and 2019. This is in line with the larger trend observed by Arıkboğa that women enter progressively even smaller municipalities. The central Ortahisar district still had the highest women’s representation (4 councilors in 2019, 8 in 2014). However, it should be noted that the peripheral district of Yomra, which was without women in 2014, elected 3 female councilors in 2019.31 Since 1999, Diyarbakır has been won over by the pro-Kurdish political parties and as such registers the highest female representation among the studied municipalities. In 2004, the pro-Kurdish political parties elected 54 mayors in the region out of whom 9 were women. At that time, this meant that pro-Kurdish female mayors accounted for half of all female mayors in Turkey (Ersanli and Özdogan 2011, 80). In 2009, Diyarbakır’s municipal council had the highest female ratio nationally, 26.6.% (Şirin Pınarcıoğlu 2011, 107). In the 2014 municipal election,

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the party won 102 municipalities (Evrensel 2014), elected 23 women on official mayor positions, and in the remaining municipalities presented female candidates “unofficially” within the system of co-mayorship. Even if only officially elected mayors were taken into account, they still represented more than half of the female mayors in the whole of Turkey (37 were elected in 2014). 25 female councilors in the metropolitan council accounted for 36.6% of the councilors of the DBP and 27.7% of the councilors overall (Diyarbakır Büyükşehir 2014). In Diyarbakır, the pro-Kurdish party came first in the majority of the councils, the second party being systematically the AKP. According to my count, the AKP elected 8 women in the whole province of Diyarbakır, rural and urban areas combined.32 The pro-Kurdish party remains the main vector of women’s inclusion in local politics. In the municipal election of 2019, several of the HDP’s lists featured gendered parity among candidates (Tigris Haber 2019). In the central district of Bağlar, 14 women and 16 men took the seats on HDP’s benches, while 2 women and 5 men sit in the council on behalf of the AKP. The overall female representation is 43.24% in Bağlar and it is notable that the AKP’s councilors are not bringing the overall proportion significantly down as was the case after the 2014 election (HDP’s proportion of women alone is 46.7%) (Bağlar Belediyesi 2019). This points toward the existence of a contagion effect—the leading party’s women’s inclusion pushes the other party to go in the same direction (Matland and Studlar 1996; and also Kışanak 2018). In Yenişehir and Sur, other central districts of Diyarbakır, but also in the peripheral district of Lice, women’s representation was well over 30% (35.48, 38.7, and 46.67%, respectively).33 On the contrary, the district of Çermik is an example of a municipal hall with the AKP majority where the HDP didn’t elect any female councilor among its five seats (Çermik Belediyesi 2019). The variations in women’s representation between Izmir, Trabzon, and Diyarbakır uncover the diversity which normally remains hidden in the national averages. Even though nationwide indicators are useful to illustrate the overall underrepresentation of women in Turkey’s local politics, the infra-national and inter-partisan comparisons reveal the intricacies of women’s political exclusion. This selective contextualization of three local configurations illustrates that political parties have to deal with different provincial histories and socioeconomic realities. Charlotte Joppien has shown how parties interact with local configurations and

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how they are in turn transformed by the local culture (Joppien 2017). Through the case of female political inclusion, the following ­chapters show how parties’ implantation is determined by their capacity to read the pre-constituted local power relations and to negotiate local alliances.

2.4  Concluding Remarks This chapter aimed to demonstrate the durability of the closure of the political field to women at multiple levels. Historically, Turkey granted women political rights in the 1930s, before many European states. This was part of the Kemalist civilizational Republican project and it took until the 2000s for women’s political representation to surpass the levels in the first parliament in 1935. With the transition to a multiparty system, women lost their role as markers of democracy and were marginalized from political representation. The chapter further demonstrated that women are also excluded from the decision-making of their political parties, notwithstanding the positive action measures that were adopted by the parties. Even though Turkish Law on political parties is very rigid and Turkey lacks a legally mandated quota, the four main political parties display significant variations in terms of their commitments toward intraparty and electoral inclusion of women. Finally, the review of women’s representation in local politics showed that the mechanisms of exclusion relevant for national politics play out in different ways locally making it even harder for women to access electoral offices at the municipal level. Overall, the chapter allowed for nuancing of the “Turkish paradox,” demonstrating that there were moments in the past when the parliamentary representation of women hit a low point while some municipalities may have surpassed the parliamentary levels. Thus, the paradox appears to have its own temporality. More recent research has shown that the size of the municipality matters greatly for the proportions of female representation and that the bigger the municipality, the higher the proportion of female councilors, sometimes even exceeding the current parliamentary levels. In addition, the party-specific criteria revealed that pro-Kurdish political parties systematically elect higher proportions of women than other parties and municipalities that they command display higher representation of women than at the Parliament. Finally, there also appears to be a hierarchy among different mandates at the local level, with the mayorship in a small municipality and the membership in

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the Council of the Province being the most inaccessible ones to women. The developments of local authorities and the progressive concentration of powers in the hands of the metropolitan mayor especially merit further analysis in terms of their potential impact on women’s local representation. A qualitative study should evaluate whether the increased visibility of the metropolitan mayorship facilitates women’s accession to this mandate or whether on the contrary the increased stakes of the mandate and lobbyists’ pressures will eventually make it even more inaccessible. The textual analysis of the party programs and the positive action measures undertaken (or their absence) to promote women’s representation would obviously be incomplete without scrutiny of the application of these principles and measures. That is the goal of the upcoming chapters. However, reading the programs and party texts has in itself revealed some interesting elements: mainly, the diversity of Turkey’s parties despite their presumed homogeneity. The pattern of leftist parties adopting quotas and right-wing parties being reticent to them was largely confirmed. The status of women’s branches within the parties is further developed in the upcoming chapter but it is already possible to give a hint of some counter-intuitive features that will be highlighted in the following pages: within the CHP, women’s branches didn’t organize their own congresses until 2012 and were thus in a more subordinate position compared to their pre-1980 predecessors but also compared to the current situation in the AKP. Also, under the leadership of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, representatives of women’s branches appear to have had a very small chance of qualifying for electoral office which is again in contrast to the AKP. These rather surprising elements are further developed in the upcoming chapters. Finally, the rudimentary description of the three research localities showed differences on number of levels between the cities of Izmir, Trabzon, and Diyarbakır. This was the first step in a continuous effort in this book to offer a locally grounded perspective on women’s local representation in Turkey as well as on the mechanisms behind their exclusion. Politics is situated within pre-constituted local power relations and the parties have to deal with existing alliances and heritages. These are however not immune to change. Trabzon used to be a stronghold of left-wing politics, however since 2009 the AKP has increased its domination over the city. Similarly, before the creation of pro-Kurdish political parties, the conservative right-wing parties were the winners in Diyarbakır. To sum up, the party-specific and the locality-specific

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perspectives are inseparable and they influence our understanding of the profiles and pathways of female politicians depending on the city and the political party we look at.

Notes







1.  Atatürk means “Father of Turks,” a title that the Parliament officially bestowed on Mustafa Kemal in 1934. 2. This is why a gendered perspective on nationalisms not only includes an analysis of women’s involvement and role but is also key for understanding masculinities (Altınay 2004). 3. Traces of that era have since been recovered (see Çakır 1994; Alakom 2001; Klein 2001; A. Demirdirek 2011). 4. The Turkish Women’s Union was reopened in 1949 and continues its activities to this day. 5. The elected female deputies in 1935, with their provinces, were: Mebrure Gönenç (Afyonkarahisar), Hatı Çırpan (Ankara), Türkan Örs Başbuğ (Antalya), Sabiha Gökçül Erbay (Balıkesir), Şekibe İnsel (Bursa), Hatice Özgener (Çankırı), Huriye Öniz Baha (Diyarbakır), Fatma Memik (Edirne), Nakiye Elgün (Erzurum), Fakihe Öymen (İstanbul), Benal Arıman (İzmir), Ferruh Güpgüp (Kayseri), Bahire Bediz Morova Aydilek (Konya), Mihri Pektaş (Malatya), Meliha Ulaş (Samsun), Esma Nayman (Seyhan), Sabiha Görkey (Sivas), Seniha Hızal (Trabzon) (source: Başeğmez 2013). 6. The İyi Parti (Good Party) is not included in this research because it was only recently created (2017). Even though it is led by a woman, Meral Akşener, the party features the lowest level of women’s representation and had no women’s branches until 2019. 7. The National Outlook movement was founded by Necmettin Erbakan in 1969 and resulted in the creation of a series of political parties, starting with Millî Nizam Partisi (Party of National Order). This Islamic nationalist movement also had many supporters within the Turkish diaspora in Europe. 8. Numbers are political. The official website of the AKP underwent reconstruction and so did the official list of the party’s founding members. While Sallan Gül speaks about 71 founding members in her 2007 article (Sallan Gül 2007, 6), the website Medyafaresi counted 74 people, of whom 13 were women (“AK Parti Ne Zaman Kuruldu? AK Parti Kurucuları Kimlerdir?” 2016). The newspaper Cumhuriyet counted 64 founding members before 2016 and 61 thereafter. Four names have been deleted—among them those of the former president of Turkey, Abdullah Gül, and one female politician, Yasemin Kumral. “Instead of her,”

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another woman was added to the list, Ceyhun Yasemin Şimşek, without any biographical information and with no picture (“AKP, Abdullah Gül ve Üç Ismi Sildi” 2016). None of these accounts corresponds to the information on the AKP’s official website as of 2019: the official number of founding members is 60 (“AK PARTİ Kurucu Üyeler” 2016). 9. The number has been determined by scrutinizing the official websites of all municipalities in Izmir as well as the (now closed) official website yerelNET.org.tr. I couldn’t locate any other sources with which my data could be cross-examined. 10. Here also, the number has been determined by scrutinizing the official websites of all municipalities in Izmir as well as the (now closed) official site yerelNET.org.tr. I couldn’t locate any other sources with which my data could be cross-examined. 11.  The proportion is the vote for the metropolitan municipal council in 2014, but it gives a good overall idea of the general MHP vote in Trabzon’s 18 districts. 12. The percentages often correspond to very different absolute numbers. Based on the different sizes of the councils, in Konak 9 elected women account for 23.1% of all councilors, while 2 women represent 22.2% of all councilors in the much smaller Karaburun district (“Meclis Üyeleri Konak Belediyesi” 2014; “Meclis Üyelerimiz - Karaburun” 2014). 13. This presupposes that the AKP can be considered a non-quota party in spite of its internal guidelines on women’s representation. I would consider the AKP a de facto quota party if it weren’t for the widespread disregard for its internal guidelines. 14. Kurdish politicians were always in Turkish political institutions (with the exception of the single party era when only very few deputies came from the southeastern provinces; Watts 2006, 133). Before the 1990s, Kurdish deputies were mostly elected on the lists of conservative parties, starting with the Democratic Party of the 1950s. The party coopted influential tribes in exchange for their electoral support. In the 1960s the first parties claiming an ethnic identity emerged (Güney 2002). The Turkish Workers’ Party (TİP) was the first to recognize the existence of Kurds. The 1971 military coup was mostly directed against the Turkish left and the Kurdish organizations (Bozarslan 1993, 5). The 1977 local ballot marked the election of the first politicians openly proclaiming their Kurdishness. This revitalization of the Kurdish political field was aborted by the 1980 military coup, after which the Kurdish democratic movement was unable to grow (Güneş 2012, 152). 15. An overview of pro-Kurdish political parties in Turkey (the dates correspond to periods when they were active in politics; every party was generally founded some time before the closure of its predecessor): 1990–1993

80  L. G. DRECHSELOVÁ HEP (People’s Labor Party), 1993–1994 DEP (Democracy Party), 1994–2003 HADEP (People’s Democracy Party), 2003–2005 DEHAP (Democratic People’s Party), 2005–2009 DTP (Democratic Society Party), 2009–2014 BDP (Peace and Democracy Party), 2014–HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party). The information is taken from my previous publication on pro-Kurdish women politicians (Drechselová 2017, 78). 16. As of 2020, the co-chairs of the party, numerous deputies and the majority of its co-mayors elected in 2014 were still in prison. 17. In 2019, it was only the HDP which presented candidates in municipalities across the whole country. 18. This was mainly due to the 10% electoral threshold. Turkey maintains the highest electoral threshold of all member states in the Council of Europe. 19. Nurgül Uçar, the former mayor of a district of Izmir (Seyrek, attached to Menemen in 2014), took personal initiative to assemble a list of female mayors which she shared with the women’s NGO Kadın Koalisyonu as well as with me during our interview in 2015. The available statistics for female mayors throughout Turkey’s republican history are based on Uçar’s list. In her MA thesis, Aslan also gives lists of female mayors by name (Aslan 2009). Notably, these sometimes differ from Uçar’s list. 20.  This study doesn’t focus specifically on muhtars but women’s representation at the neighborhood level was particularly low in 2014: 674 out of 50 292 muhtars were women (Bianet 2019). However, 2019 saw an increase in the number of female muhtars to 1071 (Muhtarlar Konfederasyonu 2019). 21. The gendered results need to be considered in the context of the overall electoral success of the studied parties. The following simplified count of the proportion of municipal councilors elected per party gives a good idea of the results: the AKP received 44.19% of all council seats across Turkey; the CHP won 28.66% of the seats; 15.83% of councilors were elected from the MHP lists; and 3.74% of seats belonged to the BDP, the pro-Kurdish party of the period (Üste 2014, 37). 22. These statistics do not take into account the candidates of the pro-Kurdish parties that were presented “unofficially” for the co-mayorship positions. In nearly all municipalities which the parties won, a man and a woman worked together as co-mayors. 23. Two of the HDP’s elected female mayors, Gülcan Kaçmaz Sayyiğit in Van Edremit and Leyla Atsak in Van Çaldıran, were not given permission to assume office on the grounds that they had been sacked from their jobs by governmental decree. This was given as a reason in the aftermath of the 2019 election, even though the authorities had allowed these women to become candidates in the first place (Eşitlik, Adalet, Kadın Platformu 2019).

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24. These numbers are rather volatile in the Turkish context: many were the former municipalities which opened a court case against the decision of the ministry to suppress their legal personality. Courts sometimes reversed the decision and thus the number of municipalities would grow. During my field work in 2015 and 2016, the number increased by two but other court cases were still running. Such volatility has an obvious distorting effect on the statistics of women’s representation, as the baseline to which the situation is compared is constantly changing, not only between the ballots but also within the same electoral period. 25. According to parliamentary debates, the contention was rooted in differential transfers based on the political color of the municipality in question. Where the AKP was in power, the personnel and equipment of the closed-down provincial administration was transferred to the municipality, while where the opposition was in power parts of these seemed rather to be transferred to the governor, an appointee of the Ministry of the Interior. 26. The murderer of the priest Santoro was conditionally released from prison in 2016. 27. The heavy balance sheet of the military operations was underlined in the United Nations report about the situation in the southeast region with regard to human rights violations (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights 2017). 28.  Among the central districts, Balçova, Bayraklı, Karşıyaka and Konak. Among the peripheral districts, Çeşme (26.7%), Dikili (26.7%), Foça (20%), Gaziemir (29%), Narlıdere (28%), Ödemiş (22.6%) and Torbalı (22.58%). Statistics compiled based on official municipal websites. 29.  Bayındır (council majority of CHP, 6.7% women), Kemalpaşa (council majority of AKP, 8% women), Kınık (council majority of AKP, 6.7% women), Selçuk (council majority of CHP, 6.7% women). 30. The overall proportion of women in the metropolitan council of Izmir is brought down by the other two political parties who managed to send their representatives after the 2019 ballot. Neither the MHP nor the İyi Parti had any women councilors in the metropolitan council. 31. The statistics were compiled based on the websites of all district municipalities. Some of these websites had not been updated as of June 2019, three months after the election. In those cases, the online articles of the local newspaper 61saat for each district provided the lists of elected councilors. 32.  The count is based on the official websites of all Diyarbakır’s district municipalities. At times unisex names and the lack of any journalistic record for several councilors may have distorted the count. The

82  L. G. DRECHSELOVÁ majority of websites were altered, after the elected mayors were dismissed. It has thus been hard to verify these numbers a posteriori as website past recovery machines yielded only partially satisfactory results. 33.  The statistics for the 2019 election were not available at the time of writing of this volume (summer 2019). The composition of statistics ­ by my own means (mainly scrutinizing websites of the municipalities) was complicated by several factors. First and foremost, the mandates of councilors and co-mayors elected in the Kurdish region were unstable. The electoral authority in Turkey even canceled the official appointment letter which it delivered to some of them—as was the case for Ekrem İmamoğlu, elected as leader of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (Gazete Duvar 2019). In Diyarbakır’s municipalities, the number of non-functional municipal websites also complicated the statistical work. Among 16 districts, 11 were non-functional or “under reconstruction”. Yenişehir, Lice, Sur, Bağlar and Çermik were the exceptions (Yenişehir Belediyesi 2019; Sur Belediyesi 2019; Lice Belediyesi 2019).

References Abadan Unat, Nermin. 1986. Women in the Developing World: Evidence from Turkey. 1st ed. Monograph Series in World Affairs, Volume 22. Denver: Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver. Abadan-Unat, Nermin, Deniz Kandiyoti, and Mübeccel Belik Kıray, eds. 1981. Women in Turkish Society. Leiden: Brill. Acar, Feride, and Gülbanu Altunok. 2013. “The ‘Politics of Intimate’ at the Intersection of Neo-Liberalism and Neo-Conservatism in Contemporary Turkey.” Women’s Studies International Forum 41 (November): 14–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2012.10.001. “AK PARTİ Kurucu Üyeler.” 2016. Official party website. 2016. https://www. akparti.org.tr/ak-kadro/kurucu-uyeler/. “AK PARTİ Merkez Yürütme Kurulu.” 2018. Official party website. 2018. https://www.akparti.org.tr/ak-kadro/myk/. “AK Parti Ne Zaman Kuruldu? AK Parti Kurucuları Kimlerdir?” 2016. Medyafaresi, February 22, 2016. http://www.medyafaresi.com/haber/ ak-parti-ne-zaman-kuruldu-ak-parti-kuruculari-kimlerdir/770935. Akdemir, Musa. 1996. “Turquie: Tansu Çiller dans de sales draps. Mise à jour d’une collusion pouvoir-mafia et démission du ministre de l’Intérieur.” Libération, November 26. http://www.liberation.fr/planete/1996/11/26/ turquie-tansu-ciller-dans-de-sales-draps-mise-a-jour-d-une-collusion-pouvoirmafia-et-demission-du-m_187476.

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Siyasi Haber. 2018. “2019 yerel seçimleri öncesi nüfusu 500 bini geçen 12 il, büyükşehir olacak.” Siyasi Haber. January 15. http://siyasihaber4. org/2019-yerel-secimleri-oncesi-nufusu-500-bini-gecen-12-il-buyuksehir-olacak. Smith, Adrienne R., Beth Reingold, and Michael Leo Owens. 2012. “The Political Determinants of Women’s Descriptive Representation in Cities.” Political Research Quarterly 65 (2): 315–29. https://doi. org/10.1177/1065912910395327. Sur Belediyesi. 2019. “Sur Belediyesi Meclis Üyeleri.” April 2019. https://www. sur.bel.tr/surbelediye/meclis-uyeleri/. Şur, Tuncay. 2017. “Kürdün Oyu.” Gazete Duvar. April 19. https://www.gazeteduvar.com.tr/forum/2017/04/19/kurdun-oyu/. TBMM. 2019. “Milletvekilleri: Cinsiyete Göre Dağılımı.” Official website of the National Assembly. TBMM. 2019. https://www.tbmm.gov.tr/develop/ owa/milletvekillerimiz_sd.dagilim. “TBMM Albümü.” n.d. Official website of the National Assembly. TBMM. Accessed July 27, 2017. https://www.tbmm.gov.tr/TBMM_Album.htm. Tekeli, Şirin. 1982. Kadınlar ve Siyasal—Toplumsal Hayat. Yerli Araştırmalar Dizisi 6. Istanbul: Birikim Yayınları. ———. 1996. “Les femmes républicaines et la place de la femme turque dans la société d’aujourd’hui: statut juridique et politique.” Cahiers d’études sur la méditerranée orientale et le monde turco-iranien (21). http://cemoti.revues. org/557. Tepe, Sultan. 2005. “Turkey’s AKP: A Model ‘Muslim-Democratic’ Party?” Journal of Democracy 16 (3): 69–82. https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2005.0053. Tigris Haber. 2019. “Ak Parti ve HDP’nin belediye meclis üyeleri belli oldu.” Tigris Haber. February 19. https://www.tigrishaber.com/ak-parti-ve-hdpnin-belediye-meclis-uyeleri-belli-oldu-54335h.htm. Toprak, Zafer. 1994. “Türkiye’de Siyaset ve Kadın: Kadınlar Halk Fırkası’ndan Arsıulusal Kadınlar Birliği Kongresi’ne (1923–1935).” Kadın Araştırmaları Dergisi (2): 5–13. Trabzon Büyükşehir Belediyesi. 2019. “Trabzon Büyükşehir Belediyesi—Meclis Üyeleri.” 2019. https://www.trabzon.bel.tr/meclis-uyeleri.aspx. TÜIK. 2016. “Türkiye İstatistik Kurumu—Yıllara Göre İl Nüfusları.” TÜIK. 2016. http://www.tuik.gov.tr/UstMenu.do?metod=temelist. Turan, Ilter. 2006. “Old Soldiers Never Die: The Republican People’s Party of Turkey.” South European Society and Politics 11 (3–4): 559–78. https://doi. org/10.1080/13608740600856587. UNHCHR. 2017. “Report on the Human Rights Situation in South-East Turkey, July 2015 to December 2016.” Report. Geneva: United Nations. Üste, Rabia Bahar. 2014. “Yerel Siyaset ve Yerel Demokrasinin 30 Mart Yerel Seçimlerine Etkileri.” Mahalli İdareler Dergisi 2 (17): 32–44.

92  L. G. DRECHSELOVÁ ———. 2017. “Yerel Seçimlerin Cinsiyeti: Seçimler ve Kadın Temsili.” İşletme Fakültesi Dergisi 18 (1): 101–31. https://doi.org/10.24889/ifede.287467. Üstel, Füsün. 1990. “1930 Belediye Seçimlerinde Kadın Faktörü.” Argos (19) (March): 71–76. Watts, Nicole F. 1999. “Allies and Enemies: Pro-Kurdish Parties in Turkish Politics, 1990–94.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 31 (4): 631– 56. https://doi.org/10.2307/176465. ———. 2006. “Activists in Office: Pro-Kurdish Contentious Politics in Turkey.” Ethnopolitics, 5 (2): 125–44. ———. 2010. Activists in Office, Kurdish Politics and Protest in Turkey. Studies in Modernity and National Identity. Washington: University of Washington Press. White, Jenny B. 2003. “State Feminism, Modernization, and the Turkish Republican Woman.” NWSA Journal 15 (3): 145–59. Wilford, Rick. 1998. “Women, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Surveying the Ground.” In Women, Ethnicity and Nationalism: The Politics of Transition, edited by Rick Wilford and Robert L. Miller, 1–20. London and New York: Routledge. Yaraman, Ayşegül. 2015. Türkiye’de Kadınların Siyasal Temsili. 2nd ed. Istanbul: Bağlam. Yenişehir Belediyesi. 2019. “Yenişehir Belediyesi meclis üyeleri.” T.C. Diyarbakır Yenişehir Belediyesi Resmi Web Sitesi. April 2019. http://www.diyarbakiryenisehir.bel.tr. Yıldız, Hacer. 2015. “Türkiye’de Kadınların Siyasi Haklar Mücadelesi ve Nakiye Elgün.” Unpublished Master thesis, Ankara, Ankara Üniversitesi. Yılmaz, Suna. 2019. “Accumulation by Dispossession as a Common Point in Urbanization Politics in Diyarbakır.” In Kurds in Turkey: Ethnographies of Heterogeneous Experiences, edited by Lucie Drechselová and Adnan Çelik, 107–30. USA: Lexington Books. Youssef, Nadia F. 1976. “Women in the Muslim Worlds.” In Women in the World: A Comparative Study, edited by Lynne B. Iglitzin and Ruth Ross, 203–17. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO Ltd. Yüksel, Ayşe Seda. 2011. “Rescaled Localities and Redefined Class Relations: Neoliberal Experience in South-East Turkey.” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 13 (4): 433–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/19448953.2011.621788. Zeyrek, Deniz. 2018. “Kılıçdaroğlu: Milli Sorundur, Elimizden Gelen Desteği Sağlarız.” Hürriyet, January 23. http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/ yazarlar/deniz-zeyrek/kilicdaroglu-milli-sorundur-elimizden-gelen-destegi-saglariz-40718696. Zihnioğlu, Yaprak. 2003. Kadınsız İnkılap: Nezihe Muhiddin, Kadınlar Fırkası, Kadınlar Birliği. Istanbul: Metis Yayıncılık. Zihnioğlu, Yaprak, and Zafer Toprak. 2009. “Talk: Kadınsız İnkılap: Nezihe Muhiddin, Kadınlar Halk Fırkası, Kadın Birliği.” In Istanbul: Osmanlı Bankası Arşiv ve Araştırma Merkezi.

CHAPTER 3

The Road Toward Election: Women’s Exclusion from Electoral Lists

Interview with Dilruba, a municipal councilor in Trabzon, in term 2014–20191: How did you enter into politics? Ten years ago, I took part in the festival called Trabzon Days which was held in Ankara. I was representing our association [name of the association]. The president of the National Assembly saw me there and asked the deputy from Trabzon, “Why don’t you invite this girl into our party?” I told him that I am not much motivated to enter into politics but he responded “No, no, it is people like you who should get involved.” We just had this conversation. After a couple of weeks, the phone rang at 2 am in the morning. I was asked by the local party leader to join the party. […] How were you elected to the municipal council? I applied for the councillorship, but I wasn’t accepted even though back then I was the head of women’s branches. I went to a women’s branches meeting in Ankara and that day was also the last day for the finalization of the candidate lists. I met the head of the national women’s branches at that meeting and told her about my situation. She told me “You will be a candidate!” That is how I was included on the list. I was the candidate of Ankara, not of Trabzon. (Dilruba, municipal councilor, AKP, Trabzon, 31 May 2015)2

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The process of entering a political party often helps to understand the electoral prospects of female politicians—be it in terms of their networks of support or their personal loyalties. Dilruba’s experience is illustrative of dynamics present within almost all political parties in Turkey. To begin with, women first join the party and later they get into electoral office. The dissociation between these two stages of a political career is important in the light of frequent criticism that women lack political experience at the moment of their election. Dilruba’s case illustrates that most women need several years of intraparty experience before being included on the candidate list. In the first quote, Dilruba describes her entry into the AKP, merely eight years prior to her municipal election. The encounters at the cultural festival show the interconnection between different political levels: the festival brings together members of the party’s national headquarters, ministers and deputies, as well as local party leaders and stakeholders. The deputy of the province where Dilruba lives is a key actor due to his multi-positionality: he knows personally the head of the National Assembly and at the same time has the necessary leverage in the province to influence political nominations. I suppose that it was after his intervention that Dilruba got the night call of the local party leader. The “night call” is a recurrent feature in my interviewees’ narratives—as if this type of calls were only happening in the darkness of the night but also giving a hint of the busy schedule of the local political leaders. It is also notable that Dilruba, a fifty-year-old NGO representative, is referred to as “girl” by the head of the National Assembly and that this is not an isolated case, rather it is another recurrent feature of the political language. The festival devoted to Trabzon in Ankara creates a shared time and space for local party representatives and national-level politicians. Such a space enables the circulation of politicians, networking, and the building of new alliances. For Dilruba, sharing this space with influential party men allowed her to join the political party on privileged terms: no climbing of the party ladder from being a simple member to being a local district representative was required; instead, she was directly asked to join the local leader’s team. The next chapter shows that Dilruba’s entering into this shared space was in no way accidental because she possessed the necessary “capital” which enabled her to attract the attention of the influential party leaders. Her skipping some steps on the party ladder

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is also more of a rule rather than an exception in the pathways of local female politicians. The second quote shows Dilruba actively shaping her political career by making use of her contacts at the national party headquarters. Even though she doesn’t take credit for her proactive behavior during our interview, her agency in the process cannot be overlooked. Dilruba “happened to be in Ankara” on the day of the closing of the electoral lists and was able to voice her grievance to a senior party member who then ensured that she was included on the list—Dilruba mobilized her network in the capital city to her advantage. The head of the women’s branches argued against the local headquarters using the unofficial party rule that the provincial and district presidents of women’s branches should be represented in municipal elections. This shows that for local actors the national level is at times a resource (like for Dilruba) and at times a constraint (like in this case for the local party selectors). This chapter which seeks to elucidate the gendered features of the candidate selection mechanisms will further analyze the supposed dichotomy between the “national” and the “local” in politics. How do women get elected? To shed some light on this question, one needs to dissect the trajectories of female candidates from the obscurity of the intraparty selection process. The classical supply/demand model borrowed from economics stipulates that the election of politicians stems from a double logic (Norris and Lovenduski 1995): the candidates’ supply which equates to their willingness as well as aptitude to hold an elected office on the one hand; and the demand of the party selectors in search for specific identity markers and individual characteristics to increase the party’s vote share on the other hand. But this model would be incomplete without first considering political parties are gendered institutions (Lovenduski 2011, vii). The omnipresent gendered power relations run through the parties’ candidate selection processes. They reveal that women’s exclusion is not solely a function of a low percentage of female candidates (supply) or of the gender bias of mostly male selectors (demand). Women’s exclusion results from the dynamic combination of the two—what Kenny calls institutional sexism (2011, 23). This chapter puts under scrutiny the gendered character of the candidate selection processes (see also Krook and Mackay 2011, 3) while the other constitutive elements of institutional sexism are discussed in the following chapters.

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The recruitment process has tremendous impact on women’s representation: for instance, selecting candidates from the “traditional” (often intraparty) networks of the parties has appeared to be more discriminative toward women, while recruitment out of larger networks (professional chambers and associations) could at times benefit women (Crowder-Meyer 2013). Having similar profile to that of the recruiters has been proven to increase candidate’s chances for nomination. To start with, being a man means sharing gender with most of the party selectors. If men benefit from the “homosocial” capital (Bjarnegård 2013), women suffer from the “out-group effect” since they do not resemble the recruiters (Johnson 2016). Finally, in the recruitment process, the formal rules (party directives, quotas) combine with the informal rules (such as norms, stereotypes) (Correa 2016). The impact of this mix on women within the context of Turkey will be analyzed below. The party policies toward women matter for the overall female political representation. Especially in the absence of legally mandated quota, such as in Turkey, the political parties act as gatekeepers of electoral politics (Achin and Lévêque 2006; Bjarnegård and Kenny 2016). The question is not whether the parties in Turkey discriminate against women but rather in what way they do so. This chapter seeks to elaborate on this core question by breaking it into a set of sub-questions: To what extent do political parties differ in their policies toward female candidates? How their own internal measures encourage or impede women’s representation? What role do the women’s branches play in the process of candidate selection? And, how do we explain the feminization of Kurdish politics? According to the feminist neo-institutionalist perspective (Franceschet et al. 2012), parties are not monolithic blocs and they are not inert. Thus, the attention paid to candidate selection reflects the dynamic character of the functioning of political parties. In the following analysis, the political parties are “broken up” into networks of agents to see how these are interconnected and how they interact on the key issue of candidate selection (Massicard and Watts 2013). The recruitment is in reality a multitude of processes which depend on the context of the interaction and differ from party to party and even between districts within the same political party (see Sawicki 1994). Even though the recruitment process has been justly compared to a “secret garden” of political parties (Bjarnegård and Kenny 2015) and to a “black box” (Kenny and Verge 2016), this shall not have a discouraging effect on conducting intraparty research, on the contrary, it should motivate further ethnographic observation.

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3.1  The Exclusion of Women by Local Recruiters Turkey’s political parties are known for their authoritarian character and for being hierarchical centralized structures (Ayan Musil 2011; Özbudun 2000). It wouldn’t be surprising to discover an electoral recruitment process dominated by the national headquarters, more precisely the close circle of the party leader, with almost no power within the local party units. The Law on Political Parties (1983) supports this hypothesis by the numerous prerogatives of high caliber that it accords to the national headquarters. Indeed, the party headquarters has the power to nominate the heads of the local unit, to dissolve the entire local directorate; it spearheads the designation of delegates who in turn elect local party representatives. It also distributes funds to the provincial and district units. The Law allows the parties to choose whether they compose their candidate lists by nomination or through the primaries. An overwhelming majority of parties choose nomination by national headquarters over the primaries, which has led some researchers to defend the thesis that in Turkey the national headquarters overruns the local units (Turan 2006, 569). I argue that the picture is much more complicated and that the study of the composition of the electoral lists yields some surprising findings about Turkey’s authoritarian party structures. The local units are actually not so powerless. First of all, the use of the radical prerogatives of the national headquarters may not always pay off. For example, the instrument of dissolution of local units is dramatic and can be costly. The MHP overused it in recent years as a means to deal with challengers of the party leader (presiding over the party since 1997). The party has been in internal turmoil since 2015 and it even gave rise to another nationalist offspring, the İyi Parti (the Good Party). The large scale suspensions of rebellious party members and the removal of local party directions freed the hands of intraparty opponents and may have accelerated the foundation of the MHP’s ideological twin and challenger, the Good Party. In 2016, in Trabzon, I interviewed one of MHP’s former members the day after her dismissal from the party’s district directorate. We scheduled the interview a week earlier when she was still in the party. At the moment of the interview, she was determined to pursue politics in the new nationalist party. Secondly, in distributing electoral seats, the party headquarters cannot act totally arbitrarily because it needs to balance several imperatives: to nominate candidates who appeal to the local electorate and at the same time to reward influential party members to secure their future

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support (Achin 2007, 130–31). In this endeavor, the national headquarters suffers from an information deficit about each province as well as each district (there are 1397 municipalities in Turkey). This information gap gives the local politicians major say in the composition of the electoral lists. To counter their “excessive” influence, the national leadership deploys a set of techniques to get crucial information about the local stakeholders,3 but the local party leaders still hold—or claim to hold— key knowledge about the electorate. In addition, the power balance often turns in favor of local businessmen who exercise significant influence on party nominations simply because they finance the party locally when public funding sent by the party headquarters in Ankara is scarce. The parliamentary and municipal elections differ in the stakes involved. In all parties, the selection of future deputies is closely policed by the national headquarters while for local elections, the amount of candidates to elect is greater, the ballots are generally less prestigious, less scrutinized by the media and the individual impact of elected councilors is much lower than that of a deputy. However, with the recent reforms of local governance in Turkey, especially after 2014, the prerogatives of metropolitan municipalities increased significantly as did the role of metropolitan mayors—as a result, the stakes of occupying this highest local office have risen and some politicians have displayed strong preference for local office rather than being a member of parliament.4 Parties have vested interest in closely selecting who their metropolitan mayors will be. With the national headquarters closely controlling the selection of deputies, the margin of action for local players is much bigger in municipal elections than in the legislative ballots. What does this mean for women? Women appear as one of the necessary “ingredients” of the lists but the dosage is limited. Zeynep, a 50-year-old CHP member and municipal councilor in one of Izmir’s central districts, described what she assumed was the strategy of selectors: A number of equilibria are taken into account. The district [name of her district] is home to mostly immigrant population from Greece and Bulgaria. Because I am not originally from this district – I moved in a couple of years ago – I wasn’t expecting a high place on the electoral list but being 11th was a disappointment. The selectors took into consideration how many votes each candidate can bring and that is why several people got ahead of me. The ranking was done targeting certain groups among the electorate. I don’t have a vote potential as such. I come with my ideas and projects. (Zeynep, municipal councilor, CHP, Izmir, 23 June 2015)

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Zeynep considers herself as not having “vote potential” even though she is a lawyer, has several years of experience within her political party and she is well known in her district for her work in the local women’s center during the past eight years which eventually propelled her to move into the district. Zeynep is not void of “capital” (professional, political, cultural) but the structure of her capital doesn’t seem to fit the selectors’ priorities. Indeed, this logic underlines how the inequalities of the social order contribute to relegating women to the periphery of the selection process—there are indeed few female hospital managers who could bring thousands of votes due to their reputation and public respect. Women are also fewer among the real estate agents who bring in finances for local party units. However, the argument of “vote potential” is also a useful instrument in the hands of local party recruiters. For women, this means a subtle road to exclusion in addition to the less subtle practices that the local party unit uses (my interviewee form the NGO KA-DER identified the usage of unisex names on the lists as a cover-up tactic to avoid the application of a female quota by local selectors5). The constitution of the lists involves a variety of actors but the preponderance of local actors appears clearly in several narratives of my interviewees. Ayşe, municipal councilor from the MHP in Trabzon, described the composition of the municipal list as follows: The deputy from Trabzon had the right to select the head of the candidate list, second place was reserved for the name backed by the district party leader, third place was reserved for the candidate of the provincial party president. My colleague here was in the 4th place. She is a long-term work associate of our party’s candidate to the mayorship and she worked for decades at the municipality. The 5th place was mine, I was the candidate of our women’s branches. The 6th place was reserved for the name supported by our candidate at the metropolitan municipality. The remaining names were determined by the party assembly taking into account their competences and specializations…as you know, expertise is required for the municipal councillorship. (Ayşe, municipal councilor, MHP, Trabzon, 4 June 2015)

Ayşe’s account reveals the central position held by the member of parliament elected from the province—not only is he a national player as he lives in Ankara and has access to the national party headquarters, but he is also a top-ranking local politician (often formerly himself the head of the provincial party unit). With such prestigious standing, he has the

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power to determine not only the number one of the electoral list but often also the candidate to the office of mayor. After him, other local players have their say over the recruitment. In the MHP, the national headquarters approves (or declines) the lists, but their composition is spearheaded by the local players. The procedure is comparable within the CHP as described by Petek, whom I also met in the city of Trabzon and who was a former municipal councilor: The head of the provincial party unit, the members of the provincial party directorate and the candidate running for mayor decide on the electoral lists together. […] Usually, the candidate for the mayorship has a say over 10% of the names, which means that he can choose between 4 and 5 people to compose his future team. But this is not always respected as the candidates want more influence. And they obtain more influence especially if they bring money to the party. As the campaign often depends on the candidates’ own finances, those who bring the biggest funds end up on the list. When our list was first composed, I was at the top. Then I dropped to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th place and I was finally elected at the 5th. (Petek, former municipal councilor, CHP, Trabzon, 23 March 2016)

Petek’s experience from the 2009 municipal election confirms other accounts of the preponderance of the local party representatives in the recruitment of candidates. Her testimony also reveals the strategy of encroachment deployed by the mayoral candidates to control more nominations than the informal party rule stipulates. The correlation between one’s political influence and the money may appear alarming but certainly not surprising. If the local recruitment process excludes women, the quota (in the CHP and in the HDP) or the internal party guidelines (in the AKP) on women’s representation represent a constraint to local players. Taking into account Ayşe and Petek’s description of those who determine the ranking on the lists (and thus the eligibility of a candidate), some of these actors may be forced to either push for the candidacy of a woman or to see “their” male candidate downgraded on the list because of the obligation to include more women. In practice, the instructions about women’s inclusion are often omitted or respected to a bare minimum. When pressured to insert women on the list—besides resorting to unisex names—the selectors advance three types of reasons why no more women can find a place on the list: political conjuncture dictates to

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include all current (male) candidates otherwise the party may lose votes; more women would hurt the sensibilities of the local conservative electorate, and finally there were not enough competent female candidates. The multiple instances of sidelining female candidates render the final justification hypocritical. On the one hand, the absence of female candidates is deplored, while simultaneously, those women who applied to councillorship are sidelined or placed at the bottom of the list among the non-eligible positions. Similar to Petek from the CHP, Ahu, AKP’s municipal councilor in Trabzon, also experienced a decrease in her ranking on the electoral list: You know how it works? Recep Tayyip Erdoğan demands the systematic inclusion of the head of women’s branches on the candidate list. The national headquarters then threatens the local units that their lists will not be approved if this is not respected. So they gave in and include one woman while any other woman is put at the end of the list with no chance of being elected and that is how we lose very talented politicians. (Ahu, municipal councilor, AKP, Trabzon, 15 March 2016)

Ahu’s colleague from the AKP in Trabzon, Emel, experienced the fall in ranking firsthand. As the head of the local women’s branch, she was supposed to be among the first three candidates. Her initial ranking was already below this level (she was 4th) and she was put on the 5th place when another candidate was added by the national headquarters.6 The fate of Emel’s only other female running mate was even sadder. At the last moment, she was replaced by her husband, a local businessman. This made Emel the only woman from the AKP in her municipal council. Women often appear as victims of the last 24 hours before the final submission of the electoral lists. The period just before the closing of the candidate lists is a moment of heightened tensions: a lot that has been agreed upon is changed last minute based on ad hoc interventions of influential party members. Women’s absence from backstage politics makes them particularly vulnerable to these last 24 hours unless they have a strong supporter inside the party. The stories of downgrading women’s position on the lists are numerous. They are present in all parties and in all studied localities. The preferential vote doesn’t exist in Turkey which gives the party selectors a major say over the ranking of candidates by which they effectively determine their chance of election.7 Female politicians are often clustered

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around the critical level where the party prospects of getting the candidates into the council diminish. They are the ones to be “sacrificed” to political conjuncture and who pay the price in case of a vote loss. However, even women who are on eligible positions and manage to get elected to the district’s municipal council suffer from their lower position on the list. The most concrete consequence is that they cannot integrate into the metropolitan council which only the first few councilors from the list are entitled to join. Women’s lower ranking on the list can have some dramatic consequences for women’s representation: in Trabzon, only two women sat in the metropolitan council alongside 66 men during the 2014–2019 period. The Trabzon province is dominated by the AKP and the absence of women from the metropolitan council shows that the party didn’t include them sufficiently high on its district electoral lists. In Izmir, on the other hand, the proportion of women in the metropolitan council was very similar to that of women in the districts (in the metropolitan council women accounted for 16.8% of councilors while they accounted for 18.7% of councilors in all district councils) (Izmir Büyükşehir 2014; Kavas 2018, 37). The CHP is a leading political force in Izmir but is closely followed by the AKP. The assessment of these proportions of female representation thus needs to take into account both parties. The similar proportion of women in the metropolitan council and in districts means that women were equally distributed on CHP and AKP candidate lists.8 Finally, in Diyarbakır, as has been mentioned earlier, the DBP, who dominated the metropolitan municipality, was the only party to elect women to this governing body and women would be proportionally better off if the DBP was the only party in the council.9 The DBP includes women in the upper segment of its electoral lists, thus ensuring a high female proportion in the metropolitan council. Among the major findings so far about the candidate selection processes is the fact that the local party units have a much bigger say in the candidate recruitment than the authoritarian and hierarchical party structures in Turkey would suggest. That is why the local party leaders tend to have a detrimental impact on women’s candidacies. This is a feature that concerns in particular the right-wing conservative parties (AKP and MHP), and slightly less the centrist secular CHP. The pro-Kurdish parties (HDP and DBP) are the only exceptions to this rule. A more detailed look at women’s representation in the different provinces shows an extraordinary adaptation of political parties.

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The case of the AKP in Izmir has already been mentioned as it elected a ­ not-so-different proportion of women to its main rival the CHP (20 and 25%, respectively). If only Izmir was considered, one could be inclined to explain the discrepancies in AKP’s electoral strategy by the ­socio-cultural characteristics of the city where women are more likely to have a university diploma, professional career, and support of the families for their political endeavors. Izmir’s more “liberal” character as opposed to the conservative Trabzon which determines the size of the “candidate pool” would be the major explanatory variable of women’s political representation. However, adding Diyarbakır to the equation complicates this analysis. The AKP sent similar numbers of women to the councils in Diyarbakır (where it is largely underrepresented) and in Trabzon (where it is dominant). Diyarbakır is at least as conservative as Trabzon with the female population being generally less educated and less integrated in the labor market. Given these indicators, AKP’s women’s inclusion should be close to zero in Diyarbakır province but it is not (AKP elected at least eight women across the province in 2014). The party appears to mirror the local political standard set by the pro-Kurdish DBP. The result falls short of the DBP’s 40% female quota, but the effort is there while a similar pattern cannot be seen in Trabzon where the pro-Kurdish parties are quasi-inexistent. Finally, some inclusion patterns of women point toward a certain degree of women’s “interchangeability,” a logic that could be summarized as “any woman would do.” The experience of Mihriban from the pro-Kurdish party should be considered: aged around 60 during our interview, Mihriban was already a candidate in 2009. Her district was the “quota district” in which only female candidacies to the mayorship were accepted. She described the unfolding of her candidacy: In 2009, we were six women in total. Inhabitants of the district were called to a public deliberation where we all introduced ourselves and our vision and projects. Then a vote took place. We were told that the party headquarters would consider the first three names that came out of this deliberation. I was not selected but I joined the team of the successful candidate and worked with her during the campaign. In 2014, I applied again, and so did the incumbent mayor. This time, it was me who was selected. (Mihriban, district co-mayor, DBP, interviewed in Diyarbakır, 6 March 2016)

In Mihriban’s district, a transfer takes place from one female mayor to her former challenger. It is almost as if Mihriban waited for her turn to

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come. Unfortunately, without further knowledge about the particular case, it is hard to explain the reasons behind this change. What is clear, however, is that in municipalities, the pro-Kurdish party favors the circulation of cadres rather than a long sequence of mandates. The switch between the two candidates in 2009 and 2014 may be indicative of this trend. To further complicate this assessment, MHP’s strategy in the city of Trabzon can be considered. In Trabzon, the local party selectors appear so reluctant to support women’s candidacies that they even exclude women whose names come out of the local party consultations on popularity. Amateur artist and retired school teacher Dilay, a candidate to candidacy to become an MP (aday adayı),10 paid the price of being a too ambitious challenger to the provincial party establishment which refused to put her on the list even after she allegedly won the popularity poll. However, another woman, Arzu, was asked by the party to take up a place on the candidate list for the upcoming parliamentary election. Unlike Dilay, she seemed to better understand the terms of the deal: When I thought about the candidacy that I was offered, I didn’t consider any personal gains. I knew that the place of women wasn’t at the top of the list. Maybe this will change in the future. But I wanted mostly to serve my homeland and my ranking on the list played no role. It was only about the service. That is why I accepted the offer. (Arzu, president of women’s branches, MHP, Trabzon, 14 April 2016)

Arzu, the head of the local women’s branch, made it clear that her prospects for election were null. Nevertheless, she accepted the candidacy “to serve her homeland,” as she puts it. The electoral bids of Arzu and Dilay are different in nature. Dilay is perceived as a dangerous candidate because of her ambition. By displaying ambition, she was viewed to be engaged in subversive behavior because the acceptable image is that of a self-sacrificing woman. This resulted in sidelining Dilay despite her popularity. Arzu, on the other hand, was the “perfect” candidate. She was put on the list for the sole fact of being a woman and she assumed her role as a harmless candidate with no displayed ambition. This challenges the simple reading of “interchangeability” of women since some women are clearly more preferable to others. What preliminary conclusions are to be drawn from these observations? The studied localities and political parties11 show that the intraparty rules are seldom followed à la lettre and, more often than not,

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their disregard happens at the expense of women. Not only the intraparty rules are neglected during the composition of electoral lists, some local party leaders go actively against the inclusion of women: the use of unisex names has been only one of the most blatant techniques. Female candidates were often excluded from their “secured” positions in the last 24 hours before the lists’ closing. This shows that the local party units are not dominated by the national headquarters, on the contrary, they maintain a solid grasp over the recruitment process. Thus, in order to understand the gendered mechanisms of political exclusion, neither the top-down approach to political parties, nor the idea of a dichotomy between the national and the local are helpful. In contrast, party structures appear as interconnected and their relations are context-bound, locally situated, and dynamic. The main puzzle stemming from this panorama is why the intraparty rules are so frequently disregarded. The assumptions about Turkey’s political parties as authoritarian and hierarchical structures again fall short of explaining this phenomenon. But before diving into this puzzle, the upcoming segment scrutinizes the role that women play in the recruitment process.

3.2  The Unbearable Weakness of Women’s Branches The overall majority of local party selectors are men. So far, women appeared to be on the losing side of this male-dominated selection process. However, their role as recruiters also needs to be considered. Even though the title of this segment proves largely self-revealing, women’s exclusion from the body of recruiters is telling about the inner workings of women’s branches within the political parties. I first consider the status of women’s branches as one of the major explanatory variables of women’s branches’ absence from the selection process. Then, I move on to discuss branches’ concrete contribution to the selection processes through a party-sensitive lenses. Most of the Turkish political parties have established women’s branches (Çadır 2011, 60).12 These are party structures with an exclusively female membership, tasked with voter mobilization in electoral campaigns and with increasing the numbers of female party members (Achin and Lévêque 2006). Since the branches are a widespread phenomenon in Turkey, it is noteworthy that the newly created İyi Parti (Good Party) decided initially not to create them arguing that

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women’s branches may represent places of female confinement (Yeniçağ 2017). In this regard, the party’s reversal of this decision in 2019 is telling of the problems it encountered in mobilizing women in the absence of the women’s branch. Notwithstanding the initial absence of the branches, the Good Party put in place a 25% gender quota and included 26.33% of women on its candidate lists in 2018, seeing 7.5% of them elected (Kadın Koalisyonu 2018; TBMM 2018). This gendered balance sheet reveals that women’s ranking on the Good Party’s lists prevented them from entering parliament in larger numbers. However, the initial non-creation of women’s branches by the Good Party brings to light the ambiguous role of the branches, between steppingstones to electoral politics and places of confinement for women.13 Research has shown that women’s branches are enablers of women’s political participation especially in the Islamist conservative parties (Clark and Schwedler 2003; Arat 2005). But they didn’t exist throughout the Turkish Republican history. On the contrary, they are a rather recent phenomenon. Created after 1960, women’s branches existed for two decades before being banned by the 1980 military junta. They were reestablished again after two legislative changes in 1995 and 1999. Textual analysis reveals striking cross-partisan similarities in the status of the women’s branches between the CHP, the AKP, and the MHP. In each of these parties, they are considered as auxiliaries to the main party structure, as a “side branch” (CHP 2015, 167) or as “side entities” (AKP 2016, 70). The CHP was the first party to establish women’s branches and in the 1970s the branches used to send two representatives to the party’s assembly. Women also used to organize congresses and elect their branch leadership (Tekeli 1982, 273). Following the re-founding of the branches in the 1990s, it wasn’t until 2012 that women in the CHP resumed the organization of congresses. In addition, women’s representation in the party’s assembly dropped to one person and she didn’t have a right to vote during the meetings. Between 2007 and 2010, the CHP didn’t even have a women’s branches president at the national level. This evolution shows that the status of women’s branches is not immune to changes, even detrimental ones. Nowadays, the designation of women’s branch presidents within the CHP happens through bi-annual congresses (CHP 2018). This process appears as essentially decentralized—the provincial female leaders seldom interfere in the district

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selection and, correspondingly, the national headquarters of women’s branches doesn’t exercise systemic pressure on the congresses in provinces. Moreover, CHP women’s congresses are systematically competitive— featuring two or more candidates. My respondents voiced frustration over what they pictured as never-ending disputes that accompany each congress. However, it should be underlined that the CHP is the only party with antagonistic congresses, the outcome of which is not always known in advance. In this sense, within the CHP, the process of designating women’s branch president is political. However, this competitive environment proves costly: more often than not, the losing team indeed recognizes the defeat but is rarely willing to collaborate with the winner. As a result, non-negligible numbers of women distance themselves from politics in the aftermath of a lost congress. CHP’s female politicians, in their overwhelming majority, hold a belief that the branches’ selection process should be autonomous from the main party unit. Sevim, former envoy of national women’s branches in the Izmir province, shared the following testimony: Men went out of their way to prevent me from pursuing a political career. During one women’s branch congress, the head of the local party unit presented a female municipal councilor as his candidate for the head of women’s branch against our team. The mayor of one of the districts also came with his candidate. We still won the election because we were well organized. […] Later, during a press conference, I gave a speech in which I called upon all men in the party to take their hands off our women’s branch. You can imagine that they jumped to the ceiling when they heard that and each and every one denied any meddling in our congresses. (Sevim, former envoy of national women’s branches, CHP, Izmir, 7 July 2015)

Interestingly, Sevim was among those who distanced themselves from politics after the following congress which failed to reelect her team. But her experience with men’s “meddling” in women’s congresses reveals the stakes that women’s branches represent for the local (and national) leadership because during campaigns, these women work tirelessly for the leadership’s reelection. For the local party unit control over the local women’s branch is a matter of strengthening one’s electoral support. The branch is financially and logistically dependent on the party leader. With an antagonistic relationship, branch activities can

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become paralyzed. Some of the techniques that leaders of local party units deploy to control the women’s branch are withdrawing their funding. Occasionally they also resort to “punishing” a disobeying women’s branch president: in 2015, things got heated in the province of Afyonkarahisar, the intraparty tensions even made it to the national press (Milliyet 2015) as well as to the narratives of several of my interviewees. Allegedly, the president of the local women’s branch refused to comply with an intraparty restriction on participation in a demonstration condemning the murder of a female college student. The party, fearing a backlash from the more conservative electorate, deemed that its representatives shouldn’t be seen at this public event but the women’s branch disobeyed and took part in the rally. This was one of the catalysts of a crisis between the branch president and the local party leadership who ended up locking her “book of decisions” (karar defteri). Without being recorded in this book, any meeting couldn’t be officially held and thus her activities were effectively blocked. This clash made the dependence of women’s branch on the local party unit very clear. Unlike in the CHP, the AKP women’s branch presidents enjoy the right to vote in the party’s executive meetings (AKP 2015) even though my interviewees suggested that a formal vote is rarely practiced. In this sense, the AKP women’s branch presidents are better off in terms of their intraparty standing than their CHP counterparts. This may appear as counter-intuitive given that the AKP is a conservative right-wing party while the CHP claims to strive for gender equality. The AKP has organized women’s congresses since 2005 but they differ significantly from those in the CHP. There has been a policy of the AKP national headquarters to only have one candidate in each congress (the party calls this strategy the “one candidate, common list” or in Turkish “tek aday, ortak liste”). Featuring only one candidate in the congress doesn’t erase the intraparty competition but it transfers it backstage. The visible political competition observable in the CHP is thus absent from most of AKP’s congresses. The benefits of this arrangement are non-negligible: on the one hand, the party projects an image of unity to the outside, there are no stories of tensions and quarrels on which the media thrive. On the other hand, and crucially, this allows the national headquarters to keep control of the selection of its local representatives (the same principle is also pushed for the local party units, not only the women’s branches). The congress in the AKP is more of a confirmation of a candidate

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favored by the national headquarters. In Trabzon, Ahu recounted the mandate transfer that she experienced firsthand: Our head of women’s branches quit because she didn’t want to work with the district party leader. Her successor was nominated but her communication with the other members of the team was not good and so they asked for her replacement. In reaction, the head of provincial women’s branches nominated me because she already knew me from my previous work for the party. Then a congress was organized where I was elected. Then I went to Ankara where I got the official letter of confirmation. (Ahu, head of local women’s branches, AKP, Trabzon, 15 March 2016)

Ahu’s account reveals two scenarios of departure for women’s branch presidents: in the case of a disagreement with the local party leader or with its own team. These nomination practices make it hard for a researcher to study the intraparty power dynamics among AKP’s women. But the media appearances of high party officials can sometimes reveal more than they hide. This was the case in relation to another transfer of power, this time at the highest level, from Sibel Gönül to Lütfiye Selva Çam. These are the excerpts from the official press conference during which the incumbent head of AKP’s women’s branches passed the baton to her nominated successor between the two legislative ballots of the 2015: Sibel Gönül: “Dear friends, in our effort to construct an ever better future for our country, the heart and support of women and mothers are very important. I would like to thank them for their support. May God not bring any harm to our country and our people, may the way of our people be open. I thank my team but we will continue to work tirelessly. [To the team] You will not decrease your concentration or enthusiasm and you will not get discouraged. We will work together with our dear friend [facing Selva Çam], young but with a lot of experience that we have chosen within our executive committee. God give her strength. God give strength to all my team.” Lütfiye Selva Çam: “Inşallah. Today, we are taking over the reins but tomorrow, maybe we will pass on the baton to others. Our party, the AK Party, registers the highest women’s participation. Standing here today, I encounter friends with whom I have already worked. Our connection was never interrupted. Side by side, God willing, we will raise our flag even higher. We will not speak much; we will work a lot. […] What is essential is the continuity of our movement.” (AKP Kadın Kolları 2015)

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At the highest level as well, the replacement of the women’s branches president took place by a nomination followed by a congress to confirm the new top women’s representative. However, there is more to this particular transfer. To understand the message, the context is crucial. This change took place in September 2015, right in the middle between the June and the November legislative elections. The ballot earlier that year was a shock for the governing AKP which emerged as a winner but without parliamentary majority. This had been interpreted as a failure of local party organizations, including the women’s branches. During my interviews in 2016, when the inter-electoral period was evaluated, women frequently judged their efforts as insufficient and the November 2015 majority-winning ballot was seen as “restauration” (toparlama) by many respondents. The press conference, from which the above excerpts come, was crowded with members of women’s branch headquarters. The passage of the baton took place seemingly in the public eye and all was staged to signify peaceful transition, continuity, and unity. Discursively, the element of continuity had a central place in both presidents’ speeches. Religious and conservative figures of speech were present and so was the obligatory reference to motherhood. In reality though, Sibel Gönül paid the price of the vote decrease, she was among the rare top-ranking party officials to leave her job in the aftermath of the June 2015 election. Accordingly, her message to the executive team was mainly motivating—she called on them not to lose fervor and to continue the hard work. In this way Gönül underlined that under her leadership the team worked hard even though this may not have been the general opinion within the party. However, there was no explicit mention of the electoral campaign or the political climate of the country. Selva Çam then opened her address by indicating that her team will also leave in the future. This may have served a double function: on the one hand, she underlined the continuity by stressing that the line of women’s branches was essentially the same notwithstanding the change in the leadership. On the other hand, by stressing the temporary nature of her appointment, she also did the necessary to appear modest and not hungry for power which would be an unacceptable trait of a female politician. Even while reading these clues, one gets the sense that the competition among candidates for the highest post in the women’s branches is hidden behind the scene by the “one candidate, common list” principle.

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If in the CHP and the AKP, the women’s branch has the status of an auxiliary organ with regards to the main party unit, the situation in the MHP displays this relegation even more clearly. In the MHP, the head of women’s branches is called women’s coordinator, she is nominated by the party leader at the national as well as the local level and exercises her mandate as his subordinate. The party directives on women’s branches display some original elements. For instance, it is only the MHP which prescribes its women’s branches to educate Turkish women about the importance of being Turkish. Women are also tasked with preventing the division of the country (MHP n.d.). The directives allow the membership of women who are not members of the party (in other parties, only party members are members of the women’s branches). Finally, there is also a list of the “things not to do” (yapılmayacak işler), among others, the giving of speeches without consent from one’s hierarchical superior (MHP n.d.). MHP’s women’s branches are the only ones not to organize their own congresses. The coordinators are nominated by the party leader every couple of years based on his preference. In 2010, academic Şennur Şener was appointed, and after her, in 2015, pharmacist Nevin Taşlıçay who also became the chief councilor to the party president (Ülkücü Medya 2016). Being generally recruited from the elected members of the local party leadership, it is possible to say that local women’s coordinators in the MHP are indirectly elected. However, this means that women’s coordinators are elected both by male and female party voters. Coordinators’ political destiny appears strongly interconnected with one of the local party leader. Not only can he replace the head of women’s branches at his will, she often resigns after “her” local leader leaves office (Ayan Musil 2011, 139). Even if the provincial coordinator of the MHP’s women’s branches has the authority to select women’s coordinators at the district level, she often closely consults the local party leader on the process. This is what Mehtap, provincial women’s coordinator, shared about the procedure: The list of candidates to the position of district women’s coordinators is approved by me and then sent to Ankara. I encourage the district party presidents [men] to come to me with the list of names of women they want to work with because it is them who find themselves in everyday contact with the women’s coordinator. We then discuss the different options. (Mehtap, women’s coordinator, MHP, Izmir, 20 June 2016)

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My interviews both in Izmir and Trabzon showed that MHP’s district and provincial women’s representatives are selected in close collaboration with the male local party leaders. This male involvement is very similar in the AKP. In fact, women in both of these conservative right-wing parties openly recognize the involvement of men in selecting female representatives. Fatma from the AKP in Izmir confirms this trend: According to our procedural rules, the local party leader sends three names to the national headquarters which then picks one to become the women’s branches’ local president. Together with my name, two others were sent, but eventually it was me who was selected. I didn’t think about a career in women’s branches. My father was in politics and he discouraged me from the women’s only environment. So when the provincial party leader asked me to become the head of the women’s branch I said no. He solicited me a second time and I refused again. It was after his third offer that I finally accepted. (Fatma, president of women’s branches, AKP, Izmir, 21 June 2016)

Fatma’s narrative reveals, on the one hand, the institutionalization of men’s involvement in selecting presidents of women’s branches and on the other, it shows that the balance of power is on the side of local leaders vis-à-vis the national headquarters. Ankara has its say in the procedure (theoretically) by choosing between three names—the choice is however framed by the local leader from the onset by selecting the names. Still, the headquarters clearly favors the local representative’s choice. His repeated offers to Fatma were certainly not voiced as “let’s include you among the three names and see what happens.” The local leader was confident that his choice was going to be approved by Ankara. At the same time, Fatma is not an unknown name in Ankara. Similarly to Dilruba in the opening of this chapter, Fatma also has important allies at the party headquarters: aged only 32 during our interview, she had already worked as the head of planning for the 2014 mayoral campaign of Binali Yıldırım in Izmir (he lost the contest but became Prime Minister soon after). In 2015, Fatma was also involved in the presidential campaign of Tayyip Erdoğan. Finally, Fatma’s father was a well-known politician and his daughter benefited from the “capital of reputation.” This overview of the status of women’s branches showed that the situation of women within the parties is not uniform and that ­party-specific lenses are necessary to unpack it. Some counter-intuitive findings emerged, such as the fact that the center-left CHP’s women branch

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under the current party leadership doesn’t have a better standing than the branch of the right-wing conservative AKP. What also became clear is that women don’t share the same attitude toward men’s involvement in their selection process—in the MHP, the nomination by a man is considered standard, in the AKP, the local leaders are closely involved in the process and the congress only serves as a confirmation, while in the CHP, women decry men’s “meddling” in their congresses and strive for autonomy. From what precedes, women’s limited impact on the recruitment of candidates appears little surprising. In the AKP, women are not institutionally associated with the recruitment process. However, individually, they may have an influence such as in Trabzon in 2009 where one female member of the local directorate took personal initiative and printed brochures for female candidates to the municipal council. The women’s branches president is sometimes “consulted” on the choice of names to be included on the list. In this regard, the president’s position is not unambiguous. The AKP has an informal policy of privileging the inclusion of district and provincial branches’ presidents on the candidate lists for the municipal election. Often however, they are the only woman included following the tokenistic logic of women’s inclusion (one woman to represent the category of women). When and if she gets consulted during the candidate selection process, it is not about the number of women on the list but about concrete names—this suggests not necessarily the selectors’ respect for women’s opinion but rather a close-to-total ignorance of who prospective local female politicians are. Paradoxically, the candidacy of the women’s branch president diminishes the electoral prospects of other women in the same constituency. This means that being a women’s branch president is a key political resource in the AKP; female politicians thus have strong incentive to compete for this office if they want to advance their political career. But the overall balance sheet shows that very few of the 4.5 million members of the AKP’s women’s branches have any electoral chances whatsoever.14 In the CHP, the current practice is somehow the opposite. Under the leadership of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu (since 2010) being women’s branches president has proven mostly detrimental to women’s electoral bids. Even though the heads of women’s branches try to keep a low profile inside the party, this doesn’t help them to increase their electoral chances. This means that the women’s branches representatives rarely challenge the party leadership for its unwillingness to increase the women’s electoral

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quota in order to not hamper their own electoral chances. Women’s branches in the CHP seldom represent a steppingstone into electoral politics. Several of my interviewees in Izmir perceived involvement in the branches as hierarchically inferior to the main party unit and as counterproductive to their political career. Women’s representatives in the CHP do get elected into the municipal council but it is more of an exception rather than the rule as within the AKP. This intraparty configuration together with the 33% female quota on the list favors the emergence of women’s alternative pathways into politics. Effectively, the CHP is the party where most of its female councilors progressed inside the party outside of the women’s branches. Alternative structures to women’s branches were even created: “Women’s Platform” (Kadın Platformu) was in place in Izmir between 2009 and 2014. It was tasked with finding ways to get women from different professional sectors involved in party politics. This also means that in the CHP, women are not confined to women’s branches because they are more likely to hold positions of power inside the main party structure, including the most influential local offices.15 But men remain the main recruiters of candidates and do not select more women than the level prescribed by the quota. During my fieldwork, I couldn’t uncover any women’s involvement in the selection process within the CHP that went beyond an ad hoc individual role. With the absence of positive action measures in the MHP, the individual efforts of local female politicians as well as the willingness of the local party leader are decisive in determining the number of women on the candidate list. There is no institutional mechanism associating women to party executive decisions, but ad hoc initiatives can sometimes yield positive results. Prior to the 2014 municipal election, the MHP women’s branch president successfully pushed for the inclusion of two female candidates in the municipal council in Trabzon. As a result, these female politicians became the first ever to hold the councillorship position on behalf of the MHP in that city. Women’s individual action and the local leadership’s responsiveness to women’s demands thus proved to have an influence on the numbers of women elected. In sum, women appear to be marginalized by the local party leadership during the composition of the electoral lists. Women’s branches of the AKP, the MHP, and the CHP also proved to be rather insignificant as far as the candidate selection procedure goes. The next section discusses the ambiguous relationship between the so-called democratic

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measures taken by political parties and women’s political representation dealing also more in detail with the pro-Kurdish parties.

3.3  Democracy, Not for Women? So far, I have mostly underlined mechanisms of women’s exclusion at the local level. Women have suffered from last-minute changes on the candidate lists and ambitious female politicians have been replaced by women who were ready to give up their electoral prospects and embrace a symbolic role. The following pages focus on the mechanisms of inclusion with special attention on the role that the parties’ headquarters in Ankara play with regard to women’s inclusion both in legislative and municipal ballots. Within the political parties, it is often assumed that giving more power to local party units and more decentralization means more democracy and that more “democracy” is automatically good for women. My research shows otherwise.16 The biggest hurdle for female politicians has traditionally been inclusion on the candidate list. Because once candidates, women’s ranking is often favorable. Şirin Tekeli has shown that in the 1970s almost half of all female candidates to the Parliament were placed among the first four names on the list (1982, 279–80)—this gave women proportionally higher chances of getting elected than men who were numerically dominant on the lists. Tekeli interprets this as conscious politics of inclusion on behalf of the national headquarters and claims that women benefited from being part of the so-called kontenjan, a proportion of seats on the list reserved to the full discretion of the party central executive organs. Women’s inclusion thus appears as limited in scope but clearly calculated. The same logic is present nowadays when the national party headquarters sometimes refuses to approve candidate lists which lack women and sends them back to the province to be revised. Indeed, this is not a systematic policy on behalf of the party headquarters. The CHP’s case is interesting to consider in relation to the primaries (önseçim) organized by the party prior to the 2015 parliamentary election. In the primaries, local party members were able to vote for the candidates they wished to see in the National Assembly. CHP’s road to primaries was progressive: in 2007, six provinces were selected for the primaries, in 2011 thirty and prior to the 2015 parliamentary election, this mechanism was applied nationally (Alparslan 2014, 310).17 The CHP primary election is exempted from the gender quota—in order not

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to presumably meddle with the popular vote. As a result, in Izmir, the CHP’s stronghold, women were unable to come out of the primaries and many of the recognized local female politicians didn’t even enter the race. Ceyda, one of the potential candidates, explained why: To be honest, I did the math. One part of parliamentary candidates is nominated by the headquarters; the other part comes from the primaries. One needs to be reasonable. In my constituency, the party won seven deputies out of whom three were nominated by the national headquarters and one was the party president himself. From the primaries, two candidates emerged, both known to people from big TV channels. In the primaries, all party members can vote, which here means around 12,000 people. Out of them maximum 400 or 500 are active and know your projects and merits. The others only see the candidates’ media popularity. How many places are there left on the list after all this? One? Well, that one is for the candidate backed by the district mayor. I am not very rich myself. You need at least 100,000 Turkish liras [over 40,000 $ in 2014] for an electoral campaign. I don’t have means to finance a campaign with no chances of winning. (Ceyda, municipal councilor, CHP, Izmir, 8 June 2016)

Ceyda estimates her low electoral chances based on the distribution of electoral seats. Even though her assessment is not put in explicitly gendered terms, the “media popularity,” “likelihood of nomination by the headquarters,” or “merit” are not gender-neutral resources. Several interviewees listed the qualities expected from a successful candidate: a combination of family background, economic capital, university diploma, and media popularity. Begüm, another municipal councilor in Izmir, was also critical of the primaries: We had the primaries but what a disappointment! First of all, women didn’t support women. Then, the people who had the greatest merit weren’t selected. They were forestalled by the faces known from the media. This is a big injustice! That is why before introducing such measures we need to focus on the structure of our party membership. We have to know it and then sew a costume that suits us and not bring a ­ready-made costume and try to fit in. (Begüm, municipal councilor, CHP, Izmir, 7 June 2016)

Research from other contexts has confirmed that the primaries can indeed contribute to women’s exclusion (Childs and Cowley 2011;

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Kittilson 2006) and that some degree of coordination in the process of the candidate selection is lost if the “authority is given to atomized and anonymous party members without other mechanisms in place” (Pruysers et al. 2017, 212). The primaries could be redesigned so that women and men compete on separate lists and then compose a parity list alternating women and men from both primary lists. However, this solution doesn’t seem to be on the party’s horizon. In CHP’s primaries in Izmir, women suffered from the lack of “popularity” capital. They appeared as relatively unknown candidates to party members even if some of them had twenty years of party experience. They couldn’t compete with names such as Mustafa Balbay, nationally known journalist with a hero-like reputation in CHP circles who spent years in prison because of a political trial. Women also seemed to suffer from a lack of economic capital to finance their electoral campaign. Primaries added another layer to the competition financed directly out of the candidates’ pockets. I heard rumors that local female politicians were expecting a place in kontenjan, the seats that are reserved for candidates selected by the national headquarters. If so, their political hopes didn’t materialize. The two women elected from Izmir to parliament were indeed elected thanks to the kontenjan but none of them had any ties with the city nor did they have a long political career prior to the election. Zeynep Altıok, human rights activist and daughter of Alevi poet Metin Altıok (who died in the Madımak massacre in 199318), joined the CHP in 2014 in Istanbul before she was presented as the party’s candidate in Izmir. Similarly, the second female deputy from Izmir was Selin Sayek Böke, a university professor, who later became economic advisor to party’s president Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. It is telling that the first mention of the city of Izmir in Sayek Böke’s CV is in relation to the 2015 parliamentary election. CHP’s national headquarters “corrected” the results of the primaries by including women among its “reserved” (kontenjan) candidates. However, the female deputies were not locally anchored actors, nor did they have a long political career prior to their election—family background (in case of Altıok) and proximity to the leader (in case of Sayek Böke) played a decisive role. Within the AKP, primaries weren’t on the agenda and all the lists were constituted via an internal nomination without a vote by the party members (other than non-binding informal consultations regarding popularity). The local political actors control an important part of candidate

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ranking on the lists and this control appears as detrimental to women. Still, the national party headquarters is particularly adamant to not let go of its right to select candidates in all elections. To this purpose, the party directorate developed techniques to increase its control over the local units and to close the information gap which otherwise gives local leaders a crucial advantage. To begin with, the AKP headquarters pushes for one-candidate congresses not only for women’s branches but for local units as well. By pre-selecting the candidate to the provincial and district party directorates, the party national headquarters ensures the loyalty of the candidates and at the same time exercises control over local nominations. The AKP then uses a set of negative and positive incentives to discipline the local units—on the one hand, it revokes disloyal actors, on the other hand it organizes several intraparty competitions rewarding the most active local units. The competitions are so many that many of my interviewees had an award to pride themselves with. To take part in these activity contests the local leaders are required to monitor all their activities and to report them through the intraparty information system AK-BIZ. Women’s branches appear as zealous participants in these competitions and all their activities are thoroughly photographed and recorded. Besides the motivational element, this allows the party headquarters to monitor all local activities. This set of incentives shows that, in comparison with other studied parties, the AKP deploys the most sophisticated management techniques. Also, within the AKP, the national headquarters plays a role in including women on electoral lists. Refusing all forms of institutional quota, the party leader nonetheless insists discursively on the necessity to include women. Zekiye Demir, publishing in a research journal close to the AKP, saw in this a “rhetorical strategy” of women’s inclusion and argued that it should be understood as a part of the “strategies designed to increase women’s political participation” (Demir 2015, 43). The discourse indeed allows for the framing of women’s representation as a legitimate concern even within a conservative party. Coupled with sporadic application of the “one in three candidates” rule, the leadership discourse contributes to the achievement of limited women’s representation on the candidate lists. But given the fact that the “one in three candidates” rule is more often disrespected than applied, the beneficial impact of R. T. Erdoğan’s discourse in the AKP appears exaggerated. For instance, Çağla makes the following argument:

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If the party president hasn’t said that women will be one in every three candidates, men would certainly not have allowed women to take part in the electoral competition. If women are elected deputies from this province, it is thanks to the party leader. (Çağla, municipal councilor, AKP, Trabzon, 4 April 2016)

Occasionally, locally constituted candidate lists are sent back by Ankara with the requirement to include women. As a result, one female name gets included. This shows a sporadic corrective role of the national headquarters. Women thus appear as elements of bargaining between the national headquarters and the local leaders. The electoral results confirm women’s secondary importance in these bargains. In such a hierarchical party structure, the national headquarters have mechanisms at its disposal to ensure its will is respected. But it is not using them to ensure increased women’s representation. Municipal councilor Ahu has asserted: Sometimes the headquarters refuses the lists and asks for corrections. So the selectors cannot say “I made my list and it’s done”. But it is true that the national headquarters doesn’t display the same level of determination in all cases. (Ahu, municipal councilor, AKP, Trabzon, 16 April 2016)

Limited—indeed symbolical—inclusion of women proves the ­ on-centrality of women’s representation for political parties. It is this n ­non-centrality which allows for explaining the laxity of Ankara in applying the intraparty rules to the candidate selection process. At best, the national party leadership has a minor corrective role which can be seen in the AKP’s nomination procedure as well as in the CHP’s primaries. After having deconstructed the candidate selection process among the mainstream Turkish political parties, it is now timely to dive into the situation within the pro-Kurdish political parties. Distinct from the rest of Turkey’ political spectrum, they display the highest levels of women’s representation, approaching parity on their lists, and having introduced the co-chairing system. In what context were these measures introduced and what difficulties do women encounter in the course of their implementation?

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3.4  Centralization: A Price for Selecting Female Candidates? The pro-Kurdish political parties have existed in Turkey since the beginning of the 1990s. A number of them have been closed down by the Constitutional Court or were dissolved and many of their representatives and members faced prosecution or lost their lives. The pro-Kurdish parties have been part of the country’s political panorama for almost thirty years but still wage a fight for legitimacy. This exceptional situation and the exceptional levels of women’s representation have often been a reason to dismiss pro-Kurdish parties as an anomaly. Thus, the phenomenon of their feminization has rarely been studied from a longitudinal perspective (with notable contributions by Çağlayan 2007; Bozgan 2011; Al-Ali and Taş 2018; Erel and Acik 2019). In this segment, I focus on an assessment of the current situation within the pro-Kurdish parties (Democratic Peoples’ Party, HDP, and the Party of Democratic Regions, DBP). The pro-Kurdish parties display several distinctive features which combine into the highest women’s representation in Turkey’s politics. Women accounted for around 40% of HDP’s deputies after the June 2015, November 2015, and June 2018 parliamentary elections. Such a stable proportion testifies to the party’s commitment to respect its intraparty positive action measures to increase women’s representation. In local politics the picture has been more diverse but not less exceptional: in 2014, women held the offices of 23 officially elected mayors and additionally of 68 mayors elected “unofficially” within the realm of the co-chairing system (Kadın Koalisyonu 2014). Women also accounted for 32.3% of DBP’s metropolitan councilors in Diyarbakır in 2014. The application of the quota suffered in some areas but Diyarbakır, the display window of Kurdish politics, mostly respected it. At the same time, in municipalities that the party won for the first time in 2014 and where its presence was not as strong, the female co-mayor was the only woman at the municipality. This situation rendered the implementation of the gender equality agenda very challenging. These levels of women’s representation are the result of two interconnected features: first, the existence of the advanced measures that both the HDP and DBP have put in place (co-chairing and the 40% quota), and secondly, the status of women’s assemblies within the party. Women’s assemblies marked a significant departure from the previous

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status of women’s branches. Women’s branches were set up on the basis of the legislative amendment authorizing parties to establish women’s and youth branches. Women’s assemblies were created in 2005 as part of an ideological shift within the Kurdish movement which from that time on introduced the “assembly” as a favored form of organizing. In stark contrast to other political parties, women’s assemblies were not set up as auxiliaries: they are the only women’s structures on equal footing with the main party unit (Çağlayan 2012, 134). Women in pro-Kurdish parties constructed women’s assemblies in strict separation to the main gender-mixed party unit. As all party women are automatically considered to be members of women’s assemblies, these assemblies take the form of an overarching structure, in contrast for instance to the CHP where many party women are politically active outside the women’s branches. Women’s assemblies in both the HDP and the DBP strive to encompass the entirety of women’s political careers and experiences. They are the key actors pushing for the implementation and advancement of the intraparty positive action measures. This has practical consequences with regards to candidate selection mechanisms: within the pro-Kurdish political parties, women aim at securing a monopoly over the selection of female candidates at all positions and levels—intraparty and electoral. Women’s assemblies determine their representatives through consultations which then culminate in a congress. The main party unit (composed of men and at least 40% of women in leadership positions) has no formal say over this nomination process. The party’s female co-president (eşbaşkan) is announced at the general congress and several male party members with whom I had a chance to speak confirmed not knowing who the female co-president was going to be prior to this announcement. Departing from other parties’ practice where women are sidelined by the local male recruiters, in the HDP and DBP, women’s candidacy is encouraged and women are selected by an all-female body. However, the selection is highly centralized—it is the women’s assembly at the national level who makes the decision about women on the list. The head of women’s assemblies nationally is mostly selected by a close circle of top female executives. It is most of the time a renowned senior politician. The selection of municipal councilors benefits from some level of decentralization with local women’s electoral committees auditioning and

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ranking the candidates. In contrast, two types of offices are subject to particularly strict oversight by the national women’s assembly: the parliamentary seats and the co-mayorship candidacies. The tight control exercised by women’s assemblies over the selection of female candidates is better understood in the context of difficulties that women face in politics. The influence of women’s assemblies is key in securing women’s positions on the electoral lists in the absence of an intraparty consensus over the benefits of parity. Besides strong organized structures and a party habitus favoring collective action, there are two other resources that women draw upon to ensure their representation: the official movement’s ideology that puts gender equality at the forefront of its objectives and the heritage of women involved in the guerrilla fight (guerrilla women contributed to the legitimation of civilian female politicians’ presence in the public space). Still, pro-Kurdish parties’ electorate is a conservative one and it is mostly voters’ support for the Kurdish movement which propels many conservative voters to “tolerate” high numbers of female candidates. Voters’ loyalty to the Kurdish movement allows women’s inclusion despite social conservatism. The role of intraparty opposition is not to be underestimated. It is a constant issue which the Kurdish women’s movement has to deal with. It even meant that the first application of the female quota was postponed from the 2004 municipal election to the 2007 legislative election. The cancellation of the quota in 2004 revealed intraparty tensions around the question of women’s representation. But it was this experience that encouraged party women to start claiming their right to select female candidates. The implementation of the quota remains a battlefield with many attempts at circumventing it. The male members of the party proved rather creative in finding new ways of diverting the underlining logic of the quota. Co-mayor Avşîn experienced such attempts: We were going to a funeral with other colleagues from the municipality. We had, in total, four cars. Men got into the first three cars. I wanted to take three women with me but they told me, “Take only two women and add one man into your car”. When I asked why, they said, “Because there are more of us”. To that I answered, “That doesn’t give you the right to decide who goes in my car”. “But comrade, there is the quota of 40%”, they said. They meant that the quota gave them the right to decide on the number of women to come. They obviously don’t have such right but it is

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a man’s mentality to consider it as his right. (Avşîn, co-mayor, DBP, outside of Diyarbakır, 2 March 2016)

Avşîn’s experience is striking. It shows how the women’s quota can be manipulated in an attempt to limit the maximum number of women and how it can be used outside its intended context—to secure the access of women to decision-making organs within and outside the party. The male politician in the Avşîn’s scenario used the quota to make the female co-mayor accept another male passenger. Avşîn held strong but it didn’t occur to her to counteract by extending the logic of the quota even further: all cars should then be considered and women should be able to occupy at least six places based on the 40% quota. Invoking the quota was just serving another agenda but its misuse is instructive of the kind of resistance women in pro-Kurdish parties face despite the existence of advanced inclusive measures. The centralization of the candidate selection procedure is an efficient instrument to ensure that desirable female candidates are put first on the list. This logic holds especially for the office of the co-mayor. In 2014, the pro-Kurdish political party experimented with the wide implementation of the co-mayorship for the first time and elected around 100 women to this office (Kışanak 2018, 46).19 The women’s movement anticipated tremendous difficulties related to this introduction of co-mayorship and controlled the nomination for female co-mayors even more tightly. Experienced women politicians with a solid ideological background were prioritized to become the pioneers of this system which legitimacy depended mostly on their performance. As a result, local consultations were often sidelined and women not originally from the district were presented for the office of co-mayor. Arvin, one of the former pro-Kurdish party selectors, confirmed that men’s and women’s selection procedures differed: Women prepare their own lists and present them ready-made to the party’s electoral committee. For men, the procedure engages different structures of the political party and many factors are assessed: the preferences of voters, power equilibria among the tribes, everyone’s potential to bring votes. But for women, these are not really taken into account. A woman who has never seen the town of Nusaybin, can be appointed there by the women’s assembly. A woman can also be nominated to become a mayor to Uludere,

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Arvin’s testimony confirms the relatively low importance of capital of autochthony in women’s candidacies. The ideological solidity and political experience necessary to push against local resistance to women in power are the utmost resources of a female candidate in the eyes of female selectors. While these elements may point to the democratic deficit of the highly centralized procedure, it also can be seen as a way for women to ensure most trusted female candidates get elected. Women do not select their candidates in a power vacuum. They are not totally free in their choices as political considerations can prevail over women’s selection: in one of Diyarbakır’s peripheral districts, the leaving mayor from the governmental AKP promised the support of his tribe to the DBP. In exchange, his daughter was elected to the municipal council on the DBP’s bench. In this case, one of the places on the list reserved to women was used as a reward for the tribe’s support. This can be read in two ways. On the on hand, the tribal support was negotiated while still promoting women’s inclusion. On the other hand, the women’s electoral commission saw a name imposed, a name which ultimately was taking the space of a female activist that the commission may have had in mind. Using similar logic, women’s inclusion on the DBP and HDP lists also serves as a means to represent religious or ethnic minorities (to tick multiple boxes with one candidate). Thus, Februniye Akyol, a young student from Mardin, a member of the fading Assyrian religious community of the city, was elected co-mayor of Mardin in 2014 next to the political legend, 70-year-old Kurdish politician, Ahmet Türk. Finally, women are also included on the lists as a result of consultation and informal quota attributed to diverse stakeholders close to the party. For instance, Avşîn, female co-mayor aged 33, was not elected primarily as the candidate of the women’s assembly but on a “reserved” seat for the Association of families of the murdered or forcibly disappeared: The delegation of the Families of the martyrs (şehit aileleri) voted for me. Their candidate has a seat reserved on the electoral list. They remembered my brothers and sisters who joined the guerrilla struggle. After the election, a woman of the same age as my mother came to me and told me “We don’t know you, but we know your brothers and sisters. Don’t abandon their legacy”. Since I took the office, I feel my responsibility towards these

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families who believed in me. That is why I always try to do my best. They gave me a mission. I am not here just as myself. I am here, because I represent these families of martyrs and the heritage of their lost ones. (Avşîn, co-mayor, DBP, outside of Diyarbakır, 2 March 2016)

The situation within the HDP in Turkey’s Western provinces is also revealing of the approach of ticking multiple boxes with female candidates. The party needs to balance the representation of the Kurdish movement and the many Turkish left-wing fractions which constitute its intraparty coalition partners. The co-chairing system complicates the representation of multiple identities such as ethnicity, religious identity, generational belonging, and political affiliation. In the majority of cases, old, male Kurdish politicians occupy the seat of the male co-chair. Then, it is on the woman to federate as many identity markers as possible to mirror the possible electorate—mainly young, union member and religious minority (Alevi, Yezidi, Assyrian). But this logic of representation based on identity traits has an impact on the concrete sharing of power between the two co-chairs: needless to say that the young female co-chair is in a disadvantaged position, often lacking political resources. This means that identity characteristics of female representatives and the modalities of their access to power also determine the modalities of the exercise of their mandate. The imbalance of power between the male and female co-chairs is often embedded in their identity traits which helped them to attain the office in the first place. To sum up, the status of women’s assemblies, positive action measures, the party’s program, and the size and structure of its female membership appear all to be constitutive of the unique gendered balance sheet of the pro-Kurdish political parties. In the context of other parties where predominantly male selectors disrespect intraparty quotas and sideline female candidates, it appears that the selection of women by women is one of the unique ingredients for ensuring high representation of women.

3.5  Concluding Remarks The previous chapter reviewed some of the party measures designed to support women’s representation. The current chapter has shown the lack of respect for intraparty rules during the candidate selection process. Overall, the unfolding of the candidate selection process has proven to

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have a high explanatory value in terms of women’s political exclusion. However, each party appears to be positioned differently on the scale between exclusion and inclusion of its female candidates. Often, contradicting mechanisms are at play simultaneously. This becomes apparent especially when the bargains between the local party units and the party headquarters in Ankara are considered. The exclusion of women from candidate lists is a matter of both formal and informal rules inside the parties. Formal codified rules may promote women’s representation while informal rules, such as gendered stereotypes, intraparty norms and informal decision-making mechanisms contribute to excluding them. In some instances, women’s inclusion corresponds to a deliberate policy of the national party headquarters and is a result of a centralized procedure. Thus, centralization allows some women’s representation—albeit limited and pre-meditated—and can help to correct the lists composed locally. Overall though, women appear to be of secondary importance which is why the national headquarters do not use all the means to enforce their own rules with regards to women’s inclusion. The candidate selection process clearly shows that information gap at the national level benefits the local leaders who pretend to hold the key for the most successful candidate lists. Even in a country with such hierarchical political parties as Turkey, the local actors are not simply subjugated to Ankara. The influence that women’s branches exercise over the candidate selection procedure is residual, with the exception of the pro-Kurdish parties. Especially within the AKP, neither the numbers of elected female councilors nor branch’s association to the candidate selection process match the size of AKP women’s branches (4.5 million members, according to official party sources). Moreover, the tokenistic logic of female representation makes it hard for a second woman to get elected as one woman is deemed enough to represent the category of women. Being the head of women’s branches is a valuable political resource within the AKP as it is she who most often qualifies for the seat in the municipal council. In the CHP, on the contrary, a significant proportion of female politicians develop their careers outside of the women’s branches. The low probability of election of a women’s branches president into any elected office under the current party leadership contributes without a doubt to this trend. While being a women’s branches president is a political burden, it also means that within the CHP women are not confined to the women’s branches as their political careers often progress outside these structures. Within the MHP, the dependent status of the women’s

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branch, the selection mechanism of its coordinator (by nomination), and the institutionalized association of local male leaders in nominating district women’s branch representatives all correlate with the MHP having the lowest proportion of women in municipal councils. The case of the HDP and the DBP shows that the parties achieve the highest women’s representation as a result of several intraparty measures, such as the equal standing of the women’s assembly with the main party structure, quotas and co-chairing as well as the conferring of female candidate selection to women. Each of these has been subject to intraparty opposition and efforts of circumscribing their desired result. Applying gendered sociology to local politicians in Turkey, this chapter provided the first part of the answer to the question of who the elected female municipal councilors are. They are those women who manage to pass through the intricacies of the candidate selection process. The second part of the answer is outlined in the following chapters and concerns women’s biographical and socio-professional characteristics, political experiences, and pathways. The central idea of this monograph is that women’s underrepresentation in politics is a product of a Cycle of Exclusion which starts way before the candidate selection process. The process itself renders even more explicit the inequalities of the social order—there are fewer women CEOs in hospitals, fewer female real estate agents, and fewer factory owners. Thus, women are deemed not to attract enough voters and are less likely to be included on the party lists. Looking into these dynamics, some researchers conclude that women in politics are manikins to be displayed in the shop window (Topak and Uysal 2010) or puppets used to mark parties’ democratic aspirations. In the following chapters, I strive to go beyond these concerns of instrumentalization of women and to show that there is more to the story. I address the careers of politically active women and reveal how they manage to craft their own political fates.

Notes

1.  Dilruba is a pseudonym. The interview took place in Trabzon on 31 May 2015. I also had several other informal exchanges with Dilruba, especially in 2016. 2. All the interviews quoted in this book took place in Turkish and all the translations are the author’s.

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3. In the AKP, for example, prior to each election, a “consultation of trends” (temayül yoklaması) is organized in the provinces. The headquarters doesn’t always respect the results of such consultations but uses them to demonstrate some level of attention to the wishes of local party members (Alparslan 2014, 318). 4. Melih Gökçek, the AKP mayor of Ankara for 23 years (1994–2017), used to be deputy. Among female politicians, Özlem Çerçioğlu from the CHP left the parliamentary office after two years to become mayor of the province of Aydın in 2009. 5. Bilge, former head of the Ankara branch of the women’s NGO KA-DER, 13 July 2015, Ankara. 6. Emel, municipal councilor, AKP, 1st June 2015, Trabzon. 7. While there used to be preferential voting in Turkey, this is no longer the case and electors cannot increase some candidates’ chances of election by giving their preferential vote to one candidate rather than another. Research from post-communist countries has shown that the benefits of the preferential vote for women are far from clear. In Turkey, in the current absence of a preferential vote system, the ranking on electoral lists is crucial. 8. It is possible to affirm that women were better positioned on the CHP list because if the party was considered separately, its female councilors in the metropolitan hall would account for 19.8% of councilors (Izmir Büyükşehir 2014). 9.  As in the case of the CHP in Izmir’s metropolitan council, but with higher levels of women’s inclusion, the DBP elected 36.6% of women to the metropolitan council while the AKP was only represented by men. Their presence decreased the women’s ratio to 27.7% in the metropolitan council (Diyarbakır Büyükşehir 2014). In district municipalities, women accounted on average for 28.35% of councilors (Kavas 2018, 37). These numbers are as of 2014, the year of the municipal ballot. 10. Candidacy to candidacy (in Turkish aday adaylığı) is a stage in one’s political career when the person manifests his/her interest in becoming a party candidate. It generally means applying by filling out a form and providing some extra references. The party then makes the selection of candidates from this lot of interested members. 11. Diyarbakır and the pro-Kurdish political parties are addressed further in the chapter. Their exclusion from the discussion until this point is justified by their exceptional character and differential patterns of women’s inclusion. 12. Out of the 27 parties in Turkey listed by Mustafa Çadır, 21 have established women’s branches.

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13. I have discussed the position of women’s branches in further detail in the working paper “Women’s Political Representation and Women’s Branches in Turkey: Untangling a Complex Relationship” (Drechselová 2019). 14. The next chapter looks into the dominant profiles of female municipal councilors and local politicians and thus makes explicit the privileged positions of the few successful female candidates within the AKP. 15. Five women were heads of provinces in the CHP in 2015 (KADER 2015, 5). 16. The MHP is absent from this segment because I couldn’t identify any concrete example of a national headquarters pushing for women’s inclusion on the candidate lists during my fieldwork. In addition, the pro-Kurdish parties are analyzed in the last segment. 17. Primaries are not a recent innovation. Prior to the 1980 military coup, primaries were more the rule than the exception. In recent years, though, the CHP has only organized primaries for parliamentary elections and not for municipal ballots. 18. It is also known as the Sivas massacre. A fire was started in a hotel where Alevi intelligentsia and artists had gathered for an annual meeting and cultural festival. 35 people died. State forces didn’t prevent the assembled crowd from setting fire to the hotel and blocking the victims inside the burning premises. 19. A form of co-mayorship had already been tested in Diyarbakır’s metropolitan municipality in the previous electoral period, 2009–2014. One of the female councilors unofficially became the co-mayor of the then mayor Osman Baydemir.

References 2820 Siyasi Partiler Kanunu. 1983. http://www.mevzuat.gov.tr/ MevzuatMetin/1.5.2820.pdf. Achin, Catherine. 2007. Sexes, genre et politique. Paris: Économica. Achin, Catherine, and Sandrine Lévêque. 2006. Femmes en politique. Repères. Paris: La Découverte. AKP. 2015. “AK Parti Yönetmenliği.” http://www.akparti.org.tr/kadinkollari/ akparti/parti-yonetmelikleri#bolum_. ———. 2016. Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi Tüzük ve Program. Ankara: AKP. AKP Kadın Kolları. 2015. Kadın Kollarında Devir Teslim. Ankara. http://www. akparti.org.tr/kadinkollari/video/78410/kadin-kollarinda-devir-teslim. Al-Ali, Nadje, and Latif Taş. 2018. “Dialectics of Struggle: Challenges to the Kurdish Women’s Movement.” 22. LSE Middle East Centre Paper Series. London: LSE. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/87484. Alparslan, Mine. 2014. “Les modes de gouvernement des partis politiques en Turquie. L’exemple du Parti de la justice et du développement (AK Parti)

130  L. G. DRECHSELOVÁ et du Parti républicain du peuple (CHP) (2001–2010).” PhD thesis, Paris, Université Paris I—Panthéon Sorbonne. Arat, Yeşim. 2005. Rethinking Islam and Liberal Democracy: Islamist Women in Turkish Politics. Albany: State University of New York Press. Ayan Musil, Pelin. 2011. Authoritarian Party Structures and Democratic Political Setting in Turkey. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Bjarnegård, Elin. 2013. “Clientelist Networks and Homosocial Capital.” In Gender, Informal Institutions and Political Recruitment, 151–81. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. Bjarnegård, Elin, and Meryl Kenny. 2015. “Revealing the ‘Secret Garden’: The Informal Dimensions of Political Recruitment.” Politics & Gender 11 (04): 748–53. ———. 2016. “Comparing Candidate Selection: A Feminist Institutionalist Approach.” Government and Opposition 51 (03): 370–92. Bozgan, Özgen Dilan. 2011. “Kürt Kadın Hareketi Üzerine Bir Değerlendirme.” In Birkaç Arpa Boyu… : 21. Yüzyıla Girerken Türkiye’de Feminist Çalışmalar, edited by Serpil Sancar, 757–99. Istanbul: Koç Üniversitesi Yayınları. Çadır, Mustafa. 2011. Kadının Siyasal Yaşama Katılımında Siyasi Parti Kadın Kollarının Rolü. Ankara: T.C. Başbakanlık Kadının Statüsü Genel Müdürlüğü. Çağlayan, Handan. 2007. Analar, Yoldaşlar, Tanrıçalar. Kürt Hareketinde Kadınlar ve Kadın Kimliğinin Oluşumu. Istanbul: İletişim. ———. 2012. “TBMM’de Cinsiyet Kompozisyonu Açısından Aykırı Bir Örnek: DTP/BDP ve %40 Cinsiyet Kotası ve Ardındaki Dinamikler.” In Kürt Kadınların Penceresinden, Resmî Kimlik Politikaları, Milliyetçilik, Barış Mücadelesi, 1st ed., 121–52. Istanbul: İletişim. Childs, Sarah, and Philip Cowley. 2011. “The Politics of Local Presence: Is There a Case for Descriptive Representation?” Political Studies 59 (1): 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2010.00846.x. CHP. 2015. Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi Yönetmenlikleri. Ankara: CHP. ———. 2018. CHP Tüzüğü. Ankara: CHP. Clark, Janine Astrid, and Jillian Schwedler. 2003. “Who Opened the Window? Women’s Activism in Islamist Parties.” Comparative Politics 35 (3): 293–312. https://doi.org/10.2307/4150178. Correa, Fernanda Vidal. 2016. “Gender Stereotypes and Patronage Practices in Women’s Careers: A Study of the Mexican Executive Branch.” Cogent Social Sciences 2 (1): 126–202. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2016.1266202. Crowder-Meyer, Melody Ara. 2013. Gendered Recruitment Without Trying: How Local Party Recruiters Affect Women’s Representation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Demir, Zekiye. 2015. “Kadınların Siyasete Katılımı ve Katılımı Artırmaya Yönelik Stratejiler.” KADEM Kadın Araştırmaları Dergisi 1 (2): 35–47.

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Diyarbakır Büyükşehir. 2014. “Diyarbakır Büyükşehir Belediyesi Meclis Üyeleri.” Diyarbakir.Bel.Tr. 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20140926142738, http://www.diyarbakir.bel.tr:80/meclis.aspx. Drechselová, Lucie. 2019. “Women’s Political Representation and Women’s Branches in Turkey: Untangling a Complex Relationship.” 1. TEZ Gender Working Paper. Hamburg, Hamburg University. Erel, Umut, and Necla Acik. 2019. “Enacting Intersectional Multilayered Citizenship: Kurdish Women’s Politics.” Gender, Place & Culture (June): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2019.1596883. Franceschet, Susan, Mona Lena Krook, and Jennifer Piscopo. 2012. The Impact of Gender Quotas. New York: Oxford University Press. Izmir Büyükşehir. 2014. “İzmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi Meclis Üyeleri.” Izmir. Bel.Tr. 2014. https://www.izmir.bel.tr/MeclisUyeleri/131/tr. Johnson, Niki. 2016. “Keeping Men In, Shutting Women Out: Gender Biases in Candidate Selection Processes in Uruguay.” Government and Opposition 51 (03): 393–415. https://doi.org/10.1017/gov.2016.6. KADER. 2015. “Kadın Istatistikleri.” Ankara: KA-DER. Kadın Koalisyonu. 2014. “2014 Yerel Yönetim Seçim Sonuçları.” Istatistikler. Ankara: Kadın Koalisyonu. http://kadinkoalisyonu.org/2014-yerel-yonetimsecim-sonuclari/. ———. 2018. “2018 Milletvekili Seçimleri: Kadın Adayların Durumu.” Ankara: Kadın Koalisyonu. http://kadinkoalisyonu.org/2018-milletvekilisecimleri-kadin-adaylarin-durumu/. Kavas, Asmin. 2018. “Karşılaştırmalarla 81 İl İçin Toplumsal Cinsiyet Eşitliği Karnesi - 2018.” 3. 81 İl İçin Toplumsal Cinsiyet Eşitliği Karnesi. Ankara: TEPAV. Kenny, Meryl. 2011. “Gender and Institutions of Political Recruitment: Candidate Selection in Post-Devolution Scotland.” In Gender, Politics and Institutions—Towards a Feminist Institutionalism, edited by Mona Lena Krook and Fiona Mackay, 21–41. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kenny, Meryl, and Tània Verge. 2016. “Opening Up the Black Box: Gender and Candidate Selection in a New Era.” Government and Opposition 51 (03): 351–69. Kittilson, Miki Caul. 2006. Challenging Parties, Changing Parliaments: Women and Elected Office in Contemporary Western Europe. Ohio: Ohio State University Press. Kışanak, Gültan. 2018. Kürt Siyasetinin Mor Rengi. Istanbul: Dipnot Yayınları. Krook, Mona Lena, and Fiona Mackay. 2011. “Introduction: Gender, Politics, and Institutions.” In Gender, Politics and Institutions—Towards a Feminist Institutionalism, 1–20. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Lovenduski, Joni. 2011. “Foreword.” In Gender, Politics and Institutions— Towards a Feminist Institutionalism, edited by Mona Lena Krook and Fiona Mackay, vii–xi. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

132  L. G. DRECHSELOVÁ Massicard, Élise, and Nicole Watts. 2013. Negotiating Political Power in Turkey: Breaking up the Party. Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Politics. Routledge. MHP. n.d. MHP Kadın Kolları Yönetmenliği. Ankara: MHP. www.mhpkadinkollari.org/usr_img/docs/parti/yonetmelik.doc. Milliyet. 2015. “CHP Afyonkarahisar İl Kadın Kolları Başkanı Görevinden İstifa Etti.” Milliyet, March 22. http://www.milliyet.com.tr/ chp-afyonkarahisar-il-kadin-kollari-afyonkarahisar-yerelhaber-687628/. Norris, Pippa, and Joni Lovenduski. 1995. Political Recruitment: Gender, Race and Class in the British Parliament. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Özbudun, Ergün. 2000. “Parties and the Party System.” In Contemporary Turkish Politics: Challenges to Democratic Consolidation, edited by Ergün Özbudun, 83. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Pruysers, Scott, William Cross, Anika Gauja, and Gideon Rahat. 2017. “Candidate Selection Rules and Democratic Outcomes. The Impact of Parties on Women’s Representation.” In Organizing Political Parties: Representation, Participation, and Power, edited by Susan E. Scarrow, Paul D. Webb, and Thomas Poguntke, 208–33. New York: Oxford University Press. Sawicki, Frédéric. 1994. “Configuration sociale et genèse d’un milieu partisan. Le cas du parti socialiste en Ille-et-Vilaine.” Sociétés Contemporaines 20 (1): 83–110. https://doi.org/10.3406/socco.1994.1366. TBMM. 2018. “Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi Milletvekilleri Dağılımı.” Ankara: Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi. https://www.tbmm.gov.tr/develop/owa/ milletvekillerimiz_sd.dagilim. Tekeli, Şirin. 1982. Kadınlar ve Siyasal—Toplumsal Hayat. Yerli Araştırmalar Dizisi 6. Istanbul: Birikim Yayınları. Topak, Oğuz, and Ayşen Uysal. 2010. Particiler. İstanbul: İletişim. Turan, Ilter. 2006. “Old Soldiers Never Die: The Republican People’s Party of Turkey.” South European Society and Politics 11 (3–4): 559–78. https://doi. org/10.1080/13608740600856587. Ülkücü Medya. 2016. “MHP’li Nevin Taşlıçay’a Yeni Görev.” Ülkücü Medya, November 14. http://www.ulkucumedya.com/mhpli-nevin-taslicaya-yenigorev-84789h.htm. Yeniçağ. 2017. “İYİ Parti’de Kadın Kolları Olacak Mı?” Yeniçağ, February 11. https://www.yenicaggazetesi.com.tr/iyi-partide-kadin-kollari-olacak-mi176306h.htm.

CHAPTER 4

Female Councilors: Who Passes the Filter?

As the previous chapter has demonstrated, the candidate selection processes discriminate against women. The present chapter focuses on the “lucky ones” who managed to pass through the intraparty filter, get elected and become municipal councilors in the cities covered by this study—Izmir, Trabzon, and Diyarbakır. In the intraparty competition, biographical properties can represent the “resources” (as for Sewell 1992) or “capital” (as for Bourdieu 1994) of prospective politicians. Women who get elected can be considered to have reached some form of equilibrium between their different kinds of capital which resulted in their election (Bourdieu 1994, 56). One could multiply the elements in this equation—professional, educational, associational, economic, social, political, familial, reputational capital, capital resulting from a previously held electoral office, capital of origin, and others. Research has shown that gendered differences determine the relevance of different kinds of capital. Men climb the intra party ladder quicker than women with similar qualifications. Also, men who hold an intraparty office are more likely to become candidates than women in the same situation (Verge and Claveria 2016). In what follows, I consider jointly the different kinds of capital because they all combine in either increasing or decreasing the electoral prospects of female candidates. The articulation of different identity markers of female local politicians makes it possible to get a sense of their multi-positionality © The Author(s) 2020 L. G. Drechselová, Local Power and Female Political Pathways in Turkey, Gender and Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47143-9_4

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(Combes 2011, 14). I utilize the concept of intersectionality to capture the social position of women at the intersection of multiple identity markers (Crenshaw 2005; Weldon 2008). Intersectionality was coined primarily as a way to describe multiple levels of discrimination against women, it is also—even though more rarely—used to grasp the position of the elites (Roy 2017). However, in order to have elite status, it is not enough to be educated, have money or family connections, it requires the person to be situated at the intersection of all these factors (Correa 2016, 5). Social and professional characteristics of the elected politicians can both facilitate and complicate their access to the local mandate. ­Socio-demographic characteristics of individuals should be understood as being socially constructed within a given context (Offerlé 2004, 25). They are not fixed. Instead, they have their own temporality and, as suggests Bourdieu, they are labile (1981, 18). They are also locally specific—their significance and impact vary across local configurations. In line with these considerations, the chapter seeks answers to the following questions: who are the women elected to Turkey’s municipal councils? Do they form a diverse ensemble or are they part of a rather homogeneous group? As such, does women’s election mean the access of marginalized voices to the local councils or rather a co-optation of the local elite into positions of political representation? I first provide a sociological analysis of female municipal councilors by constructing two categories of those with “dominant” profiles and those with “a-typical profiles.” The homogeneity of the first category is striking even though it includes some nuances. The second category appears much smaller and confirms the dominance of the first one. Secondly, I examine the relevance of different kinds of capital for the successful municipal candidates with a particular focus on the elusive salience of the capital of gender.

4.1  The Dominant Profile Among Female Councilors Simge, municipal councilor from the CHP whom I met in Izmir in July 2015, is a daughter of a businessman and a stay-at-home mum. She has one sister and one brother. All three siblings studied at the best schools in the country. Simge is an engineer, herself a mother of two, married to an entrepreneur in construction. Several years ago, she opened her own counseling company. She is active at the professional chamber of her engineering branch; she also entered KA-DER, the association set up to

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support female candidates, and one other association defending women’s rights in Izmir. The political past of her family is rich—among her ancestors we find a minister, a party co-founder, a head of women’s branches. Simge entered the CHP in 2006 but she recalls being put off by her first experience: I went to the CHP district office with the CV in my hand and told them I wanted to become a CHP member. They told me that they were out of the membership forms and that I should come back in two days. I came back two days later and became a party member but for two years, no one called me or asked me to take part in their projects. Finally, I started working with my acquaintances at the party headquarters of the Izmir province. (Simge, municipal councilor, CHP, Izmir, 3 July 2015)

When Simge joined the party, she was biographically available for political involvement (McAdam 1986): her children were grown up and her career was going well with a flexible schedule. She also had a university diploma, professional experience and was in a situation of financial security. Given her family background, she was not unfamiliar with politics but even so, her political career took several years to pick up. Simge experienced two years of idle membership before she started collaborating with the party team at the provincial level. This shows that she had networks of acquaintances but these needed to be “activated” to become salient in her political endeavors. She also assisted one congress of the local women’s branch and witnessing the disputes, she decided not to get involved with women’s branches—a strategy which hadn’t changed even at the time of our meeting. Instead, she became the intraparty educator (parti eğitmeni) organizing seminars and conferences on diverse topics, such as party statutes and program, gender equality as well as the functioning of local administrations. Contemplating a candidacy to the municipal council in 2009, Simge decided not to apply. Why, I asked. “I felt that the local leadership at the time would not give enough credit to my professional qualifications. Instead, they favored representation of different groups, based on other things, such as ethnicity,” she said. Simge was not alone among my interviewees to believe she was lacking some “necessary” identity markers which would enhance her political career. This feeling was mostly voiced by women belonging to the Turkish-Sunni majority, who believed that members of minorities had better chances to be included.

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However, given the low proportion of elected women among the ethnic and religious minorities, this assessment doesn’t seem to apply in reality. For Simge, things changed in 2014. On the one hand, the local leaders from 2009 were replaced. On the other hand, Simge’s intraparty status evolved. Holding the position of intraparty educator meant that a lot of party leaders got to know her. Such an increase in reputation constituted one of the essential elements of success in her bid for candidacy and Simge’s election confirms it. In many regards, her profile is representative of the “typical” female local councilor. Family Political Backgrounds and Socialization into Politics Political involvement of family members can be seen as one of the factors of individual politicization. Some forms of political involvement are omnipresent in my interviewees’ narratives, such as voting. A family heritage of active involvement, going beyond the ballot casting, appears in half of the accounts. The parents, siblings, or relatives displayed various levels of past and present involvement ranging from participation in neighborhood party meetings to presiding over the local party unit. In Turkey thus, having political precursors in the family is not an overtly dominant characteristic in elected women’s backgrounds. On the contrary, significant numbers of them are political pioneers. In terms of political affiliation, intergenerational conversions are rare. Most of the CHP politicians come from families who have supported the CHP or its predecessors. This is also the case of the MHP with ancestors anchored in the far-right and nationalist circles. In the case of the AKP, due to its shorter existence, the families of elected councilors were either supporters of center-right parties, such as the Justice Party (AP), or of political Islam, such as the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi, RP). Within the pro-Kurdish parties, I encountered both families of conservative voters and of radical leftist sympathizers. The families are not always politically homogeneous, especially as far as the extended families are concerned. Alev, municipal councilor from the CHP in Izmir, attests to political divides which run through her family: I have been a member of the CHP for 10 years but my family’s political tradition is longer. My maternal aunt was the very first president of the CHP women’s branches in [name of another city]. Her husband was a municipal councilor. My father is also involved in the CHP. His sister

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was a municipal councilor. But I come from a family with diverse political affinities. Two of my aunts are in the AKP and every time there is a family meeting, we fight over politics. (Alev, municipal councilor, CHP, Izmir, 7 July 2015)

As Alev’s family tree confirms, most of the politically active relatives are anchored at the local level. Deputies, ministers or national party leaders are mostly absent from family histories of female local politicians. When political conversions occur in one family, they can cause friction between the politically active daughter and her parents, like Pelin’s family: My family has nothing to do with politics. Neither my father nor any of his five children had anything to do with the municipality. At best, we followed politics on TV. I followed it more than the rest of the family. […] My father didn’t want me to become the candidate of the AKP. He didn’t talk to me for a year. My mother, my father and my four siblings all vote for the CHP. I am the only one to support the AKP but before that, we all voted for a right wing conservative party. (Pelin, municipal councilor, AKP, Trabzon, 4 June 2015)

Pelin portrays her family as having no ties with local politics and its power center—the municipality, but her involvement in the AKP is not welcomed as it contradicts the family’s otherwise unanimous political choice. Pelin is subversive by her political autonomy. On the other hand, she is the one to mark the continuity of her family’s past political orientation since they used to vote for the right-wing conservative parties before casting their ballots for the CHP. Pelin’s example confirms that families’ political heritage is not a static sum of past political involvements but it evolves and at times follows a centrifugal trajectory. Several interviewees proudly recalled how they contributed to the political transition of their parents. For instance, Bahar, the CHP municipal councilor in Izmir and former radical left-wing activist, converted her parents of agrarian origin and conservative affinities to become voters of the CHP in the late 1960s (Bahar, municipal councilor, CHP, Izmir, 7 June 2016). With or without a tradition of political involvement, family contributes to forming the propensity to political action which can be activated later in life. It provides the frame of early socialization into politics through daily interactions which are not primarily political but can later

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be transferred into the realm of the political. Political socialization is an unconscious process of incorporating the norms, values, and attitudes. It is subjected to objectivations and selective reconstructions (for more see Muxel 2003; Bargel 2009; Darmon 2016). Given the proportion of families without active political involvement in my interviewee’s accounts, the decisive politicizing moments were often the high school and university years. Political socialization by the peers can also happen in the workplace or in professional chambers and associations. In parallel to the secondary politicizing factors, the impact of the family doesn’t stop in childhood since the life partner and his entourage can also exercise a decisive influence later in life. If the gendered features of girls’ upbringing and restrictive social norms can be seen as constraints which narrow women’s margin of action in the public space, how is it possible that they didn’t prevent these women from entering politics? My interviewees frequently provided me with the same answer: because they had a “democratic father.” Their father resisted to the social pressure to educate daughters as obedient individuals and on the contrary encouraged their individuality and ambition. Işık’s testimony is illustrative of female politicians’ accounts of their enlightened fathers: We are seven siblings, four girls and three boys. There were major differences in the upbringing of girls and boys. In all the extended family, my father was the only one to send his daughters to school. He was more enlightened (aydın) than others. For instance, the five daughters of my uncle were taken out of school at the end of the compulsory primary school. According to the tradition, school and honor do not go hand in hand. If a girl goes to school and later to work, something could tarnish her honor. That is why, she should just wait to become of certain age and get married. I think that my father saw further than that. (Işık, municipal councilor, CHP, Izmir, 22 June 2016)

Işık, municipal councilor, single at the age of 40 with a promising career as an accountant, defies in many regards the “traditional gendered precepts” limiting women’s public appearance. She underlines that it was her father’s exceptionality within the family that allowed her to follow this notable path. The father appears to have been an enabler of schooling, career as well as of the formation of independent political opinions. The “democratic father” is also portrayed as liberal, allowing for political autonomization as described by Sevim:

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My father was a supporter of the Justice Party but all of his children were revolutionary leftists. He never made us feel the pressure of our conservative neighborhood. At night, we were putting up posters, at daytime we were demonstrating. We took part in each labor gathering for the 1st May. My father always said that it’s our decision (siz bilirsiniz). (Sevim, women’s branches’ regional representative, CHP, Izmir, 7 July 2015)

Next to the “democratic father,” the figure of the mother is often invisible. Mostly stay-at-home mum, her political opinions are rarely mentioned by the interviewees. Praised for her care for the family and the household, the mother has an ambiguous place in the narratives. Her sacrificing behavior is depicted as something to be avoided but at the same time her instances of micro revolts and coping mechanisms are underlined: it is thus possible to encounter a mother who votes distinctly from her husband or a mother with strong reading habits compensating for the lack of formal education. By her invisibility, the figure of the politically passive home-oriented mother enables the representation of the “democratic father”—female politicians demarcate themselves from their father because his opinions matter since he is the sole ­decision-making actor in the household. Nonetheless, the image of the “democratic father” suffers some cracks and some of his behavior could well be representative of an “authoritarian father.” Sevim’s case reflects this ambiguity: I finished high school and couldn’t go to university because of the political tensions prior to the 1980 coup. The association in which we were active with my brothers and sisters was raided by the police, my older sister and many of our friends were arrested. After that, my father sent me to Germany where I stayed for three years. Upon my return, he married me to a family acquaintance. My father thought that marriage would prevent my political radicalization. Unfortunately, marriages don’t always last. (Sevim, women’s branches’ regional representative, CHP, Izmir, 7 July 2015)

Sevim didn’t choose her marriage. Her “democratic father” chose it for her in order to “de-radicalize” her, to prevent her from deepening her revolutionary left involvement. Even though her marriage didn’t last, Sevim didn’t pursue her political activity in her previous organization (it was closed down and dispersed by the military coup) but joined the CHP upon its re-creation in the 1990s.

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To sum up, secondary socialization can have both the effect of “confirmation” and of “conversion” with regards to family’s political affiliation (Bourdieu and Passeron 1970, 59–60). The role of the family in political socialization is crucial because the family is responsible for the “primary” socialization. However, it is inseparable from the subsequent socializing experiences, during studies, work, or civic involvement. Following chapters consider the impact of the socialization patterns on the exercise of women’s political mandate. The Local Female Elite: At the Intersection of Privileges During the 1970s, Şirin Tekeli observed that a significant proportion of female local politicians were stay-at-home mothers, without professional experience, with only primary school or at best high school education (1981, 305). Tekeli contrasted their profile with that of deputies whom she considered to be a rather homogeneous elite group with high socioeconomic status, overeducated and non-representative not only of the general female population in Turkey but also in terms of profiles of the elected men. Forty years since Tekeli’s assessment of female local politicians, their profiles have evolved significantly. On the one hand, this corresponds with social changes within the category of women who are more likely to reach higher levels of education and in greater numbers enter into some male-dominated professions. On the other hand, this is also related to the transformations in the prerogatives of local governments in Turkey and their progressive increase in prestige. One of my interviewees stated that in the 1990s they themselves didn’t know what the municipal prerogatives were. Instead of monthly meetings which can take up to five consecutive days, the council used to meet every three months or so. With the rise in importance of local authorities, especially the metropolitan municipalities, it is possible to hypothesize that the competition for local offices among women increased which attracted more educated candidates. At the same time, as more women acquired profiles similar to deputies, their chances of being included in parliament did not increase significantly. This may have contributed to them rather running for a local office. The ideal-typical profile of a female municipal councilor is composed of three elements: her current family status (most often married with two children), her educational level (university diploma is a rule), and her professional career (she has one prior to her political involvement).

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The typical female municipal councilor is a highly educated person who either has a university diploma or is studying to acquire it during the course of her mandate. The high educational achievements represent a unifying factor among my interviewees regardless of their family’s socioeconomic background. Families, regardless of their social situation, accord importance to daughters’ education as a means of social mobility. Those who didn’t facilitate my interviewees’ schooling appear to have done so for economic reasons. Bahar, the CHP’s municipal councilor in Izmir, who comes from a family of farmers, shared the story of her education: We were two girls and two boys in the family. After I finished primary school, my father told me he had the means to finance further studies only of his two sons. He couldn’t send me to school anymore. He said I would go to a vocational institute for girls and learn how to sew. I cried a lot. I cried so much that my father couldn’t resist and agreed to send me to secondary school. When I finished secondary school, at the age of 14, one family came to have me married to their son. Without informing my father, I sent applications to several boarding high schools in the country. I was accepted to Konya. I struggled while announcing the news to my father but I told him: “Please just accompany me there. I will never ask for any money”. I didn’t even go back for holidays; I was that determined to study. I know that if my family didn’t have economic difficulties, my father wouldn’t have differentiated between girls and boys in education. My big sister only went to primary school, but I finished my studies with determination. (Bahar, municipal councilor, CHP, Izmir, 7 June 2016)

When recalling her story forty-five years later, seated in her office in the municipal building, Bahar was deeply moved when mentioning how she didn’t return home even during holidays in order to not incur further costs on her struggling family. Her case shows how intertwined the economic considerations and social norms are. The choice of her father is a pragmatic one, sending his sons to school, who are meant to marry and support their family (and thus the skills and school diploma are more needed by them) while Bahar was supposed to get married and be taken care of by her husband. Bahar’s case is representative of a personal commitment of many of my interviewees to study and of their family’s acceptance of it in principle. Possession of a university diploma is a rule among councilors of all age groups. Even politicians aged over 60, who grew up when it was

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even more exceptional for women to study at university, have a university diploma. Several councilors studied for a second degree during their municipal mandate, as was the case for Zeynep (aged 49) and Işık (aged 45), the CHP’s Izmir councilors. The prevalence of women with a university diploma is such that it can be considered a condition sine qua non for female candidacy, an entry requirement rather than a kind of capital which can contribute to comparative advantage. Most female councilors have professional careers and thus overcome their family’s model: a stay-at-home mother and a working father. The most represented professions among female municipal councilors are lawyer, accountant, architect, engineer, and businesswoman. These careers almost cover the full spectrum of municipal policies. As municipal work is mostly perceived to require technical competences, female councilors can mobilize their expertise to acquire office. In this sense, women accommodate the popular perceptions of municipal jobs as based on technical knowledge and skills which once served as a means to exclude them. The professions of lawyer, accountant, and engineer are so frequently represented that they appear as privileged recruitment pools for the local political field. However, when considering men’s professions a very similar picture appears: male local leaders are also mostly engineers, accountants, pharmacists, architects, and lawyers (Topak and Uysal 2010, 48). These liberal professions have flexible schedules and provide some form of economic independence. The professions of the five female municipal councilors elected from the AKP in Trabzon in 2014 cover the spectrum almost perfectly: one lawyer, one architect, one accountant, one economist/entrepreneur, and one councilor from the associational field. Another career path often leading to local politics is public employment and especially teaching, even though it is notable that none of my interviewees from the AKP used to be a teacher. One of MHP’s municipal councilors in Trabzon, Füsun, spent her whole professional life as a municipal employee, eventually reaching the level of head of department.1 Similarly, Çılay, also from the MHP in Trabzon, was the first female head of department at the governor’s office.2 Besides these examples from the MHP, this recruitment pool of public office is mostly relevant for the CHP, in which the concentration of former public employees is clearly the highest. This also has repercussions for the average age of female councilors from this party. Because the political activity of public employees is proscribed by law, many of my interviewees

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waited until their retirement to enter the party. Petek, a municipal councilor prior to 2014 and an unsuccessful parliamentary candidate from the CHP in Trabzon, was approached by local party leaders immediately after she retired from her employment in the public sector.3 In Izmir, the head of women’s branches Ceyda, a former teacher, was proud to recount how she acquired her CHP membership on the day of her retirement.4 Significantly, this ban also impacts men’s average age, with the politicians of the CHP and MHP being the oldest on average (Topak and Uysal 2010, 79). Overall, in terms of the achieved educational level and profession, there is no major difference between female municipal councilors in the CHP, the AKP, and the MHP. Actually, the profiles of municipal councilors across these parties are so similar that I had the experience—not once but twice—of becoming confused about my interviewee’s political affiliation. In both cases the conditions of the interview were less than favorable. One interview took place when I was hastily introduced to a councilor while standing in front of the municipal hall. The intermediary who had been very helpful so far pushed the person toward me and she reluctantly agreed to talk to me. I felt that turning her down would be a sign of disrespect not only to her but also potentially to our intermediary. So I agreed. During the first ten minutes, I asked rather standardized questions about her family and personal background. And then, I asked about a current event—the CHP party congress. The confusion that I spotted in her eyes was petrifying. For the first time it occurred to me that she may not be from the same party as our intermediary. So far, I had been given no clue that it could be otherwise: a single lawyer without children in her mid-30s, first mandate within the council, political experience of 2–3 years before the election. Her initial reluctance to do the interview made more sense when it was considered as a favor asked by a member of the competing party. I apologized for the misunderstanding, finished the standing interview in the next 10 minutes and didn’t have a chance to talk to her again. The second occasion when cross-party similarities struck me was in Trabzon when I talked to an AKP female councilor. We had done the principal interview during my first visit in 2015 and in the remainder of my stay we met several times. Her party affiliation was thus clear. During one of our informal discussions about social topics, she spoke about her many travels abroad and stressed the need for women’s independence through employment and state-provided childcare. She defended quotas

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in politics and expressed liberal views on abortion and divorce as well as her admiration for Atatürk and Turkish soldiers. A reader familiar with Trabzon’s social fabric may not be surprised at this picture. The councilor’s views represent a typical local blend of conservatism and nationalism. But they also represent a mix of social liberalism and conservatism. In my understanding of that time, the councilor not only put forward views that her party does not stand for but voiced views that another existing party openly advocates. This overlap prompted me to ask why she is not a member of the CHP instead of the AKP. She nodded to signal understanding of my confusion and gave me two reasons for her choice of the AKP: the first had to do with the party’s founder and ­long-term president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, his charisma and his capacity to deliver on his promises. The second reason was simply to increase her chances to pursue a political career, since the AKP dominates local councils in Trabzon. The similarities in women’s profiles also apply to their attire. Especially in the central districts of all three cities, the majority of women were without a headscarf while the situation changed slightly in the peripheral districts. Women mostly dressed in business/casual style with a carefully managed appearance. My interviewee from Trabzon’s AKP who was a former head of women’s branches recounted how she “trained” her team in legitimate women’s appearance in public: For one year, I was giving them [members of the branches’ local directorate] a formation about how a female politician should look like and how she shouldn’t, what should she wear, that she shouldn’t chew, and so on. As women, we shouldn’t laugh too loud in public. We have to choose outfits with care, always have an elegant hairstyle, the nails always clean. I am against cigarettes and I always insisted on the members of my team not to smoke. (Dilruba, municipal councilor, AKP, Trabzon, 31 May 2015)

“Which is why we always smoked in secret,” completed Dilruba’s former colleague, who was sitting next to her during our first interview. Notwithstanding her micro-resistance, I was able to attest that both women indeed resembled the image that Dilruba portrayed. Identifying similarities in the profiles of female councilors should not lead us to brush over the differences that exist among the cities included in this study. The differential migration patterns in Izmir and Trabzon are mirrored in the places of origin of local female politicians. Izmir is a metropole which takes in migrants from the whole country and women’s

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profiles reflect it: two interviewees were from Kars, others were from Aydın, Diyarbakır, Dersim, and Manisa and still others were descendants of Balkan immigration in the first decades of the twentieth century. In most cases, they had been living in Izmir for several decades. In Trabzon, on the other hand, the city is mostly affected by migration from the Black Sea region—an urbanization of the province’s rural population. Among the interviewees from the municipal council in Trabzon all were from Trabzon, mostly from its peripheral districts. The comparison between Trabzon and Izmir can already reveal that identical personal attributes do not have the same meaning and significance in these two local configurations. In Trabzon, the profile of a ­well-off educated and professional female politician is much more selective. Fewer women have university degrees in Trabzon as compared to Izmir, which is at the top of the national rankings in this regard (Demirdirek and Şener 2014, 92, 94). Women in Trabzon are also less likely to be employed (also self-employed) than in Izmir. The 2016 TEPAV report confirmed both trends, with 24.43% of women being at least secondary school graduates in Trabzon and 32.11% in Izmir, and with 17.37% of women employed at Trabzon’s municipality compared with 23.41% in Izmir (Kavas Urul 2016, 27–31). Based on the statistics of Turkey’s Bar Union, in 2016 women accounted for 46% of all lawyers in Izmir and 40% of all lawyers in Trabzon (Türkiye Barolar Birliği 2016).5 Finally, in Izmir, women are more likely to be elected to the local councils than in Trabzon as the statistics from previous chapters illustrate. This means that a lawyer in Izmir is situated differently in the social space than her colleague in Trabzon. The statistical data about women’s educational and professional status in a given city need to be supplemented with their political affiliation. Female lawyers in Trabzon are active both within the CHP and within the AKP. However, their chances of getting elected are not equal. The AKP is the dominant political force in the province (women put in ninth place on the electoral list still get a seat at the municipal council), while the CHP is a marginal political actor with a fierce intraparty fight for the top seats. Being a lawyer and belonging to the CHP in Trabzon can even negatively impact one’s career because clients may be more reluctant to engage the services of the “opposition” lawyer. On the contrary, the AKP lawyer is more likely to be included on the candidate list because she has a “golden profile” in the eyes of the party selectors. This means that women with identical attributes have different chances of getting elected depending, among

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other things, on the position of their political party within the local configuration. Wearing a headscarf is another example of an identical attribute with differential significance depending on the local configuration. In both Izmir and Trabzon, women elected within the AKP are more likely not to wear a headscarf whether they are municipal councilors or party representatives. This trend is more pronounced in Izmir, where the heads of women’s branches tend to be younger and wear non-religious attire while their team is mainly composed of middle-aged women, who are often veiled. In Izmir after the 2014 local election, 20% of the AKP’s female councilors wore the veil while 80% did not. The presence of fewer veiled women in Izmir’s AKP as compared to Trabzon reflects on the one hand the structure of the women’s candidate pool in the given city and on the other the party’s accommodation of local differences. Such adaptation strategies include women’s clothing, but they go beyond it. Fatma, the head of women’s branches in Izmir, told me about the specificities of the activities of her team in a city renowned for its liberal and secularist image: I am convinced that particular party program for Izmir is necessary as compared to other provinces. Social fabric of Izmir is not the same as Konya or Trabzon. Here, we need to explain ourselves to the people who, in reality, do not know us. We have to show them that we are also humans. That is why beside the traditional door-to-door campaigns we have other projects. […] For example, we have organized a concert of a symphonic orchestra to which we also invited the CHP members. At this event, we disrupted the idea that we only listen to religious music as there was jazz, Latino, Greek and religious music. We showed them that our party speaks to all segments of society. For the Mothers’ Day, we have organized a race called “My mother, my copilot.” With our mothers, we took helmets and joined a car race. This went against the stereotype that the AKP women who cannot drive cars. (Fatma, head of women’s branches, AKP, Izmir, 21 June 2016)

In some circumstances, it is possible that the headscarf negatively impacts the woman’s candidacy, especially in contexts where the party seeks to project a more liberal image. With this logic, the AKP appointed a former beauty queen at the top of women’s branches in Aydın, the province neighboring Izmir. It seems that the AKP’s policy of including veiled and unveiled women on the lists is by no means accidental. It not only has the potential to appeal to the widest possible electorate, but also

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helps to convey the idea that women with a variety of profiles get represented. However, this perception of variety, symbolized by the presence or absence of the headscarf, actually masks the homogeneity of elite profiles in socioeconomic and educational terms. Most female councilors are in their 40s (or older) at the time of their first election; they are married and have two children. This is the most represented profile across parties. What does it mean for their political activity? It shows politics is inscribed into specific temporalities and life pathways (Bessin 2009 talks about parcours de vie). The stage of life at which a woman enters the electoral race as well as the rhythm of her political career allows us to rethink the notion of “biographical availability.” Doug McAdam defines biographical availability as the absence of personal constraints which would increase the costs and risk of participating in a movement (1986, 70). Having a full-time job and family responsibilities are among the possible constraints. In the case of Turkey, biological age appears to be an insufficient variable in explaining the biographical circumstances of the first election of female politicians. If several interviewees from the CHP, such as Petek, entered the party when they retired from their job after 50, this was not only due to their “unavailability” for politics in terms of time and individual resources but because public employees are forbidden from political activity. Even though retirement may further increase the time flexibility of a candidate, women are not always discharged from the essential task of care. It took me several weeks before I could schedule an interview with Turna, AKP’s municipal councilor in Izmir. When we finally met, she arrived accompanied by her grandson. Turna explained that she had a hard time reconciling politics with the need to care for her three grandchildren, whose parents worked full time.6 On the other hand, I also met politicians who entered politics when their children were still very young. Among them were the municipal councilors and party representatives from the AKP, the party which champions the image of women primarily as mothers. Biographical availability has to be nuanced by the experiences of these women who defy the traditional frame of availability for politics and engage in political activity even though they have small children. At the same time, the concept of biographical availability needs to be analyzed within the given context because one’s propensity and willingness to enter politics may not come to fruition due to restrictions on political action (such as the ban on public employees, which significantly delays women’s entry into politics).

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The role of marriage in women’s political activity is ambiguous. Being married is a shield against allegations of sexual misconduct—as Sineau observed for the case of French female politicians: “the best way to find oneself beyond any reproach, in politics more than everywhere else, is to be a spouse and a mother” (1988, 56). Even though they represent a minority, unmarried, divorced, and widowed women are also involved in local politics. The 32-year-old head of AKP women’s branches in Izmir, Fatma,7 as well as 39-year-old Alev, a municipal councilor from the CHP in Izmir,8 were both single. Some of the husbands, even when initially displaying mild interest in their spouse’s political career, were portrayed as providing emotional and logistical support. But marriage can also act as a biographical rupture, as the case of Sevim showed. Her father decided to marry her off to prevent her political radicalization, which had profound consequences on her political involvement. After a decade-long break from politics and a separation from her husband, she found herself in the CHP—a centrist party as compared to her revolutionary left activism.9 Bahar’s case also illustrates how marriage can shape women’s availability for politics. Bahar is a member of the 1968 political generation and played an active part in the street protests and demonstrations of the leftist urban movement. She got married at the age of 19 and had her first child immediately after. As she herself puts it “I was not going to protest with a toddler,” which is why she joined CHP’s youth branch at the beginning of the 1970s—by joining the CHP, she entered a party with lower costs of involvement, she “de-radicalized.” Her husband also had an instrumental role in shaping her further political pathway: I worked in the health sector for twenty-two years. At the beginning of the 1990s, the CHP was going to be created again10 and I wanted to be part of it. That is why I took an early retirement at the age of 41. At that time, we lived in [other city than Izmir] and that is where I became ­vice-president of the party at the provincial level. We were spreading the party organization. One day, the national head of the party, Deniz Baykal, called me in person and asked me whether I would like to become party’s candidate to the local mayoral seat. I was very excited by this option. I went home and talked to my husband who categorically refused. He said that I was going to forget the road to home. Next day when I was coming back home, I found a “to sell” sign in front of the house and a note from my husband saying: “I moved to Izmir with the kids. You choose between us and the politics.” I packed my stuff and came to Izmir. (Bahar, municipal councilor, CHP, Izmir, 7 June 2016)

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For twenty years, Bahar, who had at her disposal the significant capital of seniority within the CHP, kept refusing invitations to appear on local electoral lists. Then came another biographical rupture. She was widowed at a time when her children were already grown up. When in 2009 a party candidate for the position of mayor asked her to join the municipal list, she agreed. When I met her in 2016, she had one unsuccessful parliamentary candidacy behind her and was exercising her second municipal mandate in Izmir. The observations that Şirin Tekeli made with regard to female parliamentarians in the 1970s are today valid for the majority of female local politicians with the “dominant profile”—they are accepted in politics because they are exceptional and overqualified. Being the first of their kind (such as the Konak mayor in Izmir who was the first female president of the Bar Association in the city) or having an outstanding educational and professional track record are the qualities sought in female municipal candidates. This means that the profile which was once suitable for a parliamentary office is nowadays a decent qualification for the municipal hall. This corresponds to the rising levels of women’s education and labor involvement nationwide but also to the rising importance of the municipalities. However, as became apparent from the comparison between Izmir and Trabzon, similar identity traits and qualifications have different salience based on local configurations.

4.2  The Unconventional Profiles We find female politicians with unconventional profiles either at the margins of the abovementioned parties, the AKP, CHP, and MHP, or as a “dominant profile” of the pro-Kurdish parties, DBP and HDP. These women do not combine the attributes of a high educational level, an enhanced professional career, and high socioeconomic status. They are generally younger than the average female local politician and tend to be single or divorced. The age difference between the pro-Kurdish parties and the rest of political spectrum is confirmed by the fact that men also tend to be youngest in these parties (Topak and Uysal 2010, 79). Women with “unconventional” profiles are thus positioned differently within parties: at the margin of the three parties or in the very center of the pro-Kurdish parties. This section also aims to introduce some complexity into this category and differentiate among politicians with unconventional profiles. Especially the case of the pro-Kurdish DBP and HDP raises the question of how discriminatory factors (such as low

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socioeconomic status and educational level) can be transformed into characteristics which facilitate women’s political inclusion. This signals that pro-Kurdish political parties value different attributes in their female candidates. The following profile is illustrative of the numerous recurrent attributes of women within the pro-Kurdish parties: Aged 37 during our interview, Şeyda is a DBP’s municipal councilor in one of the central districts in Diyarbakır. Originally from Diyarbakır, she comes from a family of seven children with a father working as public employee and stay-at-home mum. Şeyda’s mother is illiterate but displays vivid political activism, as Şeyda put it: “She regrets every demonstration she misses.” Şeyda’s mother tongue is the Zazaki dialect of Kurdish but in daily life, she uses much more the widely spread Kurmanji dialect. Şeyda is divorced and has one daughter at primary school. She herself studied a yüksek okul (professional school below the university level). However, she never made use of her technical specialization and instead pursued active career within a left-leaning labor union. In 2000, she took active part in founding the Diyarbakır Women’s Platform, uniting women’s NGOs in the city. Şeyda’s political activism started at the same period. She was first elected in the municipal council in 2009 and was in exercise of her second mandate when we met. During her time in office, she started a distance-learning university program of Law. Şeyda summarized the circumstances of her entry into politics as follows: “We are born into politics. Each family has paid the price. My sister gave her youth to the prison. My brother was arrested numerous times. During our childhood, we had police coming regularly to our house.” (Şeyda, municipal councilor, DBP, Diyarbakır, 6 May 2015)

The majority of biographical pathways of female politicians from the pro-Kurdish parties are marked by the military conflict opposing the Turkish state and the guerrilla organization of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). If a politically active family is not a rule among politicians with “dominant profiles,” within the DBP the situation is strikingly different. It appears that almost all of my interviewees come from a family politicized on the left, with family members either involved in radical left-wing groups, within the armed struggle or whose lives were deeply affected by warfare (for example, by the burning of villages or forced migration). For many, the military coup of 12 September 1980 had significant repercussions; their parents or siblings were arrested, tortured, imprisoned for long periods of time or compelled to seek refugee status abroad. The long imprisonment of Şeyda’s sister is illustrative of this.

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Biographical Pathways Marked by Violence and State Repression Such a close experience of militarized violence is the first differentiating factor of these atypical local politicians. The facts that they tend to come from a poorer background with political ascendants and are less likely to have a university diploma or a high-paying career should also be read in conjunction with the social strata of population from which these female politicians are recruited. As underlined by Handan Çağlayan, it is not surprising that Kurdish female politicians are different from their homologues from other political parties because they come from a marginalized population politicized by human rights violations and forced disappearances (2012, 144). Early childhood experiences of violence often appeared as an objectified element of politicization in the interviewees’ narratives. Avşîn, a district co-mayor elected in 2014,11 had several siblings active in the guerrilla struggle. She also considered that they were all born into politics: Once, when I was nine years old, I was ill, lying in my bed. When I woke up, plenty of masked people in black were in the house. One woke me up by kicking me. They took everybody to the gendarmerie station. I spent three days in detention. That night, they were searching for guerrilla members in our village. They were asking me whether armed people were coming to our house. I was too little to understand but I told them that our house was open to all good people. But they made a mess of it. At that time, I decided they were bad people. (Avşîn, co-mayor, DBP, outside Diyarbakır, 2 March 2016)

Avşîn presented her entry into politics as a search for justice and accountability. As she later put it, one can either join the guerilla or enter politics. The tendency to show political involvement as a natural, unavoidable consequence of their life experiences was very recurrent in the accounts of the pro-Kurdish politicians, while it was rather rare for women from other political parties. Lalebend, aged 25, municipal councilor in Diyarbakır, explained her family’s support for her political involvement in a high-risk party through a shared sense of political belonging: I come from a contesting family active in the Kurdish movement and its political parties since their beginnings. My father was tortured. So was my

152  L. G. DRECHSELOVÁ mother. The state asked us to become the pro-state village guards [korucu] but we refused. Our house was destroyed and we had to leave. My mother was taking us to every demonstration and was angry when we didn’t go. […] My siblings are also active in the movement. My older sister spent ten years in prison. Myself, I was in prison when I was 14. (Lalebend, municipal councilor, DBP, Diyarbakır, 8 May 2015)

Another distinctive feature emerges from Lalebend’s and Şeyda’s accounts—the importance of the mother’s political activism for the political involvement of the daughters. Only a minority of politicians from the “dominant profile” category mentioned the education or civic engagement of their mothers. The father figure was most often the key actor for their politicization. In the Kurdish families, the mothers appear much more politically active: Şeyda’s mother demonstrates frequently and so does Lalebend’s, whose experience of torture is also mentioned. The mother also represents a political educator for the children, as in the case of Delal, co-mayor in Diyarbakır, whose mother had a subtle way of providing political formation to her children: When we were little, we had to wait for hours until the kaymak12 was ready. When finally my mother was cutting the pieces of it for all of us, she spread them on the bread and gave a piece to each of us, saying: “This one is for DEV-YOL, this one is for DEV-SOL, this one is for Halkın Kurtuluşu, this one for TIKKO.”13 Without us noticing, with that bread, she was also giving us a political perspective. (Delal, co-mayor of district, DBP, Diyarbakır, 3 March 2016)

Delal’s family lived in a village where encounters with the state were very rare, but where several organizations of the revolutionary left were active in the pre-1980 coup period. Her mother knew all of these groups and transmitted this knowledge to her children. The majority of pro-Kurdish female politicians come from politicized families which have experienced state repression since their early childhood. This fact points toward the politicizing effect of such repression. However, the data collected through interviews with politically active women do not encompass the experiences of those women who remained outside the political realm amid state violence. It is thus not possible to fully answer the question of the mobilizing or demobilizing effects of state violence. Women who entered politics did so if not because of then amid state violence.

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It is interesting to note that in one of the predecessors of the HDP and DBP, the Democratic Society Party (DTP, Demokratik Toplum Partisi), most of the local leaders came from conservative religious families without ties to the Kurdish movement (Topak and Uysal 2010, 62). Several elements can help to explain my strikingly different observations—that the overwhelming majority of female politicians came from politicized families close to the Kurdish movement. First of all, the DTP was a party in action between 2005 and 2009. This period marks the first election of female MPs, but no significant breakthrough of women into local political representation. Thus, women were mostly missing from the numbers offered by Uysal and Topak with regard to local party leaders. Secondly, the fact that women come predominantly from politically active families can have repercussions for the families’ acceptance of female political involvement. In religious and conservative segments of society, women’s public campaigning is constrained by the imperatives of chastity. If a family is not anchored within the Kurdish movement, it is unlikely to accept its daughter’s political activities. This explains why the majority of women come from such politicized environments—their families are enablers of their involvement. Still, the violence inflicted on them since their early childhood cannot be considered a single politicizing factor. In the case of ­pro-Kurdish female politicians, their entry into politics has multiple denominators relative to a continuum of political socialization: family transmission of political orientation (the heritage of a family’s past activism sometimes taking the form of a “moral obligation” to get involved), the mobilizing effect of state violence, personal early-age trauma, women’s own unionist and associational activism and their professional careers. On the one hand, these characteristics help to explain who the susceptible candidates are. On the other, these women are strategically included on electoral lists in such high proportions because the party selectors consider family political heritage to be a legitimizing factor which has the potential to galvanize electoral support. The heavy price of political involvement paid by the family of the candidate or the candidate herself is called “bedel” in the Kurdish movement. The experience of violence and repression amounts to having paid a high bedel for one’s political mobilization. During the first years of the existence of pro-Kurdish political parties, women who were nominated as candidates to parliament consistently came from families which had paid the bedel. For instance, this was the case for all female candidates

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in the 1995 legislative election: Selma Tanrıkulu is the widow of Zeki Tanrıkulu, killed by an “unknown perpetrator” in 1993; Fatma Yıldırım is a widow whose husband’s disappearance was never elucidated; Cihan Sincar is the widow of the murdered MP Mehmet Sincar; Serap Mutlu is the older sister of Mazlum Doğan, a leading figure of the political opposition in Diyarbakır prison who self-immolated in 1981 (Çağlayan 2007, 143). Their family heritage constituted the major element of these candidates’ political capital. Still, they were placed at the bottom of the electoral list and even in the event of their party crossing the 10% electoral threshold, they would not have entered Parliament. Bedel also applies to the candidate’s own biographical path. It commonly takes the form of imprisonment. The time in prison is so recurrent in politicians’ histories that in the aftermath of the 2015 legislative election, one of the TV channels published an article about the pro-Kurdish deputies coming “from prison to Parliament” (CNN Türk 2015). However, unlike the candidates of the 1990s, women elected in 2015 did not only come from politically active families or have prominent husbands. They were placed on the list due to their own involvement, activism, and experience of state repression. The case of Selma Irmak exemplifies the activist past of most candidates: she spent ten years in prison during the 1990s for her alleged membership of the PKK and was arrested again in 2009 for her alleged membership of the KCK (urban wing of the PKK14). She was serving her prison sentence when she was elected deputy in 2011. She was eventually released in 2014 and was sworn into office in the same year. Irmak was reelected in 2015, arrested in 2016 and is still in prison at the time of writing in 2020. The “effect of prison” is not only symbolic in legitimizing the election of a candidate. Many of the interviewees talked about their prison time as a learning experience during which they became more familiar with the Kurdish movement’s core principles and ideology. Prison can also have a politicizing effect. Roza, who was in charge of women’s academy in Diyarbakır at the time of our interview, used to work as a trained nurse and was active in a labor union. She was arrested in 2009 for her alleged membership in the KCK and spent five years in prison. From a Turkish left-wing sympathizer of the Kurdish movement, she was transformed into a devoted full-time activist upon her release.15 In Roza’s case, prison meant an intense “secondary” socialization into politics.

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Two Generations of Pro-Kurdish Local Politicians The 2000s were critical years in terms of women’s inclusion in pro-Kurdish politics. Two dynamics developed dialectically: women ­ entered political parties in higher numbers and the intraparty positive action measures opened the way to their further political ascension. Women’s positions on the electoral lists progressively guaranteed election and bedel was transformed from a central issue to one criterion among others. Women from outside the Kurdish movement, such as Turkish radical leftists and Alevis, were also included in the pro-Kurdish parties. The diversification of socializing patterns of the candidates also entailed the multiplication of cases of individual politicization. Havîn, a young municipal councilor in Diyarbakır, comes from an agricultural family without political ties. She was asked to join the municipal council of the pro-Kurdish party because of her youth, university diploma, and professional experience in entrepreneurship: It was a little bit difficult to explain to my family why I decided to enter politics. My mother supports all my projects, but initially my father did not agree. I am lucky that I convinced him and that he respected my decision. My father is a farmer far from politics and myself, before becoming a candidate, I saw municipality not as a place of politics but a place of services. (Havîn, municipal councilor, DBP, Diyarbakır, 8 May 2015)

Havîn’s case suggests that bedel and family heritage are no longer the sole criteria for the selection of female candidates. Her election to the municipal council was facilitated by the female quota which opens the way for more diverse profiles. But could this evolution also signal changes in terms of the dominant profile within the pro-Kurdish parties? If so, what kind of change? This evolution is more visible when women’s political generations within the Kurdish movement are considered. The first generation of female politicians encompasses those who were politicized during the 1980s and 1990s. Some of them are mothers of my interviewees, speaking mostly Kurdish with little notion of Turkish, poorly schooled, mostly of rural background. They remained in the civilian sphere, i.e., they didn’t join the ranks of guerrilla fighters like many young girls who were politicized or sought to escape the constraining

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social order or forced marriage. The first political generation of women remained with their families but suffered firsthand the consequences of their husbands’ political involvement and of state repression. Often, they migrated to the city to escape the destruction of their villages during the 1990s. As the traditional provider for the family was in prison or forcibly disappeared, women took on the active role in urban areas. The absence of the men led to their increased spatial mobility fueled by the imperative to provide for the family. Suffering from economic difficulties, they reached out to the solidarity structures of the families close to the Kurdish movement. These structures provided them not only with social support but also with political solidarity, and thereby facilitated women’s involvement in organized action. The socialization into politics for these “improbable” activists happened within these structures, in front of prisons and police stations where they were claiming the right to see their relatives or denouncing cases of mistreatment and torture. Handan Çağlayan’s work captures most accurately the entry points into politics of this “first generation” of politically active Kurdish women (2007, 2012). Among my interviewees currently involved in electoral municipal politics, women with these profiles are almost totally absent. While they are common in the neighborhood assemblies (mahalle meclisleri), in the most grassroots forms of political organizing, they do not generally access the municipal council. Zêrav, a widowed mother of three children, was truly my only interviewee who belongs to this category. After the murder of her husband and the destruction of their village, she escaped with her children to Diyarbakır, the biggest city in the region. During our meeting, she described how intimidating it was for her to pay her first bill as this required mobility in an unknown urban space and interaction with completely new agents. Zêrav didn’t go to school and her Turkish remained poor. Her use of mobile phones was still impaired by difficulties with reading. She was the representative of the neighborhood assembly and was well known among the inhabitants of the area. She recalled once being arrested while chatting on the street, demonstrating how much her public activity was being monitored by the police. When I met Zêrav in February 2016, her day was mostly filled with two sorts of activities—supporting the families of victims of the military clashes in Diyarbakır’s Sur district which was under curfew and protesting in front of the morgues where the police had been blocking the handover of the dead to their families for weeks.16

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Zêrav corresponds to the “first political generation” of women in the pro-Kurdish political parties. Her socialization into politics is related to her migration to an urban area and her political activism is firmly located at the grassroots level. Her profile would be truly atypical if she was to be elected to the municipal council. However, her lack of proficiency in Turkish would make it difficult for her to exercise her mandate. Zêrav’s distance from representative functions is also concomitant with the rise of a new political generation of women, the “second generation,” who entered politics in the 2000s and 2010s and whose profiles differ from Zêrav’s. But this doesn’t mean that the second generation DBP municipal councilors display the same characteristics that dominate among most of the councilors of the other political parties. They differ in several regards. To start with, they come from families of lower economic status. Among the professions of parents, farmers, and small shop keepers are represented, with some public employees, but no established industrialists or big entrepreneurs. Economic difficulties are not absent from the childhood accounts of the interviewees, as shown by the case of the co-mayor Avşîn who experienced her family’s forced migration to a Western province of Turkey: We were nine people in a house composed of a single room. We put curtains to divide the space between kitchen and bathroom. But because we knew the difficult moments, we were always helping those newly arrived from our region. One day, a woman whose husband had been killed by soldiers came to the city with her four children. They sought help in the bureau of the political party. They didn’t have anywhere to go so my mum took them to our place. When one person was washing herself, thirteen people had to leave the house. In summer, it was fine but in winter it was happening every day as each of us had his or her turn. (Avşîn, co-mayor, DBP, outside of Diyarbakır, 2 March 2016)

Avşîn was able to return to the southeast region in 2009. She was approached by the party to become a candidate, passed the interview with the women’s electoral commission and was elected councilor. In the next election, in 2014, she became co-mayor. Thirty-three years old when we met, she received professional training after secondary school and didn’t go to university. Her modest origins and family heritage of active involvement within the Kurdish movement are the prominent

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features of her profile. During her term as co-mayor, she made it her tradition to eat lunch at different shops in the city center, cultivating an accessible image and maintaining regular contact with small tradesmen. In the pro-Kurdish parties attributes that would in other parties be mutually constitutive of women’s discrimination (being a woman, young, from a poor background, without diplomas and a professional career, belonging to ethnic and religious minorities), do not have the same impact. The intersectional exclusion that these women would suffer in other parties becomes their asset. This attests to a reverse logic by which intersectionality operates in the pro-Kurdish political parties. As a result, young female politicians are more likely to be elected in the DBP than in other parties. The age composition among Diyarbakır’s metropolitan female councilors whom I interviewed in 2015 illustrates this observation: five women were in their twenties, five in their thirties, five in their forties, and one was aged over fifty. Women in their twenties are rarely found in municipal councils in such proportions and if we consider that the category of “young councilors” encompasses the first two categories, they hold more than half of the seats. These councilors are also more likely to be single or divorced than their counterparts in other political parties. Among the sixteen interviewees, nine were single and two divorced (with one and two children, respectively), one was a widow and only three were married. Due to the specific selection mechanisms within the DBP and HDP, female candidates are selected by a women’s electoral committee. This has several repercussions for the profiles of women who get elected. For instance, past involvement in women’s centers and solidarity associations is highly valorized. As a consequence of this selection procedure, autochthony (being originally from the place of one’s candidacy) is of minor importance. This is especially true for female co-mayors: often the woman nominated to this position is not originally from the constituency which she then governs. While for male candidates, being a “local” is crucial, women are selected because they are experienced activists and are trusted to stand against the pressures associated with the co-mayorship. Being an experienced, trusted member of the Kurdish women’s movement is of higher strategic importance than being born in the place of one’s candidacy. In terms of the economic status and educational level of female councilors, there exists some diversity. Besides those who come from modest origins, women from middle class backgrounds are also represented. There is more of a contrast in terms of education: in parliamentary

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representation, a university diploma is mostly the rule. In local politics, those women who were poorly schooled throughout their lives, such as Zêrav, either belong to the 1990s political generation, or pursue political activism at the grassroots level, and are unlikely to enter the municipal council. This assessment has a gendered character because being a primary school graduate does not hold male colleagues back from becoming members of local party directorate or of the municipal council (Topak and Uysal 2010, 160). Among the younger female municipal councilors, a university diploma is increasingly the rule. Aged between 20 and 30, they most often study social sciences, journalism or law. Among my 16 interviewees from Diyarbakır’s metropolitan council, nine had a university degree. In two regards, there exists a certain alignment in profiles between the atypical and dominant categories: increasingly prevalent university education and some appearance of politicians coming from non-political backgrounds, elected for their own professional achievements or entrepreneurial skills. Among the holders of elective office in the DBP, distance learning is a real phenomenon. I was struck by the frequency with which the interviewees engaged in “açık öğretim” (distance learning). In Turkey, a person can graduate from distance learning schools from primary school to university level without restriction of age by attending classes every other weekend. Lalebend studied high school during her mandate as metropolitan municipal councilor in Diyarbakır.17 Şeyda continued her distance studies of law when she was vice-mayor of the district.18 Berzê, co-mayor of the district outside of Diyarbakır, finished secondary school, then got married and started distance learning for her high school diploma during her mandate.19 Among the nine councilors with a university degree, three acquired theirs through distance learning. Thus the term of elected office appears to be a suitable time for advancing one’s educational capital. This can be related both to the necessities of the mandate (the knowledge required) as well as the resource availability (financial and time-wise) that the mandate offers. The DBP is also more likely than other parties to elect women with no professional career. Housewives and stay-at-home mums are very much present within the gigantic AKP’s women’s branches but they seldom hold an electoral office. No specific job appears as dominant in the DBP councilors’ profiles but labor union activities are systematic. Among the elected women, we find teachers, former bureaucrats, and craftswomen.

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Among elected female councilors, a few were also known as child brides, the “çocuk gelin.” Being a woman married (illegally) at an early age is associated with vulnerability and the pro-Kurdish parties criticize this practice. Councilors who were child brides are put forward and attract media attention. They often make the prevention of early marriage the core of their political fight. This was also the case for Kejê, a 41-year-old municipal councilor in Diyarbakır. She got married at the age of 15 but she stressed that her mother was married when she was 12, so 15 did not seem extremely young for the family. However, Kejê didn’t only blame tradition: “I am the victim of the 1990s,” she said during our interview. Demonstrating from an early age, she was arrested when she was 14 years old. Upon her release, her family pushed for the marriage. Kejê divorced her abusive husband after thirteen years of marriage. Mother of four children, she finished high school and made her children’s education her priority. One daughter was already studying at university and one son was preparing for the entry exam at the time of our meeting.20 Finally, elected female councilors from the pro-Kurdish parties are not all ethnically Kurdish. Februniye Akyol, the co-mayor in Mardin, is Assyrian. The profiles of female politicians from the HDP in Izmir are also telling. Even though Izmir’s HDP also attracts Turkish radical ­left-wing activists, the core of its membership and sympathizers remains Kurdish. In many regards, they share the migration pattern of Avşîn: they are in Izmir as a result of migration from the southeast region. In terms of socioeconomic status, though, their family status is generally better than Avşîn’s. Bade, in her late twenties, was the co-speaker at the Peoples’ Democratic Congress in Izmir (HDK, Halkların Demokratik Kongresi), a conglomerate of associations and civil society organizations supporting the Kurdish peace process. Bade is an Alevi from Dersim (Tunceli by its current administrative denomination). Her father is an accountant and her mother works in the service sector; Bade has a university degree and at the time of our interview she was studying for her Masters. Her parents have never held an intraparty office but participate in demonstrations regularly. Bade regrets not being fluent in Kurdish, with mostly Turkish spoken at home. She considers her politicization to have happened during her undergraduate years, in another city in Western Turkey: Entering university, I became friends with other Kurdish students. It was not by nationalism but because we were similar, we came from similar families.

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We used to have lunch together, we went together to classes but nothing more. This caught the attention of a group of Turkish nationalists at the university who came to warn us not to group like this. One day we were waiting for other friends but they didn’t come. Later on, we learnt that the nationalists chased them with knives and sticks. They took shelter in a café and called the police. When police came, they took identity cards of all and saw birth places of our friends, such as Diyarbakır and Mardin, and it was them who got arrested. […] Everything is done so that you don’t feel secure in the city. […] That is how we developed the consciousness of our Kurdishness. (Bade, co-speaker of the HDK, Izmir, 13 June 2016)

At the university, Bade cocreated an association regrouping some of the students in which they studied the history of the Kurds and worked on a theater project. Later she moved back to Izmir and worked in the women’s commission of the pro-Kurdish party before becoming co-speaker of the HDK at the time we met. Women with atypical profiles are well represented within the pro-Kurdish political parties. In other parties, mostly the CHP, they represent a marginal profile. The group of radical Turkish leftists belonging to the 1968 and 1978 political generations partly integrated into the CHP and partly joined the HDP. There is a split within the group which shares the common political socialization of the 1970s (within the revolutionary left but often in competing fractions). This split is easy to observe in Izmir, where both the CHP and the HDP operate. However, in Trabzon it is almost nonexistent. Most of the former revolutionary leftist women are today politically active within the CHP. This is due to the absence of left-wing alternatives in a city with a strong ­Islamic-nationalist consensus (the AKP and MHP gather the vast majority of votes). The CHP thus represents a space where some form of left-wing politics is possible. At the same time, these women contribute to move local party organization toward the left. The cases of Trabzon and Izmir, with different patterns of political involvement of similarly politically socialized women, confirm how local configurations shape the opportunities for political action. To sum up, several trajectories lead to local electoral office for women within the pro-Kurdish parties. Family political heritage represents the first road into politics. Second is an individual long-term political involvement. Third is a belonging to an influential tribe or family ­(Şahin-Mencütek 2016). With regard to this point, the silence of my interviewees about their tribal belonging was striking. However, the

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existence of these ties is sometimes openly claimed—for instance by the association of the Bekiran tribe located in the areas of Muş, Batman, and Erzurum. On their website, the association of Bekiran proudly announces the election of two female deputies from their tribe (Bekiran Derneği 2015). Finally, one’s achievements or outstanding profile can prompt the party selectors to approach a candidate. This last method opens up a way for more diverse profiles to be represented. Crucially, these women tend to be university educated and to be professionally active. In these regards, they are closer to the “dominant councilors’ profile” as described in the first section of this chapter. However, the massive detentions of ­pro-Kurdish politicians have intensified since 2016 and the renewal of the warfare between the Turkish army and the PKK and its adjacent smaller armed groups has increased the cost of involvement in pro-Kurdish politics in Turkey. This is most likely to stop the alignment of dominant and atypical profiles of female local politicians. In times when engagement within the HDP presents increased risk, the party may have to mobilize the most traditional recruitment pools and draw candidates from politically active families who have already paid the high price, bedel, of involvement.

4.3  Gendered Resources and Stigmas The significance and salience of women’s resources varies depending on time and space. The reversed operation of intersectionality within the pro-Kurdish parties shows how attributes which in most of the parties contribute to the exclusion of women from electoral politics can benefit female candidates. Similarly, the salience of resources varies locally: being a lawyer in Izmir and in Trabzon does not have the same meaning for the interviewee’s political career. In addition, the salience of different types of capital varies during the individual pathway. This can best be seen in the volatility of gender capital: being a woman is at times a stigma but can be a benefit under specific conditions. This section discusses the implications for women’s careers of two “resources”—political experience and the fact of being a woman, the gender capital. Women Lacking Political Capital? Are women unexperienced coopted candidates or on the contrary veteran politicians equipped with political capital? The argument most often

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heard from critics of the female quota in politics lies in the assumption that if more women were included in politics, this would lead to the inclusion of less competent candidates. Many female politicians mirror this argument even if supporting inclusion in principle: “more women yes, but not just any women,” they say. Is the image of competence in politics gendered? Mine Alparslan, in her comparative research on the AKP and the CHP, noted that women who have become integrated into the highest organs of these political parties were not selected because of their prior political experience but because of their professional achievements and technical expertise (2014, 124). She concludes that political experience has a lower salience for women than men. The situation is more nuanced at the municipal level. To begin with, most of the female councilors are not newcomers to politics at the moment of their election. They have had prior intraparty political experience. However, this often means that their careers are tightly linked to those of the mentors who instigated their entry into politics in the first place. Ezgi, AKP’s municipal councilor in Trabzon, was approached by the contender for the party directorship at the district level. Together they lost the election, but won the next one, and later on the mentor helped Ezgi to access the party directorate at the provincial level, a mandate that facilitated her election to the municipal council.21 Based on this close relationship, women’s loyalty to their mentor appears crucial in climbing the intraparty ladder. The trajectories of women within the AKP share a non-linear character that was present in Ezgi’s case. Their careers are rarely linearly ascendant. On the contrary, the experience of an unsuccessful intraparty congress is almost the rule. The first defeat does not entail the dissolution of the competing faction but rather its restructuring and preparation for the next electoral period. The time between the invitation into the party by an aspiring local leader and the election of the female politician in the municipal council counts as the political capital of the female councilor. The act of invitation is an important element, especially strong within the AKP. It marks the non-linearity of women’s careers from another point of view: the majority of municipal councilors did not start working in the party at the grassroots level as ordinary members. Instead, they were handpicked by either the local party leader or the head of women’s branches. In both scenarios, these women entered directly in a position of responsibility as members of local party directorate or of the leadership of women’s branches. Amid the 4.5 million

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members of the AKP’s women’s branches, women are climbing a broken ladder, as most councilors skip several steps directly at entry. Prunelle Aymé’s research attests that this hierarchy is also reflected in the organizational division of labor within the women’s branches, which in turn impacts the electoral chances of women. Members of the branches’ directorate invest more time and energy into party work and have a busy schedule, while ordinary members get involved based on their availability and maintain looser ties to the party (Aymé 2017, 97). Within the CHP, a significant number of female councilors were in the past or still are party educators (parti eğitmeni). This intraparty role constitutes a crucial component of their political capital. As party educators, they organize the seminars and intraparty academies, which helps them to acquire the capital of reputation. When it comes to including women on the list (to fill the 33% party quota), these women are more likely to be selected because they are familiar to local party leaders. Being an intraparty educator also entails frequent communication with the headquarters in Ankara which may strengthen links with national politics and thus increase the candidate’s standing in comparison to other aspirants. Practically, moderating seminars may improve one’s communication skills and enhance one’s clarity of expression, both elements valorized in electoral campaigns. If the majority of women have prior political experience, the most accomplished female politicians rarely find their place on the electoral list or seem stuck at the municipal level. Sevim, from the CHP, is one such politician. A member of a radical left-wing organization in the 1970s, she entered the SHP in the 1980s. She left the party in 1992 to protest the way its president handled the Sivas massacre of the Alevi intelligentsia. She entered the newly created CHP two years later and assumed a series of intraparty responsibilities: member of the district party directorate, member of provincial women’s branches, delegate to the national congress of the women’s branches. Her candidacy for the position of district mayor in Izmir was first accepted but then party leaders favored another (male) candidate just a couple of days before the closure of the candidate lists.22 In Turkey’s local politics, women do not lack prior political experience at the time of their election. Although seniority within the party is openly valorized (i.e., the higher the number of years between entry into the party and the election the better) actual individual involvement cannot be measured in years. One female councilor used to only occasionally

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join the party’s events and was more of a passive member, while the other accumulated commission memberships and took an active part in the organizing of daily activities. Both entered the party in 2009, and upon their election in 2014 both had five years of (very different) political experience. Who ultimately gets included depends on the strategies of party selectors. As the following chapters show, all is set up institutionally to favor obedient behavior and adaptation. It can benefit a female candidate to have five years of party membership but not to have been too outspoken. It is the structure of women’s political capital, rather than its presence or absence, that differentiates them from the men who become mayors and members of parliament. Male political careers show that the mayoral and MP offices are reserved for the heads of provincial and district party units. Most of the men I encountered had held this local intraparty post in the past. Women are much less likely to climb to the top of the local party hierarchy—within the AKP and the MHP such posts are almost exclusively male-occupied. Within the CHP, some women get to preside over the provincial party unit and this may indeed enhance their career. Within the pro-Kurdish parties, the co-chairing system applied since 2005 to all party hierarchy confirms that women who previously held this top local office are likely to enter national politics in the future. It is notable that all three female metropolitan mayors elected in 2014 used to be MPs (one from the AKP, one from the CHP, and one from the HDP). In 2019, this was the case for three out of four women who became metropolitan mayors (one from the AKP, one from the CHP, and two from the HDP). This trajectory is significantly gendered; it shows that while men can become mayors after having led the local party unit, women reach this office mainly after having served in national politics. The presence and structure of political capital can also play a role in cases of last-minute evictions from the candidate lists. While women appear especially vulnerable to last-minute changes, the reason consists partly in their lack of visibility and influential intraparty support, both of which are related to the structure of one’s political capital. As female politicians follow the careers of their mentors, they are also not immune to the factional rivalries within parties. The clearest examples of this were the developments within the MHP from 2016. Several aspirants to the party’s top office challenged the longtime leader Devlet Bahçeli and called for a congress, which the MHP seldom organizes.

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They were eventually excluded from the party. These divisions then run through local party units. In Izmir and in Trabzon, affiliations to one of the opponents of Devlet Bahçeli even divided families of supporters of the Turkish nationalist movement. In Trabzon, I met with sympathizers of three out of the four factions: Arzu, the head of women’s branches remained loyal to Bahçeli23; Dilay, an unsuccessful parliamentary candidate, supported Meral Akşener, who ended up presiding over the newly formed İyi Parti24; finally, Abide, who was a member of the district party directorate and a supporter of Koray Aydın, was expelled from the MHP the day prior to our interview.25 Within the AKP, political factions are rather invisible to the external observer. The party headquarters pressurize local units to organize congresses with only one candidate, which relegates intraparty rivalries almost exclusively to the party’s backstage. During interviews, female councilors would offer an occasional glimpse of the rivalries by noting that the mayor doesn’t lend an ear to their projects because he identifies them as coming from a different faction, i.e., they are backed by his rival. With the creation of the AKP in 2001, several of my interviewees joined the party as a means of political reconversion. For some, this was lived as continuity: Feriha, municipal councilor from the Refah Party in Trabzon, went on to become the AKP’s deputy.26 However, for Pınar in Trabzon who used to be in the Demokrat Parti27 of Süleyman Soylu the political reconversion was a slow and risky process. Even though Süleyman Soylu, an influential ally of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, asked Pınar to join the AKP to advance her political career, she was reticent and postponed it: Süleyman Soylu called us and invited us to follow him to the AKP. I was waiting for the right timing. I was offered an intraparty office but I turned it down. One day, the municipality placed a bus stop just in front of our shop’s door and it was bothering us. So with my husband we went to see the mayor and asked him to change the placement of the bus stop. With the mayor, we talked at length and I told him about my visions about public transportation in this city and he appreciated my ideas. He encouraged me to apply for municipal council in the 2014 election. I was still hesitant. The last day of applications came and we met the president of AKP’s local unit at a football match. He assured me of his support during the selection process. He and my husband took care of the necessary documents and I just signed. So I had an explicit support of the mayor, of the head of local unit and I was promised sixth place on the list which

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would also allow me to enter the metropolitan council. Over the last night though, I fell to the fifteenth place. (Pınar, municipal councilor, AKP, Trabzon, 20 April 2016)

While the reconversion of Süleyman Soylu led him to the post of the Interior Minister, Pınar’s reconversion was not as smooth. Amid the guarantees of support, her lack of intraparty political capital within the AKP contributed to her downgrading on the list and meant that the door of the metropolitan council remained closed to her. It is possible to note that Pınar embodies the “dominant councilor’s profile”: she is in her forties, married with two children, university educated, socioeconomically well positioned, and has a successful professional career. By her identity attributes she is definitely in the pool of considered female candidates but coming from a different party may have negatively impacted her bid for candidacy.28 In the absence or scarcity of individual political capital, female local politicians can also mobilize political capital in its delegated form, through other family members. Having generations of active politicians as family heritage, a brother at the top of a local party unit, or an influential husband can have repercussions for women’s political ascension. Would such a multiplicity of family political involvement signify that women are proxies of the influential men from their families? My research shows that while there are consistent interests defended by members of the same family, assigning women to proxies would be a too-deforming shortcut.29 Aware of the label, some of the interviewees were reluctant to talk about their family’s political involvement, only talking about their own actions and aspirations. Others shared strategies to avoid being seen as receiving a political office for the merits of their families, such as Dilay, MHP’s unsuccessful parliamentary candidate: When I wanted to enter politics a lot of the men were just saying “see a pretty woman, married into a well-known family, she will become deputy thanks to her husband”. To prove them wrong, I worked on deepening my insights into country’s and city’s problems. I started publishing opinion articles in the local journals. I think around that time, these critical voices stopped, because people accepted that I put forward my candidacy for my own ideas. (Dilay, candidate to the Parliament, MHP, Trabzon, 13 April 2016)

The notion of women as proxies also hides the variety of scenarios and modalities of involvement across family structures. Adalet’s case

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is interesting in this regard. Her husband had a longtime ambition to become a member of Parliament and when he handed his application to the AKP, he registered his wife in the political academy of the party. At that time, Adalet was taking care of their newborn child and was far from being biographically available for political action. Nevertheless, she joined the academy and was spotted by the president of district women’s branches who invited her to join her team. She accepted, and when the president was to quit her role to integrate the provincial party unit she designated Adalet as her successor. Adalet was confirmed in a congress where she was the single candidate but was also given the message that her application for the municipal council in 2014 would not be supported by the party directors. Adalet explained that this was because her leadership of women’s branch was still too recent at the time of the municipal election. Her absence from the list meant an exception from the AKP’s rule to first offer the place on the list to the head of local women’s branches. While Adalet’s career took off, her husband made multiple unsuccessful applications to be an MP. With the political ascent of his wife, it is not impossible that she may in the future enhance his political chances.30 Rather than assigning women to proxies, a notion that implies a lack of independent action or agency, it is more accurate to conceive of their situation as being part of a network consisting of multiple political involvements within one family. While family members are almost systematically active within the same political party, a strategic deployment of family members across parties is not totally absent (it can be seen in the Of district in Trabzon or within some tribal structures in the southeast region). However, the political action of these family networks is not always coordinated. Women’s branches president Mehtap from the MHP in Izmir comes from a family firmly anchored in the nationalist wing of Turkish politics. Mehtap’s father, an influential entrepreneur, has been politically active in the past and her sister was an unsuccessful parliamentary candidate. These family involvements strengthened Mehtap’s personal capital in politics and smoothed her access to the top of the local women’s branch. At the same time, different family members found themselves divided over their loyalties to the contested party leadership from 2016. The sisters each supported a different aspirant to the leadership. In addition, Mehtap’s personal political capital has been getting stronger due to her eight-year-long engagement in politics and she is actively working on building her position for a future election.

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“When I am walking, I always have headsets on. People may think I am listening to the music, but I am actually listening to speeches by Devlet Bahçeli and other leaders of our movement,” she said.31 Mehtap’s path and ambition show the deficiency of the proxy notion in capturing the modalities of women’s political involvement. Another much more well-known example is that of Leyla Zana. She was married at the age of fourteen to Diyarbakır’s mayor Mehdi Zana, who was then imprisoned for many years. Leyla Zana spoke little Turkish and received little formal education when she was elected deputy in 1991, mainly for being the wife of the famous Kurdish politician. Her inclusion on the list was due to the resonance of her family name. However, throughout the following twenty years, she built a reputation of her own that overshadowed that of her husband. She became famous for pronouncing a sentence in Kurdish after her parliamentary oath, for having spent ten years in prison and for being awarded the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Human Rights. The pro-Kurdish parties display great variation in the structure of the political capital of their elected female members. The ­co-chairing system and the 40% quota opened a number of offices to women which reflects the spectrum of political pathways that are represented. Gülistan, co-mayor in the Erzurum province, has been active in politics since 1994. Her political trajectory spans almost the whole existence of pro-Kurdish political parties in Turkey. Today in her sixties, Gülistan entered the party after her children grew up. She was the party’s secretary treasurer throughout the 1990s. Later on, she entered the provincial party directorate and worked with women’s branches from the 2000s to finally integrate the party’s disciplinary committee. Upon her return to her natal district, she was selected for co-mayorship.32 At the same time, we can also find some women without any political experience on the electoral lists. They were mostly encouraged to apply for councillorship because of the scarcity of candidates—especially in the remote conservative districts where the pro-Kurdish party secured a tight win. Rojhat, a DBP municipal councilor in her twenties, recalls such an experience: Before the elections, the friends from the party came to see me. They insisted that I apply for the councillorship because I have been sitting at home after finishing my high school studies. I submitted my application but I sincerely hoped that it will not work. One week later, I learnt I was included on the list. After the elections, I had to ask where the

170  L. G. DRECHSELOVÁ municipality building was because I had never been there. (Rojhat, municipal councilor, DBP, Mardin province, 29 February 2016)

Rojhat was invited onto the list due to the lack of female candidates in her district but this does not mean her selection was random. She also has educational capital as it is rare for women in her village to complete high school. Being young and single, she was also biographically available for politics. Nevertheless, she has never exercised an intraparty mandate and did not have any prior political experience before entering the municipal council. In most cases, women’s careers within the Kurdish movement are marked by their multi-positionality. Avşîn, for instance, combined a number of roles: she was concomitantly a co-mayor at a district municipality, a member of the Free Women’s Congress (KJA) and a member of the Association of Local Administrations (Yerel Yönetimler Birliği). This multi-positionality also stretches across time and makes women’s pathways appear circular: municipal councilors were in the past labor unionists, municipal bureaucrats, members of a women’s association, or human rights activists. Their electoral mandate represents a stage on this circular path which is going to be followed by another role, such as human rights activism, a position within the KJA or in the media. The path of Lalebend, a 28-year-old metropolitan councilor in Diyarbakır, is very representative: she worked consecutively in the youth sections of the pro-Kurdish parties, in the women’s solidarity center Selis, passing by an organization collaborating with one of Diyarbakır’s municipalities, then in another women’s center, Kardelen. She also collaborated with associations helping refugees and children and with the association called the Peace Mothers (Barış Anneleri).33 Experience from a women’s association has been so recurrent among DBP’s female councilors that it can be seen as one of the most valorized elements in a candidate’s profile. The associational field thus appears not to be external to the political field but to be an integral part of it in the context of the pro-Kurdish parties. This means that throughout her early involvement Lalebend accumulated significant political capital even though she didn’t officially hold any intraparty office. The close connection between women’s trajectories and the associational field is not the privilege of the pro-Kurdish parties even though they are unusual for the level of politicization of their associations. Literally all my interviewees across political parties mentioned one or

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more associations they had ties with. Women are more likely than men to have been active within the Unions of the Family and the School ­(Aile-Okul Birliği), structures with charitable aims which co-finance lunches or school equipment of children from disadvantaged families. These associations are seen as especially suitable for women because they cover the realm where women are considered as legitimate, embodying characteristics coherent with their motherhood, such as care and help for children. While one of my interviewees was in charge of the Union of the Family and the School during the exercise of her electoral mandate, for many this experience was a stepping stone to public action and thus, indirectly, to politics. An ideological division can be drawn between the associations with which women from different political parties become involved. Members of the AKP and the MHP are mostly active within charitable organizations such as the Union of Turkish Mothers (Türk Anneler Birliği) or an association to fight different diseases. Women from the CHP often have ties with associations known for claiming the Kemalist heritage, such as the Atatürkist Thought Association (Atatürkçü Düşünce Derneği, ADD), or with secularist women’s organizations such as the Turkish Women’s Union (Türk Kadınlar Birliği). Their position within the association also differs: within the AKP, simple membership is generally the rule, while within the CHP the presidency of an association is more recurrent. This may be related to the propensity of the party to include on its lists “exceptional” women, which leads to the valorization of the presidents of associations. A Volatile Gender Capital In politics, women are constantly brought back to the singularities of the “women’s condition” (Dulong and Matonti 2005, 2) and to their embodiment of gender (Sineau 1988, 16). Being a woman in politics is a minority phenomenon: the quantitative analysis of Uysal and Topak showed that women constituted 11% of members of local party directorates across major parties (2010, 147). However, gendered belonging does not always operate as a stigma. It has already been noted that in the pro-Kurdish parties, being a woman can compensate for not being originally from the given constituency. Other instances of a reversal of the stigma can also be observed. When and under which conditions can gender be transformed into a strategic resource?

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Given the mechanisms excluding women from local politics, the intraparty understanding of the minimal acceptable women’s representation plays a key role in assessing the salience of gender. When women’s inclusion is dictated by the tokenistic logic, the likelihood of gender being a stigma is very high. In such a context, the discriminatory mechanisms within the party run along the lines of the gender inequalities within the social order. This is the case in the conservative parties, the AKP and the MHP, where women are mostly tokens representing the whole category of women. Being a woman is their primary characteristic and it only serves for a very limited inclusion. The situation within the CHP is different due to the implications of its gender quota. The quota aims at intraparty elections, candidates selected by the national headquarters in the legislative election, and at local elections. The quota acts in two major ways: first, it overcomes the logic of women as tokens. Therefore, more than one woman gets to the municipal council; second, the quota puts women into direct competition with other women. Few women manage to construct their gender as a resource in politics. They do so on the one hand by underlining their gender belonging, and on the other hand by presenting projects related to women’s status. Fidan, a 37-year-old municipal councilor from the CHP in Izmir, played the “woman card” while advancing her career. She launched a women’s cooperative in her district and worked within the women–men equality committee in the municipal council. Beyond that, she also joined a platform of all existing equality committees in Izmir province and participated regularly in the seminars offered by local and national NGOs. Fidan’s political ambitions could eventually suffer from the relegation of the issue of women–men equality to the periphery of municipal action. But the fewer the women pretending to be “champions of women’s issues,” the higher their chances of successfully building on this resource in politics. The championing of women is an exclusive label and helps to advance the career of very few. Fidan’s bet on this status is thus risky and puts her in direct competition with other contenders for the label. The salience of such activities changes with political circumstances—it is enhanced when the president of the party punctually expresses his support for female candidates, or when the electoral period coincides with a national or international agenda fueling concerns of gender inequality. Fidan’s success, however, lies not only in her capacity to construct herself as a champion of women but also in not relying

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solely on gender capital. In her case the combination of two capitals is at play: family political capital (coming from the third generation of CHP politicians) and professional capital (having technical expertise suitable for municipal work). The experience of the 40-year-old Leyla, lawyer and former CHP councilor in the provincial council34 in Izmir, reveals much about the modalities of women’s ascension in politics: After the local election, the provincial council was about to elect its president and two vice-presidents. Among the candidates to these posts, there were only men. The day before the election, a friend of mine, a female lawyer, called me and asked me to apply for the post of vice-president of the council. I said “I am new, I don’t know the proceedings.” She said “You will see, men who finished primary school apply for the job and they have no problems with it.” But one man from my district was already a candidate so my party didn’t want me to apply because that would mean two people from the same district want to monopolize the positions. I angered my party and the other candidate when I walked to the pulpit and made a speech in which I asked for two women to be elected as vice-presidents of the council because the president is a man. Izmir should play a pioneering role in this regard, I said. Then I left the room and it was only when a journalist came to ask my impressions that I learnt that I was elected a vice-president. (Leyla, former provincial councilor, CHP, Izmir, 29 June 2015)

The episode shows that Leyla’s inclusion was a result of her standing up and advocating for women’s inclusion in general. Her call was rewarding for her personally. This shows that men within the party are sensitive to appearances and do not want to be portrayed as discriminating against women. At the same time, including the vocal woman is the easiest and quickest fix at their disposal and so she often ends up being included herself. Most of the interviewees refrained from labeling themselves as feminists. They did so either in line with their party ideology (in the conservative parties) or as a precaution against lowering their chances of inclusion—a woman describing herself as a feminist can be seen as a potential troublemaker and thus disqualified from the electoral competition. The pro-Kurdish parties are the only spaces where being openly feminist is valorizing. Especially within the HDP, being a feminist is not an exception but a norm. Among the party’s outstanding feminist figures are the former co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ (imprisoned since 2016) and

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the deputy and well-known academic Filiz Kerestecioğlu. In comparison to the HDP, women within the DBP display greater variety in their use of the “feminist” label. Some describe themselves as feminists, others see their struggle in continuity with feminism but at the same time as a remedy to feminism’s elite aspects. This shift “beyond feminism” is part of a larger ideological development within the Kurdish movement which is dealt with in the upcoming chapters.

4.4  Concluding Remarks The dominant profile of a female municipal councilor in Turkey is an elite one. These women do not “revolutionize” the socioeconomic composition of the council. In line with the gender-discriminatory intraparty selection mechanisms, the elite profile is what it takes to qualify for a place on the electoral list. The similarities in profile among parties and localities are striking. Besides the existence of the “dominant profile,” the differential salience of similar identity markers is another key outcome of the cross-party and cross-municipal comparison. The levels of women’s political representation appear to follow not only the dominant party pattern but also the socioeconomic status of women within a given city. With lower percentages of women with a university education and professional career in Trabzon, a woman lawyer has a more unusual profile than in Izmir. This has also been termed the effect of cosmopolitanism (Gidengil and Vengroff 1997), relating women’s representation to the size of the local pool of susceptible female candidates. At the same time, similar identity traits do not bring about similar political experience. There as well, the local configuration and the degree of a party’s implantation have great explanatory value. Being the first female councilor from the MHP to enter the municipal council or being the only CHP’s female councilor amid the party’s drop in votes are very different political experiences which attest to how female political actors are differentially positioned—not only with regard to men but also in comparison to other women across parties and localities. The next chapter focuses on some of their differential experiences related to this positionality. Family background differs a lot and reveals variations in individual political socialization. Half of the interviewees had politically active antecedents in their family. For the other half, the encounter with politics happened later. Women’s experiences confirm that political socialization

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cannot be understood as only pertaining to the “political” in the strict sense but is also built upon experiences and behaviors that did not have a political character as such but contributed to motivate political actions of the interviewees in their adult life (such as their childhood struggle to access education). Many women became acquainted with politics during their high school and university years, which underlines the importance of secondary socialization in explaining political involvement. However, the variety of life stages during which women entered politics (at an early age as well as in their 40s) supports the understanding of socialization into politics as a continuous process, beyond the binary between primary and secondary socialization (Boughaba et al. 2018). Women who do not fit into the elite profile are rarer in local politics but they are mostly represented within the pro-Kurdish parties or on the margins of the other political forces. Within the pro-Kurdish parties, the identity traits that generally mean exclusion from electoral politics combine to favor one’s inclusion on the lists. This means that intersectionality works in reverse: most candidates are at the same time women, young, members of ethnic and religious minorities and deprived of classical political resources. However, the assessment of women’s profiles within the pro-Kurdish parties reveals more plasticity. Shifts in profiles are apparent between the first and the second political generation. The first generation mostly entered politics in the 1990s as a result of the warfare in the southeast region. These women from a modest background with poor schooling migrated to the cities where they encountered the Kurdish movement’s solidarity networks and became further politicized in front of the prisons where their relatives were held. These women are still represented in Kurdish local politics but remain at the grassroots level, such as neighborhood assemblies, and rarely access municipal councils. In the municipal councils, elected women tend to be younger and have a university diploma (many having been enrolled in distance learning programs while in office). Their profiles are more diverse and bedel, the price paid as a result of involvement in the military conflict and political action, is not the dominant criterion for selection anymore. Women’s political careers are tied to that of their mentor. Women’s electoral chances largely determined at the moment of their entry into the party. The mentor is often an aspirant to the local electoral office and through invitations he preselects his future municipal councilors. This feature also has a crucial impact on the profiles that dominate local

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politics—preselection is a way to avoid subversive profiles and disruptive elements in politics (for this argument in the French context, see Dulong 2010, 260). Women generally have several years of intraparty experience before candidacy. Thus, the idea of women’s political inexperience does not correspond to the majority of trajectories. However, the nature of women’s political experience differs significantly. Voicing grievances may not always be the most valued strategy for women’s ascension. A loyal and accommodating attitude benefits the aspiring candidate. As Ayşe Güneş-Ayata remarks, women progress in politics with the support of men and only those who do not threaten the patriarchal order succeed (1998, 246). The instances of the strategic use of gender capital suggest how volatile a resource gender can be. The following chapters expand on this point by diving into the strategies women deploy as political actors as well as the difficulties they encounter in their endeavors.

Notes

1. Fusün, municipal councilor, MHP, Trabzon, 4 June 2015. 2. Çılay, former candidate to the mayor, member of the MHP, Trabzon, 7 April 2016. 3. Petek, former municipal councilor, CHP, Trabzon, 23 March 2016. 4. Ceyda, head of women’s branches, CHP, Izmir, 8 June 2016. 5. It is notable that both proportions could be considered rather high in comparison with the proportions in many European states. The justice sector, academia and medicine are among the sectors within which women have been encouraged to integrate since the early Republican era. It is not without interest that Turkey had the first ever woman appointed to the supreme court of appeal worldwide, in 1945 (Browning 1985, 39). 6. Turna, municipal councilor, AKP, Izmir, 3 July 2015. 7. Fatma, head of women’s branches, AKP, Izmir, 21 June 2016. 8. Alev, municipal councilor, CHP, Izmir, 7 July 2015. 9. Sevim, women’s branches’ regional representative, CHP, Izmir, 7 July 2015. 10. The CHP was closed down by the 1980 military junta together with all other political parties. During the 1980s several parties disputed the political space to the left of center. One subsequently adopted the name of the CHP and in the first half of the 1990s merged with another political party from the 1980s. The name remained CHP. 11. Avşîn is among the female co-mayors whom I met outside of Diyarbakır in 2016.

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12. Kaymak is a dairy product containing high milk fat eaten at breakfast or as a dessert. 13.  All the abbreviations mentioned are names of revolutionary radical ­left-wing organizations which existed in Turkey prior to the 1980 military coup. 14.  KCK stands for Koma Civakên Kurdistan, a Kurdistan Communities Union, an alleged urban wing of the PKK. 15. Roza, women’s academy, Diyarbakır, 8 May 2015. 16.  Zêrav, neighborhood assembly representative, Diyarbakır, 28 February 2016. Zêrav did not agree to our interview being recorded. All the information provided here comes from my handwritten notes, which is also the reason why I couldn’t quote her words directly and at length. Our interview was in Kurdish with Zêrav’s daughter translating the parts for which my knowledge was insufficient. 17. Lalebend, municipal councilor, DBP, Diyarbakır, 8 May 2015. 18.  Şeyda, municipal councilor, DBP, Diyarbakır, 6 May 2015. 19. Berzê, co-mayor, DBP, outside of Diyarbakır, 3 March 2016, interviewed in Diyarbakır. 20. Kejê, municipal councilor, DBP, Diyarbakır, 8 May 2015. 21. Ezgi, municipal councilor, AKP, Trabzon, 3 June 2015. 22. Sevim, national women’s branches’ regional representative, CHP, Izmir, 7 July 2015. 23. Arzu, head of women’s branches, MHP, Trabzon, 14 April 2016. 24. Dilay, parliamentary candidate, MHP, Trabzon, 13 April 2016. 25. Abide, member of the party district directorate, MHP, Trabzon, 19 April 2016. 26. Feriha, former MP, AKP, Trabzon, 19 May 2016. 27.  Democratic Party (Demokrat Parti) was created in 2007 by a fusion between the True Path Party (Doğru Yol Partisi, DYP) and the Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi, ANAP). 28. Pınar was not reelected in 2019. 29. After the reserved seats were legislated in Indian local politics, extensive research characterized women as proxies of men from the family. Since then, the balance sheet of the positive action measures and their subversion has been rather ambiguous (Sharma 2000; Tawa Lama-Rewal and Ghosh 2005; Jayal 2006; Mathur 2014). 30. Adalet, head of women’s branches, AKP, Trabzon, 13 April 2016. 31. Mehtap, president of women’s branches, MHP, Izmir, 20 June 2016. 32. Gülistan, co-mayor, DBP, interviewed in Diyarbakır, 4 March 2016. 33. Lalebend, municipal councilor, DBP, Diyarbakır, 8 May 2015. 34. The il meclisi, Council of the Province, has since been abolished in metropolitan municipalities.

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Correa, Fernanda Vidal. 2016. “Gender Stereotypes and Patronage Practices in Women’s Careers: A Study of the Mexican Executive Branch.” Cogent Social Sciences 2 (1): 126–202. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2016.1266202. Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams. 2005. “Cartographies des marges: intersectionnalité, politique de l’identité et violences contre les femmes de couleur.” Translated by Oristelle Bonis. Cahiers Du Genre 2 (39): 51–82. Darmon, Muriel. 2016. La Socialisation. 3rd ed., 128. sociologie. Paris: Armand Colin. Demirdirek, Hülya, and Ülker Şener. 2014. 81 İl İçin Toplumsal Cinsiyet Eşitliği Karnesi. Ankara: TEPAV. Dulong, Delphine. 2010. “Au dedans et en dehors. La subversion en pratiques.” In Sociologie de l’institution, edited by Jacques Lagroye and Michel Offerlé, 249–66. Paris: Belin. Dulong, Delphine, and Frédérique Matonti. 2005. “L’indépassable «féminité». La mise en récit des femmes en campagne.” In Mobilisations électorales, edited by Jacques Lagroye, Patrick Lehingue, and Frédéric Sawicki, 1–15. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France—P.U.F. Gidengil, Elisabeth, and Richard Vengroff. 1997. “Representational Gains of Canadian Women or Token Growth? The Case of Quebec’s Municipal Politics.” Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue Canadienne de Science Politique 30 (3): 513–37. Güneş Ayata, Ayşe. 1998. “Laiklik, Güç ve Katılım Üçgeninde Türkiye’de Kadın ve Siyaset.” In 75 Yılda Kadınlar ve Erkekler, edited by Aksu Bora, 237–48. Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yayınları. Jayal, Niraja Gopal. 2006. “Engendering Local Democracy: The Impact of Quotas for Women in India’s Panchayats.” Democratization 13 (1): 15–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510340500378225. Kavas Urul, Asmin. 2016. 81 İl İçin Toplumsal Cinsiyet Eşitliği Karnesi - 2016. Ankara: TEPAV. Mathur, Kanchan. 2014. “Crafting Political Pathways Through the Exclusionary Mesh in India.” In Women in Politics: Gender, Power and Development, edited by Mariz Tadros, 202–32. London: Zed Books. McAdam, Doug. 1986. “Recruitment to High-Risk Activism: The Case of Freedom Summer.” American Journal of Sociology 92 (1): 64–90. Muxel, Anne. 2003. “Les jeunes et la politique: entre héritage et renouvellement.” Empan 50 (2): 62–67. https://doi.org/10.3917/empa.050.0062. Offerlé, Michel. 2004. “Le champ politique national.” In La Sociologie de la vie politique française, 17–32. Repères. Paris: La Découverte. Roy, Srila. 2017. “The Positive Side of Co-Optation? Intersectionality.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 19 (2): 254–62. https://doi.org/10 .1080/14616742.2017.1291225.

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CHAPTER 5

Constraints on Women’s Political Agency

In this chapter, I focus on the role-learning processes of female municipal councilors. How do women in politics become acquainted with the social norms and expectations which play a crucial part in shaping their political experience and ascension? The role-learning process doesn’t start with the electoral mandate. It doesn’t even begin when a woman enters her political party. On the contrary, role-learning is closely related to prevalent social norms as well as to the political socialization which takes place from early childhood. While this chapter focuses primarily on mechanisms favoring political involvement, it should be noted that women’s trajectories can be marked by as many depoliticizing factors as they are by politicizing elements. The processes of politicization are non-linear and multifaceted (Déloye and Haegel 2017). The childhood narratives of my interviewees confirm that even the “non-political” elements of their upbringings had a tremendous impact on their ways of exercising their respective political mandates. Simultaneously, numerous female politicians identified later stages of their lives as their first encounters with politics, such as their high school years and adulthood associational activities (Bargel 2009, 511; Darmon 2016, 20). The conservative social order and a hostile intraparty environment combine to act as constraints on women’s agency. Women are encouraged to police their bodies and public appearances and to censor their behavior in order to succeed. Such censorship can be a double-edged © The Author(s) 2020 L. G. Drechselová, Local Power and Female Political Pathways in Turkey, Gender and Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47143-9_5

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sword—it allows survival in politics, but complicates the exercise of the mandate. The informal intraparty environment and institutionalized rules can also be both enabling and inhibiting for women, depending on the context, political party and actions of a particular female politician. Taking into account the different local environments and institutional arrangements in which they operate, this chapter analyzes the difficulties women face in local politics, while the following chapter addresses the variety of women’s strategies in politics. The upcoming subsections feature on the one hand women’s experiences, which assert how the social order is translated into local politics, and on the other hand the difficulties associated with a hostile intraparty environment.

5.1  Social Order and Local Politics Proximity is one of the main features that differentiates local politics from national politics. Municipal councilors live in their constituency and are seen and scrutinized by the inhabitants on a daily basis. Citizens see them not only during the public hearings of the council, but also on the street and at places of divertissement. In contrast, deputies live in a remote capital and only go back to their constituency every now and then. The proximity factor of local politics has a particular impact on women’s political careers and their experiences in office. Several times, I witnessed my interviewees being solicited on the street by passers-by and I saw their obligatory small talk with the shopkeepers in the neighborhood. This led them to continuously police their appearance and behavior. Arsun, the prospective parliamentary candidate for the AKP in Trabzon, refused to put up her poster in the city’s main square. She said: “I live and work in this city. I cannot have people pointing to my face every time I pass that square”.1 Arsun’s pre-candidacy campaign did run the risk of making her defeat more visible and memorable and, indeed, she was not selected to be among the six eligible candidates from the province. In deciding which action to undertake, women often call upon their understanding of what the correct ways of being a woman are. These rules defining “legitimate femininity” have been cast upon them from early childhood. However, it should be noted that the gendered norms to which they were exposed are inseparable from the socioeconomic position that their family occupied in the social space (Darmon 2016, 31).2 Gendered upbringing, by transmitting ideas about acceptable

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femininity and masculinity, partakes decisively in shaping women’s political behavior. From an early age, girls are rewarded when displaying socially acceptable behavior and penalized when they transgress the norms. The narratives of my interviewees differ in how they consider their upbringing impacted on their subsequent political involvement. Some politicians believe that the inequality between them and their brothers in childhood propelled them into rebellious behavior. Demet, who was the CHP’s prospective candidate to the Parliament (aday adayı) in Izmir, recalled her first rebellion from the time of her childhood when her family lived in a village in the East of Turkey: In the East, people prefer boys to girls. When our father went to the city, he would always bring something to my brothers but not to us, the girls. As soon as I learnt how to write at school, I wrote banners denouncing my father’s discrimination against girls. I mobilized my sisters and convinced my mother to join us. When my father returned home from the city, he found the windows of the house covered with slogans and banners. He got very angry, since it was the first time in years that his wife took a stance against him, but he promised that next time he went to the city, he would bring us new clothes. (Demet, parliamentary candidate, CHP, Izmir, 18 June 2015)

This memory was Demet’s answer to my question about her first experience with politics. She went on about her politicization at high school which she attended during the 1970s, a decade marked by violent clashes between the revolutionary left and the nationalist right. After her studies, she became a teacher and was active in a left-leaning teachers’ union. The 1980 military coup meant the closure of the union and persecution of its representatives and members, and as such it put a temporary end to Demet’s associational political activism. Representatives of the MHP, the sisters Sinem and Çilay were born and raised in a nationalist family and attended also high school during the tormented decade of the 1970s in Trabzon. When they wanted to travel outside of the city to take part in sports tournaments, their father forbade them from sporting activities to “protect their chastity” by diminishing uncontrolled contact with the opposite sex. However, when both sisters joined a theater group organized by the Idealist Clubs (Ülkü Ocakları), closely related to right-wing paramilitary structures, their father gave his blessing even though the rehearsals took place in a mixed

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group and implied returning home late in the evening.3 This politico-cultural activity allowed Sinem and Çilay to enlarge their margin of action in the public space and to overcome the restrictions that applied to sport. It can be said that activities within nationalist circles appeared more trustworthy to their father as he could relate to the political—and socio-conservative—values of the other theater members. Berna, a member of the directorate of women’s branches in Trabzon, entered the AKP shortly before the 2014 local election. A married mother of two, she studied to become a teacher but never worked in the profession. This is how she reflected on her upbringing: My father was a little conservative. My two bigger sisters experienced difficulties because of that. I had bigger liberty. It is indeed because my conduct always reassured my father. However, even though I really liked the sports, my father never gave me the permission to join the trainings which took place outside of the city. I myself tried to encourage my children for these activities but they are not really interested. (Berna, member of the directorate of women’s branches, AKP, Trabzon, 13 April 2016)

The ban on sporting activities, especially tournaments and out-oftown training, is a common thread in several narratives. In Berna’s case, her liberty is actually contingent upon her chaste behavior. It is her capacity to know her place which diminishes friction with the father, who feels he has to constrain the actions of her older sisters. She avoids explicit bans by internalizing the rules she saw applied to her older siblings. Such primary socialization plays a role throughout women’s lives and political careers. This doesn’t mean that they simply reproduce what they have learnt at an early age, but they are affected in different ways by these socializing patterns. Most of the efforts of female politicians seem to be directed at protecting their public image. Dilruba shared a piece of advice given to her by her male colleague from the AKP: “if a woman and a man are alone in a room, the door should always remain slightly open.”4 It is a way of performing chastity, to dissipate any doubts about improper conduct. With this advice, Dilruba’s colleague transmitted to her one of the codes for legitimate female behavior in politics. In order to survive in politics, women behave in such a way as to avoid rumors at any cost, even when it complicates their mobility. AKP’s municipal councilor Beyza, for instance, mentioned her reservations

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about getting into a car with a male colleague. She found a particular solution: In the winter, when we visit our constituency, it gets dark very early. In a city of the size of Trabzon, three men and one woman in a car – can you imagine what people would say if we had an accident? My husband obviously agrees with my activities, but I am also bothered when I am alone with another man in a car. I have the right to hold a gun, so I got the license and now I have one in my car. We once went to another district with my colleagues and I was driving. They appreciated my driving style so they said “you are a woman but you drive like a man” and I told them “I even have a gun”. They didn’t believe me, so I told them to look at the compartment of the car. They saw the gun and told me “one should be afraid of you” [senden korkulur]. That earned me respect even though I consider guns to be a horrible thing and I never wear mine on me. (Beyza, municipal councilor, AKP, Trabzon, 4 June 2015)

From the accounts of my interviewees, the avoidance of rumors is based on the notion of honor (namus). The Turkish term “namus” has a clear sexual connotation and evokes more precisely forms of social control over female sexuality. While often used by the feminist movement, the term tends to be marginalized in research due to the risk of fueling culturalist assumptions related to the notion of honor killings (namus cinayetleri), used as a sensational marker of some regions’ social backwardness. I argue that the use of such a loaded term as “honor/chastity” finds its relevance in the context of women’s political behavior because their strategies and choices are primarily motivated by the aim to appear honorable or chaste in public. The chastity of the politicians can thus be described as “showcased” or “ostentatious.” This facilitates their political careers, but, as a result, these high-profile elite women help to strengthen these norms in society. They thereby contribute to the legitimization or even reinforcement of components of “legitimate femininity,” which has far from empowering repercussions for “ordinary women.” Most references to the social order as a web of conservative and restrictive patterns influencing what behavior is permissible for women were voiced in Trabzon, but even there a variety of attitudes exist. Some of my interviewees affirm taking part in political meetings until late at night and feeling comfortable in a car with male colleagues. To a much lesser extent, I encountered accounts of social conservatism impacting on

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women’s careers in Diyarbakır, and such references were almost absent in the narratives from Izmir. This is significant and reveals the regional differences in dominant social norms. Izmir’s reputation as a more liberal city is confirmed by the narratives of female councilors, even though this progressive character does not translate into particularly high-levels of female political representation. How to explain the differences between Trabzon and Diyarbakır? It can be argued that society in Diyarbakır is at least as conservative as in Trabzon but women still do not voice the same preoccupations as in Trabzon. Moreover, they reach levels of representation incomparable with those in the Black Sea region. In the following section, I provide the answer to this puzzle through an assessment of the intraparty environment as a hostile environment for women while keeping in mind the significant differences which exist among the parties.

5.2  The Party Environment: A Hostile Environment for Women Female politicians are seen first and foremost as female and only then as politicians. As such, women’s presence in politics still represents derogation from the—masculine—norm. Their difficulties in politics are enshrined in the political field, which displays significant continuities with the social order (Achin 2007, 11–15). As Arsun, my interviewee from Trabzon, put it: When you look at the social order of the country, you also have lived here, you know that it is a society dominated by men. Men see politics as their power space to which they are entitled and which they are supposed to seize. The message sent to women is this: “You are represented in politics anyway based on a saying, behind every successful man is a woman.” That’s what the society tells you. (Arsun, parliamentary candidate, AKP, Trabzon, 21 March 2016)

Arsun establishes a clear link between social norms and a political realm dominated by men unwilling to relinquish control over politics. Social norms are readily used by male colleagues in order to limit women’s margin of action. The use of conservatism by political parties contributes to the difficulties that women face within their parties but doesn’t encompass them all: the assessment of recruitment procedures identified the difficulties

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that women experience upon entry into politics. While they are welcomed and encouraged to join the vote-harvesting activities of women’s branches, any independent display of ambition is discouraged. This was also the destiny of Dilay, a female candidate for the parliamentary seat of the MHP in Trabzon.5 She was openly ambitious and asked for a better position on the candidate list. Instead, she was given a non-eligible position and on the next occasion she was replaced altogether by a female colleague who did not have a claim for office. But before that, Dilay was sent to conduct her electoral campaign in the rural areas of Trabzon: They sent me to conduct the campaign in villages; they were thinking “a woman, what she can achieve”. But our only candidate who managed to get into the Parliament won with a very small margin and everybody agreed that the votes from rural areas played a key role. For the first time, I made the village campaign visible. I posted all my events on Facebook, I took thousands of pictures with women. I visited centers for popular education. The visibility motivated my campaign colleagues but also appealed to people with whom I entered into contact. That campaign strengthened my position in Trabzon. (Dilay, parliamentary candidate, MHP, Trabzon, 13 April 2016)

Dilay’s case shows that the strategy of party representatives was to send the difficult candidate to an unpromising field. However, in that particular case, it fueled Dilay’s ambition and she reapplied for candidacy in 2015. After being excluded from the candidate list altogether, she left the party and joined the Good Party (İyi Parti), an offshoot of the nationalist MHP, created in 2017. Her trajectory is illustrative of the consequences of systematic discouragement of female candidates. Dilay didn’t abandon her political career, although she left her party. However, she is an exception to the rule because several women reported distancing themselves from politics after multiple unsuccessful electoral bids. The strategies of party recruiters in composing electoral lists constitute another element that makes the party environment hostile for women. The tokenistic inclusion (one woman represents the category of women) prevalent within right-wing conservative parties significantly diminishes other women’s chances to find their way into representative offices. Similarly, women are excluded from the office of mayor. Seen as contestants with lower chances, they are likely to be presented only in areas where their party is less likely to win. This logic was confirmed

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across regions and parties, with the exception of the DBP. In 2014, the CHP nominated three women candidates to the office of the mayor in different districts of Trabzon where it was virtually impossible for the party to win. In 2019, the AKP pursued the same strategy in Izmir, presenting women in districts in which it was unlikely to win. The functioning of political parties is tailored to the needs of the traditional householders: the men. Sometimes, meetings are held in places which an “honorable” woman should avoid, such as cabarets. Electoral campaigns involve working late at night and some events are organized early in the morning, such as suhur, the last meal before the start of daily fasting during the month of Ramadan. Suhur is often provided by political parties and female politicians with children find it difficult to attend.6 Although political parties are not engines of the social emancipation of women, they are not slaves to social norms either. As the differences between women’s representation in Trabzon and Diyarbakır reveal, the number of women in politics depends most importantly on parties’ stance toward the conservatism of their electorate. Thus, women’s exclusion in line with the conservative patriarchal order depends on how parties operate within the patriarchy and to what extent they are ready to reproduce social conservative values. During my fieldwork in Trabzon in 2016, Of, one of its districts, made national headlines due to a scene which took place during a meeting of municipal councilors and employees. During the meeting, a female representative of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) was invited to speak about the role her institution would play in the event of a natural disaster. Before she was able to give her speech, the ­vice-mayor of the district stood up, and started shouting that a woman will not preach to him. He prevented the female Diyanet representative from reaching the podium. After that, he stormed out of the room, allegedly turning off the lights (Güne Bakış 2016). When journalists approached him for an explanation, he defended his actions by stating that women and men have different places to express themselves. This event was unanimously condemned by my interviewees and the pro-government women’s association KADEM (Woman and Democracy, endorsed by the daughter of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan) became involved in the investigation of the issue. Accidentally, I was interviewing a KADEM’s representative in Trabzon the very next day. During our talk, she got a phone call from the mayor of Of trying to convince her that coming to the district was unnecessary and that measures will be taken against the vice-mayor. But

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my interviewee was adamant. She refused to abandon her visit. Given the high-level endorsement of the association, the mayor could have been justifiably worried about the political consequences of the whole incident. KADEM used its leverage to try to dismiss the vice-mayor and to prevent such behavior from being repeated. However, even after several months I was unable to identify any concrete repercussions for the vice-mayor. The incident in Of is illustrative of the fact that even openly misogynist attitudes can go unpunished, even though they do not go unnoticed. After all, the AKP, which is in power in the Of district, incorporated this person into the party at a high elected local position. If Of’s example is the most spectacular one, the interviews revealed many other instances of party members readily building on conservative and patriarchal social norms. Thus, not only do female municipal councilors enter office with ideas and perceptions about legitimate female behavior rooted in their socialization, but their femininity is also policed by their colleagues. Citing public concern for the chastity of women and using public shaming of uncaring mothers, male party representatives regularly send women home before the end of the political program or campaign. Oftentimes, women comply and their efforts to satisfy the image of the chaste woman contribute to their exclusion from the political backstage. This leads to women having weaker intraparty networks. The experience of Adalet, the AKP’s district head of women’s branches in Trabzon, shows that women’s exclusion operates through multiple registers, from women explicitly being sent home earlier to the unsaid, such as when a female politician comes to the meeting of the party directorate but everybody except for her is already there and the “official” part of the meeting is just about to start. I asked Adalet how colleagues in her party react when she asks for greater inclusion: They don’t react actually, they say nothing and that’s precisely the problem. They handle their affairs in silence and don’t let you know. Except that you know about it because most of the time someone else tells you. But you can’t do anything even if you know who the concrete person keeping you out is. (Adalet, head of women’s branches, AKP, Trabzon, 13 April 2016)

The party recruiters also use the argument of “electoral sensibilities” to justify the limited inclusion of female candidates. Female councilors

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overwhelmingly acknowledged the existence of conservative norms and their exclusionary character. However, they often reflected on “conservative sensibilities” as something to progressively change over time, as did Beyza, reacting to my question about why there is no woman in high local political office in Trabzon: There should be, but we are a small town. To illustrate this, I always compare Trabzon to the West. I argue that here we are ten years behind the West. Currently, at the top of the provincial party hierarchy, only the CHP has a woman. To get there, she had to fight a lot, they didn’t want her. This is related to the social base. In ten years, I am sure the parties here will have women as heads of their provincial headquarters. (Beyza, municipal councilor, AKP, Trabzon, 4 June 2015)

While in Trabzon conservative social values are given as a reason for the low number of women in the mayor’s seat and in the ­municipal council, in Diyarbakır the situation is quite the opposite. The conservative electorate votes overwhelmingly for the pro-Kurdish party (in 2014 it was the DBP), which features the highest proportion of female candidates. This shows that levels of women’s inclusion are primarily about the parties, not about local configurations. If it was not for the pro-Kurdish political party, it would hardly be conceivable for women to represent over 30% of municipal councilors in Diyarbakır.7 This doesn’t mean that women are free from difficulties within the pro-Kurdish political parties. In Izmir, Cansu, a young member of the HDP’s provincial party headquarters, shared her encounter with the “electoral sensibilities” within her party: There are still controversies around gender equality. The most basic example of such a controversy is this; some say: “There are many elderly men in the party, why do female comrades cross their legs while sitting?” Traditionally, this way of sitting is interpreted as a lack of respect towards the elderly or as a way of flirting. When I joined the provincial party headquarters, one young man warned me: “Comrade, if you sit this way, people who come to the party will criticize you. You are member of the party directorate, pay attention to your manners.” I told him he is not the one to decide about how I am going to sit. But I am sure he is still convinced he was right. Moreover, he presented his interference as a sign of respect towards the people and especially the elderly. For me, the party is where we construct a space of liberty. That is why I will not let anybody mess

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with my way of sitting. Some men do not accept to be criticized. They get angry and leave. And these are not even the worst cases. (Cansu, member of provincial party headquarters, HDP, Izmir, 31 May 2016)

Cansu’s experience confirms that attempts to control women’s behavior with a similar justification as within the AKP can also be detected within the pro-Kurdish parties, including in the HDP in Izmir. While the electorate tends to follow the traditional gendered division of labor and address their demands mostly to male co-chairs, the attitude of these men is crucial for the inclusion and relevance of their female co-chairs. Bade, HDP’s district co-chair in Izmir, solicited help from her male counterpart who then started directing requests from party members and citizens to her. In Bade’s case, the co-chair took a stand to alleviate the gender bias of the electorate. However, on other occasions nonaction by co-chairs and male colleagues complicates women’s exercise of their political mandate and, as a result, can be interpreted as a subtler form of gender-based discrimination. Women are almost never criticized for being women. However, they are much more likely to be dismissed by their colleagues for being less competent, less experienced or not originally from their electoral district. I observed this trend during intraparty training in Diyarbakır in 2016, which assembled male and female co-mayors and was meant to establish a balance sheet for the policy of co-mayorship, which had been implemented from 2014. Because women’s presence in politics is not open to discussion within the pro-Kurdish parties, the patriarchal logic of exclusion adapted by attacking supposed characteristics of women in office other than their womanhood. Women also appear to be particularly vulnerable to intraparty disciplinary mechanisms and are often the first people to whom formal sanctions are applied. A Member of Parliament for the CHP, Aylin Nazlıaka, was expelled from the party for propagating a rumor involving the removal of the portrait of Mustafa Kemal by another MP (Milliyet 2016). Similarly, Meral Akşener, the only female among four challengers to the current president of the MHP, was the first one to be expelled from the party (BBC Türkçe 2016). Figen Yüksekdağ, the female co-chair of the HDP, was the first pro-Kurdish MP to be stripped of her parliamentary mandate after the national assembly voted to lift MPs’ impunity (BBC Türkçe 2017). All of these cases concern highly positioned national female politicians. In the cities included in this study, I didn’t

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identify instances of female exclusion based on formal disciplinary procedures—such a spectacular step is thus generally restricted to the more visible national political arena. However, in the aftermath of the 2016 coup attempt thousands of members left or were expelled from the AKP. My initial observations suggest that women were rather sheltered from these waves of (forced) exits. Future studies could provide an assessment of the gendered features of exits from politics, including those from the governing AKP. Gender and a lack of seniority make it harder for female politicians and councilors to be taken seriously by the electorate or to coordinate policies with the bureaucracy. Young female municipal councilors in Diyarbakır in particular, such as the 30-year-old Lalebend, had a hard time communicating with senior municipal bureaucrats even though they were close to their political party, the DBP.8 In the CHP, Kamelya experienced intersectional discrimination on the axes of gender and age. Aged 30 during our interview, Kamelya comes from a family where “everyone becomes a CHP member the day they turn 18.” Among her close relatives, she counts neighborhood delegates, representatives in charge of electoral bureaus and a municipal councilor. Even though Kamelya was elected to a district council in Izmir in 2014, she was discouraged by a senior party member: I used to work in the youth branches, then the party district directorate and eventually the provincial party directorate. I am young but I passed through all these organs. For me, it was like a political internship and I passed it. Then I applied for the office of the municipal councilor. […] We were 200 people to apply for 25 places on the list. One night, a high ranking party member (parti büyüklerinden biri) called me and told me “you applied for municipality, do you think you have any chance at all? In the midst of so many wolves, it is very unlikely that your application is accepted”. This call made me really sad. (Kamelya, municipal councilor, CHP, Izmir, 3 July 2015)

Kamelya considered the night call to be an attempt to dissuade her from her political ambitions, an attempt which was formulated in terms of her youth. The gendered differences between political parties can be exemplified by the ways they conduct electoral campaigns (Navarre 2015). In 2015, I joined the DBP’s mixed delegation for its campaign in the rural areas of the southeast region; a couple of days later, I followed the AKP’s male

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parliamentary candidate into two peripheral districts of Trabzon. Both campaigns were composed of mixed delegations and both took place in rural constituencies. They both had an intense rhythm—the party representatives and candidates visited a high number of places in a limited amount of time. In Trabzon, the delegation was composed of 20 people divided into smaller “action units” based on the cars they traveled in. My “unit” was composed of three young AKP members, who were all women, all under 30 years of age, and all university graduates. One of them was married with a child. The day I joined them was a “day out” for them since they were usually working in the local party headquarters, coordinating the campaign and the volunteers. After a luxurious working breakfast, we got into the cars and headed to the first peripheral district. The podium was set up but we had to wait for the nearby CHP meeting to finish. My unit was mainly busy finding a good spot from where to watch the podium. For its improvised electoral headquarters in the district, the AKP used a newly built building which did not seem quite finished. It had plain walls, no running water, and no sanitary equipment, but it was filled with electoral posters and other objects to be distributed to the inhabitants. And it had a great view of the podium. We took a spot by the window in the second floor of the building. When the meeting started, we had an overview of both the crowd and the podium. The speeches started: the head of the provincial party directorate, the head of the district directorate, the parliamentary candidate. There was only one woman on the podium—the provincial head of women’s branches—but she didn’t speak. The slogans from the speakers succeeded one another at such a pace that the assembled inhabitants and party members visibly had a hard time responding with the right exclamation or correctly answering Evet! (yes) and Hayır! (no). The members of the AKP’s youth branches practically dictated the answers. There was no visible role for my all-female unit at this stage. After the speeches, when the parliamentary candidate was walking through the district, they helped him distribute loaves of bread with his name baked onto them. The electoral convoy then toured neighboring districts. No other crowd meeting was organized, so we generally arrived at the main square, greeted by the local party officers. During three different stops the same scenario played out: women were kindly seated in an outside café and given foods and drinks. They didn’t take part in the dissemination of the political message—that was done by the candidate and his all-male

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inner circle—and were occasionally asked whether they needed anything. Women were treated with the utmost attention but kept at a distance and passive while the candidate and his male delegation toured the closest shops and businesses. I went home by bus and the young members of my unit followed me by car. Only a few women stayed after dark. I was exchanging messages with one of them until late at night. At some point, when the candidate started entering pubs and cabarets, she always waited in the car before moving to the next stop. Overall, even though women were present during the campaign and occasionally took an active part in it (when distributing loaves of bread), an effort was made to maintain a non-mixed gender environment in the mixed delegation. The campaign day which I spent with the DBP delegation brings fully to light the differences in how the two parties deal with gender diversity. In the heat of the month of May 2015, I spent a day with a 20-person delegation in the province neighboring Diyarbakır. The two main characteristics of the delegation (similar to that of the AKP) were the mix of men and women and the fact that they all came from the urban center and were touring villages of their province. In one day, we visited five villages. The scheme was always the same: we entered one of the selected houses where 10–15 inhabitants of the village were assembled, and we sat either in the garden or in the biggest room, greeted by either food or fruit. There were two leaders of the delegation: the head of the provincial council, a female member of the DBP, and the male mayor of the biggest city in the province. The remaining members were from the city council and the local party organization. Women both with and without headscarves were part of the delegation. Most of the groups we met with were composed of men; women only made quick appearances while distributing the food. The female members of the delegation openly denounced this situation and asked for a mixed meeting on the next occasion. They also tried to establish contact with local women on two different occasions—once by joining them in the kitchen and having a discussion over meal preparation, and the second time while leaving the all-male meeting and touring the village on foot, knocking on doors and talking to women. The management of gendered seclusion was thus very different in the delegation of the AKP and of the DBP. Both were campaigning in conservative rural areas, and both were mixed and mostly met with male inhabitants. While women from the first delegation had a mainly symbolic presence and were sidelined during the day, women in the DBP took an active part

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in the meetings, talked to the all-male groups of local inhabitants and then transgressed the seclusion by actively engaging with local women. Even though their effective impact is hard to establish, the DBP women were legitimizing women’s active political involvement by their presence and through concrete practices. While women in the DBP may appear subversive in their behavior, in comparison with their AKP counterparts, they actually followed the established party line advocating diversity and gender equality. As will be seen in the last chapter, women in both delegations behaved according to their party’s ethos.

5.3  Gendered Differences of Local Configurations The comparison of the gendered differences in political campaigning confirms once more the importance of considering the party political environment when attempting to understand women’s underrepresentation and exclusion from politics. Even though this distinction among parties is key to our understanding of discriminatory mechanisms, the configurations in the three studied cities need to be taken into account as well. Indeed, each of the cities offers very different opportunities for women’s organizing and political action. Izmir is a lively space for women’s organizing but suffers from a lack of coordination as well as from high political polarization among women’s associations. The district of Bornova was the first one in Turkey to establish, in 1989, a center for women’s support and solidarity (Kadın Danışma ve Dayanışma Merkezi). Since then, Izmir municipalities have set up similar centers and established two refuges for battered women and several municipal councils regularly set up a “women-men equality commission.” The equality commissions, with their overwhelmingly female membership, are spaces for networking and for political learning. Women can try out projects and perfection the art of negotiating with fellow councilors over the budget for issues that most of the male elected representatives find secondary. However, these commissions meet sporadically and are never treated as essential, even by their female members. The commissions’ inaction was justified by my interviewees by the lack of citizens’ questions and municipal projects directed to them. Even though equality commissions could demand gender mainstreaming and potentially oversee all municipal projects from a gendered perspective, their members do not demand such a radical shift, anticipating refusal by the respective mayors.

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The fragmentation of multiple bodies related to women’s issues can be seen, for instance, in the lack of coordination between the municipal council’s equality commission and the Women’s Assembly within the Council of the City (Kent Konseyi)—the institutionalized hub of local NGOs. It is also reflected in the complete absence of common projects (at least as of 2016) of the NGO-staffed Women’s Assembly and the municipal bureaucracy (General Directorate of Women’s Projects, Kadın Çalışmaları Genel Müdürlüğü). Political polarization results in a lack of coordination. The associations of women which could be labeled as Kemalist are often characterized by having had a single president since their foundation. They do not join forces with associations close to radical feminists, human rights activists, or the Kurdish movement. Amid these differences, the Women’s Assembly in Izmir occasionally plays the role of mediator, with wide participation from across political spectrum in its “Women and Politics” working group (for more see Drechselová 2020). The city of Trabzon offers a less vibrant environment, even though it has a multitude of institutional bodies dealing with women’s status, mainly due to its membership in the pilot phase of the UN-sponsored project “Women Friendly Cities.” Female politicians in Trabzon have used the city’s membership in the project as leverage to obtain personnel and equipment for women’s divisions within the bureaucracy. However, the inaction of the bureaucratic body dealing with the project at the level of the governorate reveals that for women’s issues to be discussed, individual investment by the governor or the mayor is decisive. Questions related to women’s status are dependent upon ephemeral political support. In Trabzon, they are not easily included on the agenda. Mostly, they appear on specific dates and commemorative occasions. Municipal involvement with these issues is thus rather ceremonial and constrained to a specific date. However, some municipal councilors work with this constraint to push for more ambitious projects, anticipating the commemorations and convincing the mayor about its political benefits. The mayors seem to be receptive to low-cost symbolical gestures, such as having a female councilor preside over the council’s meeting on 8 March. Even though most cases of women dealing with conservative norms provided in the section above come from Trabzon, the composition of municipal commissions doesn’t point toward women’s confinement to specific topics. While women constitute the majority of members of the

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women–men equality commission, they are also represented in some of the most influential commissions, such as the commission on budget and urban planning. Systematically, women elected in the central district of Trabzon were members of commissions based on their professional expertise. However, the preferences of female councilors are not always taken into account: Ahu, the AKP’s municipal councilor in Trabzon, expressed her interest in social affairs but because she was the only woman elected on the party’s list—as a sign of respect—she was allocated to the much more prestigious urban planning commission, which she sincerely disliked.9 The low number of female municipal councilors in Trabzon favored cross-partisan cooperation, mostly between the AKP and the MHP (even prior to these parties becoming allies at the national level). Emel, from the AKP, and her colleague from the MHP prepared a project to remedy men’s swearing in the public space. The two councilors suggested that the municipality install panels on the streets with quotes from Coran and Turkish sayings condemning and prohibiting swearing.10 While the AKP and the MHP female councilors reported good relationships during our interviews, the marginalization of the CHP and the impossible existence of the HDP also brought these political actors closer. This was the case in Trabzon but much less so in Izmir, due to the different positionality of the parties in both cities. Lawyers close to the CHP signed a petition asking (in vain) for the HDP to have the right to duly establish an electoral bureau in Trabzon. During a reported incident during the 2015 May 1st march, the local CHP politicians protected the HDP’s cortege against an attack by provocateurs. This rapprochement was possible due to the sense of marginalization shared by both parties, but also by the radical left-wing heritage of several high positioned CHP politicians. The latter also explains their solidarity with the leftist HDP in Trabzon as opposed to its lack of their mainstream colleagues from the CHP in Izmir. The existence of the HDP in Trabzon remains extremely precarious. Its female co-chair saw her family relations deteriorate as a result of ostracism in the public space and she eventually moved away from the city.11 There are associations in Trabzon which have an adversarial relationship with political power, and thus the bureaucracy. This is the case for the People’s Houses (Halk Evleri) radical left-wing association, which is among the rare voices opposing nationalist students on the campus of the Black Sea Technical University (KTÜ). Trabzon also hosts an annual

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“Witch Festival” (Cadı Festivali) organized by local feminist groups critical of the dominant conservative norms, which attracts participants from outside the region. Finally, in Diyarbakır, the municipal environment is particularly marked by the Kurdish movement (Dorronsoro and Watts 2013). In line with the pro-Kurdish parties’ program, several changes were introduced at the institutional level: the municipal bureau of gender equality was promoted to the level of directorate general, the municipality continued to actively employ women (including in less typical jobs such as bus drivers) and to promote female bureaucrats to the level of general director. While only one woman had attained this position in the municipal hierarchy in 2014, by 2016 four women had done so. The m ­ ulti-positionality of many women as activists and municipal employees was at times an enabling and at times a constraining element. These women were convinced that if they were employed by the private sector and not the municipality, they wouldn’t be able to dedicate as much time to their political work. On the other hand, the municipality was sometimes reluctant to provide logistical support, such as buses, for the implementation of their political projects, and the unclear division of labor complicated their activism. The 2015 parliamentary campaign in Diyarbakır and its peripheral districts was marked by well-timed ceremonial openings. Among them, the women’s center in Hanî was inaugurated by the female co-mayor of Diyarbakır’s municipality, Gültan Kışanak. An hour and a half from the city of Diyarbakır, Hanî is a Kurdish-majority zaza-speaking conservative rural district where the DBP party won for the first time in 2014. Hanî was selected as a pioneer district for the women’s center after the metropolitan municipality obtained authority over rural areas in 2014 (before then the area depended on the Special Administration of the Province). During preliminary research by municipal employees, women in Hanî mainly complained about the impossibility of getting out of their houses and the metropolitan municipality—the new authority—intended to address that. The opening of the women’s center brought together two rather unlikely publics: a busload of female activists and municipal employees ready for feminist slogans and halay, a traditional folk group dance where dancers make a circle and hold hands or fingers; and the local female inhabitants, seated further from the podium, dressed all in black, generally older than the visitors and accompanied by a couple of children. The men from the village were not officially invited to the

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opening but several of them observed the ceremony and the speeches from afar. It was expected that the population of the district would regard the women’s center with suspicion (there was a risk that the center would be seen as a refuge for battered women, to which there was strong resistance among the district population). For this reason, the purpose of the center as a place for cooking and sewing classes and a kindergarten was constantly stressed. However, the municipality still sent in a psychologist and a lawyer to respond to women’s needs beyond cooking and sewing.12 The migration crisis from Syria and the subsequent military operations in Turkey’s southeast meant that the municipalities and all stakeholders in Diyarbakır were shaping priorities based on the most pressing needs. Thus, several projects pertaining to women’s status in the city (especially the fight against violence toward women) were put on hold to organize relief for homeless families coming in from Syria. One of the floors of the buildings used by the largest women’s association, Kardelen, was transformed into an improvised hospital. The dismissals and incarcerations of the co-mayors and their replacement by trustees appointed by the Interior Ministry from 2016 onward put an end to most municipal activities and slowed down associational projects (Drechselová 2018). The trustees closed down more than ten general directorates of women within municipalities (Üner 2016).13 In the city of Van, female bus drivers were fired (soL 2017); in Cizre, the health and education center was transferred to the AKP’s women’s branches (Sendika44 2017); in Batman, the multilingual theater was closed down (Üner 2016). Some of these decisions directly impacted on women by limiting their access to services; others had an indirect gendered impact since they affected services and cultural provision in Kurdish, on which women were more dependent than men. Overall, the policy of the trustees targeted municipal action related to gender equality, one of the flagship policies of the DBP that helped distinguish the party from other political parties (Stevenson and Bayram 2017). These observations reveal the differential opportunities for women’s political action and organizing in the three cities included in this study. They demonstrate how the intraparty environment can shape women’s political destinies. Women thus face constraints on multiple levels, including the conservative social order and a hostile intraparty habitus, as well as constraints stemming from the local environment.

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5.4  Concluding Remarks Learning to become a “legitimate female local politician” doesn’t start with women’s entry into elected office or their political party. On the contrary, it is a long-term process which begins with primary socialization. While elected—and exposed to further public scrutiny—female politicians have to position themselves with regard to dominant social norms. The importance of the social order, and especially of conservative values, lies in the proximity that female local politicians maintain to their constituencies. Living in the cities of their election, they engage in encounters with citizens on a daily basis. Such proximity also entails social control over their public appearance and behavior. Directly stemming from the conservative social order, the imperative of chastity limits women’s margin of action. As a result, they deploy significant amounts of energy to avoid rumors that could destroy their political future. Some of my interviewees preferred not to get into the same car as male colleagues; others purchased a gun to gain authority. In embodying the legitimate feminine, elected women take part in defining what being a woman in politics means. Women interiorize ­gender-biased rules of the political game and thereby make them even more efficient (Achin 2007, 94). By projecting the image of a woman with honor, they contribute to sustain conservative norms beyond the political realm—norms that apply to all women, including those without an elite status. The efficiency of social norms depends on the use that political parties make of these norms. The syndrome of the “only woman” which characterized the electoral lists of the AKP in Trabzon is illustrative of such use. Party recruiters argued that the conservative electorate would not support its lists if they featured more women, and that the electorate had certain “sensibilities” and was not ready for an increase in women’s representation. In addition to this discourse, municipal councilors and heads of women’s branches witnessed concrete exclusionary practices: male colleagues did not hesitate to send their female colleagues home before the end of the political program so they could live up to their maternal and family duties, effectively excluding them from the backstage of politics. Furthermore, women were not invited to all party meetings. If women are appreciated by party recruiters because they embody a multiplicity of identity markers, they can also be discriminated against for these same markers. Youth appears to be one such double-edged sword.

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Parties generally discursively encourage young members to apply, associating the presence of young candidates with positive change, but several of the young candidates witnessed practices of discouragement (night calls before the lists were finalized) or sabotage (by senior bureaucrats after election). The comparison between the AKP and the DBP dealing with a similarly conservative electorate reveals the importance of party ideology and concrete party approaches toward social norms. While within the AKP conservative norms are invoked to justify women’s exclusion, in the DBP they are not openly invoked even though some attempts at policing women’s behavior also appear in the pro-Kurdish political parties. The disparity in approaches is particularly visible in electoral campaigns. Women who joined the parliamentary campaign in Trabzon on behalf of the AKP were mainly on the margin of events and didn’t take an active part in canvassing. On the other hand, female representatives of the DBP in the southeast region were actively involved in meetings with local stakeholders, not only sending a symbolic message about women’s political ability but also openly criticizing the absence of local women in the meetings. Lastly, even though the functioning of political parties appears to be the main explanatory element for difficulties pertaining to women’s local representation, local configurations also play a role. Each city offers different opportunities for women’s political learning and organizing which in turn shape their resources and position within political parties. In Izmir, the avenues for women’s organizing are multiple but the associations suffer from political polarization between the mainstream CHP politicians and more left-wing actors (some closer to the HDP). In Trabzon, women’s issues, which represent an important a way for female politicians to increase their visibility through concrete projects, appear limited to important dates in the calendar (International Women’s Day or the anniversary of women’s suffrage). In Diyarbakır, all women’s activities are marked by the criminalization of pro-Kurdish politicians. The war in Syria and the military operations in the southeast also contributed to the change in priorities of the Kurdish women’s movement, which began to focus more on shelter for the displaced than on tackling violence against women. In sum, their party affiliation and the local configuration combine to shape women’s margin for political action. The following chapter scrutinizes the multiple strategies that female local politicians adopt to survive in politics and, at times, to alter intraparty rules.

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Notes

1. Arsun, parliamentary candidate, AKP, Trabzon, 21 March 2016. 2. It should be noted that especially class-belonging ultimately determines permissible male and female behaviors (Court 2007, 108; Court and Mennesson 2015, 56). 3. Sinem and Çilay, members of the MHP, at different times candidates for the mayorship, Trabzon 7 April 2016. 4. Dilruba, municipal councilor, AKP, Trabzon, 31 May 2015. 5. Dilay, parliamentary candidate, MHP, Trabzon, 13 April 2016. 6. Deniz, municipal councilor, CHP, Izmir, 7 July 2015. 7. In the last subsection of this chapter, I discuss how women within the pro-Kurdish parties were able to draw upon multiple resources to establish their position. 8. Lalebend, municipal councilor, DBP, Diyarbakır, 8 May 2015. 9. Ahu, municipal councilor, AKP, Trabzon, 15 March 2016. 10. Emel, municipal councilor, AKP, Trabzon, 1 June 2015. 11.  Orkide, former provincial co-chair, HDP, Trabzon (interview in Istanbul),12 May 2016. 12. The opening of the Hanî women’s center took place on 9 May 2015. 13. The first municipalities with the general directorates of women’s status closed down were: Sur, Erciş, Edremit, İpekyolu, Özalp, Cizre, Silopi, Mazıdağı, Derik and Suruç.

References Achin, Catherine. 2007. Sexes, genre et politique. Paris: Économica. Bargel, Lucie. 2009. “Socialisation politique.” In Dictionnaire des mouvements sociaux, edited by Olivier Fillieule, Lilian Mathieu, and Cécile Péchu, 510–17. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. BBC Türkçe. 2016. “Meral Akşener MHP’den Ihraç Edildi.” BBC Türkçe, September 8. http://www.bbc.com/turkce/37303091. ———. 2017. “Figen Yüksekdağ’ın Milletvekilliği Düşürüldü.” BBC Türkçe, February 21. http://www.bbc.com/turkce/haberler-turkiye-39042816. Court, Martine. 2007. “La construction du rapport à la beauté chez les filles pendant l’enfance : quand les pratiques entrent en contradiction avec les représentations du travail d’embellissement du corps.” Sociétés & Représentations (24): 97–110. https://doi.org/10.3917/sr.024.0097. Court, Martine, and Christine Mennesson. 2015. “Les vêtements des garçons.” Terrains & travaux (27) (December): 41–58. Darmon, Muriel. 2016. La Socialisation. 3rd ed., 128, sociologie. Paris: Armand Colin.

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Déloye, Yves, and Florence Haegel. 2017. “Politisation. Temporalités et échelles.” In Sociologie plurielle des comportements politiques. Je vote, tu contestes, elle cherche…, edited by Olivier Fillieule, Florence Haegel, Camille Hamidi, and Vincent Tiberj, 332–46. Paris: Les Presses de Sciences Po. Dorronsoro, Gilles, and Nicole F. Watts. 2013. “The Collective Production of Challenge: Civil Society, Parties, and pro-Kurdish Politics in Diyarbakır.” In Negotiating Political Power in Turkey: Breaking Up the Party, edited by Élise Massicard and Nicole F. Watts, 99–117. London  and New York: Routledge. Drechselová, Lucie. 2018. “Le démantèlement du système municipal kurde et ses retombées genrées dans le Sud-est de la Turquie.” Confluences Mediterranee N° 107 (4): 125–36. ———. 2020. “Women in Local Politics in Izmir.” In International Symposium: Local Government, Democracy and Izmir. Proceedings, 420–33. Izmir: Mediterranean Academy Directorate of Izmir. Güne Bakış. 2016. “Kadın Hatibi Kürsüden Indirdiler.” Günebakış, March 31. http://www.gunebakis.com.tr/haber/103817/kadin-hatibi-kursuden-indirdiler.html. Milliyet. 2016. “Aylin Nazlıyaka CHP’den İhraç Edildi.” Milliyet, April 3. http://www.milliyet.com.tr/aylin-nazliaka-chp-den-ihrac-edildi-siyaset2204249/. Navarre, Maud. 2015. Devenir Élue. Genre et Carrière Politique. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes. Sendika44. 2017. “Cizre’de Kayyum Sağlık ve Eğitim Merkezini AKP Kadın Kollarına Devretti.” Sendika44, April 23. http://sendika44.org/2017/04/ cizrede-kayyum-saglik-ve-egitim-merkezini-akp-kadin-kollarina-devretti/. soL. 2017. “AKP’nin Atadığı Kayyum, Kadın Şoförleri Görevden Aldı.” SoL, February 26. http://haber.sol.org.tr/toplum/akpnin-atadigi-kayyum-kadin -soforleri-gorevden-aldi-186985. Stevenson, Tom, and Murat Bayram. 2017. “‘It’s Memorycide’: Turkey Dismantles Monuments to Kurdish Culture.” Middle East Eye, March 8. http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/after-political-crackdown-turkey-targets-monuments-kurdish-history-and-culture-791128912. Üner, Ozan. 2016. “Kayyumlar Kadın Kazanımlarını Yok Ediyor.” Bianet, October 22. https://bianet.org/bianet/toplum/179883-kayyumlar-kadinkazanimlarini-yok-ediyor.

CHAPTER 6

Navigating Local Politics: Women’s Careers and Strategies

Agency exists where there is power or domination, as Judith Butler shows in her study of the processes of subjectivation (Butler 1997; Özkazanç 2013). However, not all action by female politicians is a form of resistance to oppression. Neither is it necessarily subversive (Takhar 2013, 11; McNay 2008, 192). On the contrary, Delphine Dulong has shown that everything within political parties is organized to discourage subversion and to reward obedience (Dulong 2010). In this chapter, I subscribe to a wide definition of agency, considering even the strategies of accommodation and adaptation to existing rules as a form of agency on behalf of female politicians. As Deniz Kandiyoti has pointed out, women’s bargain with patriarchy can take multiple forms, including the acceptance of gender-biased social norms in the hope of receiving retribution (Kandiyoti 1988). Women’s negotiation of political space is a dynamic process: the salience of their resources changes and so do the characteristics of their environment. The salience of institutional arrangements depends on women’s capacity to use the existing set of intraparty rules or their capacity to alter it. Thus, even though parties inhibit women’s political expression to a large extent, they also have the potential to be enabling factors for individual as well as collective advancement. In imagining their political action, women act within the limits of the time-specific and ­place-specific repertories of action (Tilly 2008, 14–15) which constitute the frames for their action. The capacity to imagine change differs © The Author(s) 2020 L. G. Drechselová, Local Power and Female Political Pathways in Turkey, Gender and Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47143-9_6

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considerably among female politicians and is mostly correlated with their party affiliation. Each party exercises a certain hold over its members, offering legitimate cognitive frames and action patterns (Tarrow 2011, 31; Bourdieu 2012, 260), as a result of which women inscribe their action in the horizons of possibilities (Fretel 2010, 211; Avanza 2009) determined by the dominant ethos of their party. The dominant ethos in each party represents a benchmark against which to measure which behavior will be considered subversive, and thus penalized, and which will not. Within the AKP and the MHP, the criticism of patriarchy would be truly subversive, while in the HDP it is the norm, in line with the party ideology. While in the CHP, women regularly criticize other female colleagues and display their own ambition, such action would be seen as subversive in the HDP because it is contrary to the principle of female solidarity which is supposed to eclipse individual success. It is important to understand the intraparty ethos because it enables or inhibits women’s attempts to change. Political parties display various attitudes toward women’s attempts to change. According to Lisa Young’s typology, some of them are receptive, while others are either non-reactive or even oppositional (Young 2000). However, the intraparty setting may discourage any voice of women’s grievances (Hirschman 1970). The intraparty pressure to adopt loyal and accommodating behavior, together with the logic of interiorizing existing barriers (Bezes et al. 2010, 59–65), makes it harder for women’s demands to emerge. As few attempts see the light of day, there are few opportunities to apply Young’s typology in the context of Turkey. Women’s strategies to advance their political careers include discursive strategies as well as direct action. In the first segment, the accommodation and adaptation strategies of female local politicians are reviewed. The instances of adaptation show not only how women internalize and perpetuate social norms, but also how they attempt to use these norms to advance their careers by embracing an acceptable form of femininity. Then, I analyze the individual strategies of women which can bring about intraparty change. This change can either remain ephemeral— time-limited and only beneficial to the single politician—or it can spark a lasting transformation. Even though many attempts at lasting change ultimately prove ephemeral, several of my interviewees managed to introduce changes in their political parties beyond their individual careers. I label their action as “butterfly politics,” inspired by Catharine MacKinnon’s assessment of her advocacy projects which sparked lasting

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change (2017). Finally, I assess the conditions which favor the emergence of organized collective action and the difficulties related to its implementation.

6.1   Adaptation Mechanisms and the Spirit of ­­Self-Sacrifice Women’s ambition is not welcome in any political party. All politicians try hard to be seen as genuinely interested in the public good and indifferent toward personal gains, but the imperative of fedakârlık ­(self-sacrifice, altruism) has particular gendered features: it weighs heavier on women because it is articulated using the socially acceptable image of a woman as a caring, selfless mother. A woman who displays ambition in politics risks being seen as far from the female ideal of fedakârlık and to be rejected as greedy. As a result, female politicians—especially in conservative parties such as the AKP and the MHP—have a vested interest in putting forward their selfless motherly approach to politics. As Nagehan Tokdoğan noted in her study of the MHP, women cherish their “natural” motherly role as a way to survive in politics (2015, 282). This doesn’t mean that women are not ambitious—rather, it pushes them to dissimulate their political strategies to climb the party ladder. Even when competition is hidden, everybody seems to be aware of its existence, as Fatma, the head of AKP’s Izmir women’s branches, confirms: Of course women can collaborate, but when the electoral campaign starts, the friendships are forgotten. That’s part of politics. Women do not say “let’s unite behind one candidate and let’s push for her being the number 2 on the list”, no. Each of them wants to be the candidate and this encourages the gossips against others. By that, women open the way for men. (Fatma, head of women’s branches, AKP, Izmir, 21 June 2016)

Fatma suggests that if women were united and organized, they could claim better positions on the electoral lists. Still, her logic of inclusion doesn’t go beyond women as tokens since it envisions one common candidate for all women. In a context where women’s self-sacrifice is the most valued commodity (Jacquemart 2013, 220), female politicians develop alternative ways of manifesting their interest in a mandate. In the discourse of Nurşen, head of the AKP’s women’s branches in Trabzon, we encounter

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simultaneously the fedakârlık and her readiness for further political advancement: I think that politicians should have a cause. They shouldn’t press themselves towards an office just because they are ambitious. If you push forward only thinking about yourself, you will be forgotten by History. The issue is not Nurşen herself. I sit in this chair and I do all that my mandate requires. But I didn’t strive to occupy it. I am a very idealist person. I push for the cause not caring about who is in the shop window. If in the future, there was a possibility to have a place in the shop window and to have a representative role, why not. I am aware of some openings but I do not push for them to materialize. (Nurşen, head of women’s branches, AKP, Trabzon, 29 March 2016)

Nurşen’s assessment of “some openings” was indeed right because she ended up being elected to the Parliament after 17 years of her involvement in the AKP. Women are encouraged to work tirelessly, most often in women’s branches, and are appreciated for their achievements. At the same time, so as not to hamper their electoral prospects these women adopt the strategy of conformism and over-adherence to existing masculine political norms (Sineau 1988, 110). In a nutshell, most women conform to existing norms and ideas about acceptable femininity in the hope of securing a representative office. Still, most women’s ambition doesn’t become a reality. The ethos of fedakârlık has dire political consequences: in the absence of openly displayed ambition, male recruiters—mainly within the conservative AKP or MHP—can blame the low levels of elected women on the lack of motivated qualified female candidates. Mehtap, the MHP’s head of women’s branches in Izmir, explains that in line with conservative values, women are not absent from politics, but merely less visible: It is true that numbers of women in the MHP are not particularly high. We are not as many and this creates an image of women’s absence in the MHP. But we are here. We just have problems with publicity. Because our party stems from the Turkish-Islamic synthesis, we are rather modest and more inward looking. Today, everything is about publicity and we have to try harder in this regard. (Mehtap, head of women’s branches, MHP, Izmir, 20 June 2016)

While fellow female politicians in the AKP reproduce the party’s dominant discourse regarding the refusal of quotas, they also add to women’s

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eternal burden of proof with regards to their qualifications and competence. Former head of the AKP national women’s branches Güldal Akşit illustrated this logic: Women should be in politics. […] But if a woman is considering her candidacy, she should ask herself first: “Can I do this? Do I have sufficient capacities? Do I have enough political experience?” Of course, no one is born mayor, but it is necessary to pass this phase of self-assessment before applying for a mandate. (quoted by Can 2013)

The image of the “unqualified female” is another clearly gendered concept in politics since worries about unqualified males seldom appear in political discourses. This study has shown that in terms of socioeconomic profile, family background, education and career, women are mostly overqualified for local political offices. Moreover, they do not lack political experience prior to their election. Even though the fear of the “unqualified female” is still present in discourse and helps to justify women’s political exclusion, its premise doesn’t match the reality of most female municipal councilors. Even women whose profiles do not fully fit into the chaste maternal and self-sacrificing category adhere to the party discourse of legitimate femininity and perpetuate it. Sometimes, this leads to paradoxes, as it did for Kösem, a divorcee and former member of the local AKP directorate in Izmir with whom I discussed the conclusions of the parliamentary committee on “protecting family unity” (Tahaoğlu 2016), notably by limiting women’s rights to alimony after divorce: I am one of those women who were victims of the discriminatory provisions of the old Civil Code. There was a law which sensibly limited women’s legal and material rights upon divorce. As a woman, I was convinced that these articles needed to be changed and that this would be done if more women entered politics. In 2003, the AKP launched a reform to seriously alter the existing situation. Since then, the government continues to enlarge women’s rights. (Kösem, former member of local party directorate, AKP, Izmir, 16 June 2016)

Kösem suffered under the discriminatory rules contained in the old Civil Code. By replacing it, the AKP strengthened women’s p ­ ost-divorce rights and enlarged their entitlement to alimony. In 2016, when the AKP-dominated parliamentary commission on the protection of family

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unity published its recommendations, limiting women’s right to alimony was among them. If accepted (which they were not as of February 2020), they would make Kösem’s initial motivation to enter the AKP obsolete, since the same party would be limiting women’s access to alimony to prevent them from getting divorced. Even so, Kösem didn’t criticize the commission’s recommendations, but rather expressed confidence in the legislator. The over-adherence to party discourse is even more pronounced in the presence of other female colleagues. I witnessed this tendency when I met with a member of the AKP’s district directorate in Trabzon in a café for what was supposed to be a one-to-one interview but became a collective discussion when three of her colleagues, including one whom I had previously interviewed, spontaneously sat down at our table. The conversation became more about concrete policy issues, including the right to abortion—a heated debate back in 2012, but still fresh in the memories of everyone who sat at the table. Even though I was able to collect some nuanced views on the question during individual interviews, the group discussion meant that each politician was seeking to outbid the others in her capacity to follow the official party line—that abortion is murder. The overbidding represented an overt display of loyalty intensified by the public setting and the presence of other party representatives. This corresponds to the overall culture within the AKP, which only allows a limited level of discussion behind closed doors, with zero publicity (Tepe 2005, 79). The pressure from the national party headquarters to always organize party congresses with a single candidate to avoid visible debates and to fuel media attention can also be interpreted in this light. The group discussion that occurred in Trabzon’s café followed the similar pattern—no debate or nuanced opinions in the presence of a foreigner or in a public space. The situation is radically different in the CHP, where my interviewees discussed party policy and functioning rather freely and didn’t hold back from using the local press to strengthen their faction within the party. CHP women’s branch congresses are also systematically competitive—even more so at the local level—and the debates (and controversies) are always vividly reported by the local newspapers. In the HDP, the criticism of other women is rare and proscribed by the party’s informal rules and the imperative of female solidarity, but women are outspoken in their criticism toward men, and thus reveal a lot about how the party deals with inner conflicts.

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Women’s subversion of the dominant party norms and images of acceptable femininity is more difficult due to the sidelining of outspoken and critical women. From the beginning of the 2000s, the AKP was supported by Başkent Kadın Platformu (Platform of Women of the Capital), a group of intellectual Islamic feminists. For years they carried out an extensive campaign for the inclusion of women with headscarves on AKP’s electoral lists. One of their slogans even featured a threat not to vote for the party if women with the veil were excluded again. The group also didn’t refrain from criticism of party policies. As a result, very few of its members were ever elected on the AKP’s ballots, even to the less prestigious local political offices. More recently, Fatma Bostan Ünsal, from the Platform, criticized the state of emergency declared in the aftermath of the 2016 coup attempt and was dismissed from her university job by governmental decree (Bostan Ünsal 2018). In contrast, women from the association KADEM (Woman and Democracy) are known for their proximity to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and for their loyalty to the party line. Even while advocating for increased women’s representation, they do so by avoiding an overt critique of the party. The association not only recruits its representatives from among former municipal councilors (in Trabzon, this pattern was very visible) but it also grooms prospective female politicians. Even in the AKP and the MHP, where women mainly display loyalty and adapt to existing rules, they also learn how to navigate their political environment and actively contribute to the advancement of their careers. Firstly, they do so by putting into practice their knowledge of the informal intraparty rules. The case of Ezgi, the AKP’s municipal councilor in Trabzon, shows the subtlety of her conscious effort to join the provincial party headquarters: I was the only woman at the district directorate and I decided to become a member of the provincial party directorate. […] A party congress was going to take place and there were two candidates. I didn’t know with whom I should try to cooperate. The two made a speech and Ahmet Bey seemed more sincere to me. So I went to see the head of my district section and told him I wanted his support in the matter. He said, ‘We are having dinner tonight, come and I will introduce you’. During the dinner, I noticed that my boss and Ahmet Bey were sitting next to each other and were pointing at me regularly. Then, my boss said ‘we gave the girl’ [kızı verdik], and Ahmet Bey replied, laughing, ‘we took the girl’ [kızı aldık]. I was lucky because the list of Ahmet Bey won the congress and I entered

212  L. G. DRECHSELOVÁ the directorate of the province. After a year, Ahmet Bey resigned to become parliamentary candidate and all members of the directorate were dismissed. I was in an empty space, but Ahmet Bey offered me the position of the head of district women’s branches. I stayed there for more than a year. Then, the head of provincial women’s branches asked me to apply for the municipal council. She said that there were not enough competent female candidates [doğru dürüst kadın adayımız yok]. And that is how I became a municipal councilor. (Ezgi, municipal councilor, AKP, Trabzon, 3 June 2015)

When I met her, Ezgi was in her second term at the municipal council. She was a skilled local politician with years of intraparty experience within the party directorate as well as women’s branches. Ezgi’s ascension from the district to the provincial party level demonstrates her political ambitions and her capacity to bring them to fruition. She presents her promotion as purely her own idea, pursued on her own initiative. She then proves her command of the informal intraparty rules, dominated by men and patronage networks. She talks to her district boss who makes it possible for her to meet the candidate for the provincial directorate. Not going to see the candidate herself is not the result of a lack of political agency; on the contrary, it shows Ezgi’s awareness that recommendation from a trusted source is a must. The negotiation about Ezgi’s inclusion on Ahmet Bey’s list is done between the two men with her as a witness. The language they use is highly gendered. They use expressions from traditional marriage negotiations between families of the bride and groom: Ezgi passes from the authority of her district boss (who is “giving the girl”) to the authority of the provincial candidate (who is “taking the girl”). As was the case with Dilruba earlier, although Ezgi is over 40 years old she is still addressed as a “girl.” While in other contexts the distinction between a girl [kız] and a woman [kadın] is used to mark virginity or sexual maturity, in the political context this refers to the power hierarchy where the “girl” represents a bargain between hierarchically superior men. Ezgi’s case shows that women know how to navigate the hostile intraparty environment and how to make use of prevalent patriarchal norms without entering into overt conflict with them and without engaging in subversive action. Women within the conservative parties adopt distinct behavioral patterns in environments where they are the only woman. Through their behavior, they teach diversity to men and bring about very different modes of togetherness in politics—even within the same political party.

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The following two examples both come from the AKP in Trabzon, but from two different districts. They encompass the experience of two female politicians who, at a specific point in their political careers, entered an all-male environment (one within the political party and the other within the municipality) and chose opposite methods in order to adapt. The fact that both cases come from Trabzon is not accidental since tokenistic representation of women occurs regularly there. Indeed, many districts of the city only elected one female councilor. The following exchange with Emel shows that she considers her presence in the all-male AKP group in the council as a means to elevate the overall culture of expression and behavior: Women have to be in all spheres of life. I experienced it by myself. During our party meetings, any time I see an improper way of sitting or talking, I alert the fellow councilor saying: “Me, Emel, I am here as a woman”, or I say “Beware of your way of talking”. Because you are the only woman elected from your party? Yes. At the beginning we were two, but my other colleague was replaced by somebody else. I criticized the party decision back then. Why did they leave me alone? I think if we were two women, we could be more successful. Being alone is not very comfortable. Even leaving the meeting to go to the toilet is not as obvious as if we were two. I manage to fulfill my tasks in the council because the citizens and my colleagues like me but I sometimes feel alone. (Emel, municipal councilor, AKP, Trabzon, 1 June 2015)

Emel embraced conservative images related to femininity in order to police male behavior in the party meetings. Her bipartisan project about swearing mentioned previously is also in line with the conservative ideal of a “chaste woman.” In contrast, Ezgi, from another Trabzon’s district, chose a rather different strategy in her all-male environment: I was the only woman among 30 members of the local party directorate. I was thinking “how am I going to go to the meeting every week?” These men, who generally swear, sought to control themselves when they saw me. They couldn’t get used to me at the beginning and to the fact that I am relaxed. Me being relaxed was actually destabilizing them. But after two months, they accepted me as one of them. We became good friends and these friendships still last. From this team came two mayors, one ­vice-mayor, two heads of the district party unit and four or five municipal councilors. (Ezgi, municipal councilor, AKP, Trabzon, 3 June 2015)

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While Emel constrains the behavior of male colleagues, Ezgi encourages them not to change. As she remarks, this initially destabilizes them as she represents an unexpected form of femininity. She subverts the habitual norms about female behavior but she does so by accommodating the dominant male behavior. Ezgi is accepted, but as an exception. If municipal councilors abide by the prescriptions of the legitimate female role in politics, it can be in part because they have interiorized the imperatives of such a role. However, their conformity can also be strategic and result from a conscious choice (Lefebvre 2010, 221). Furthermore, while discursively preaching the ideal of family life—marriage and (at least three) children1—female politicians rarely satisfy this “objective.” They use political activity to explain that they work for the cause by other means, but encourage other women to get married and have (the desired number of) children. I suggest that this manifests the reverse logic of biographical availability (Beyerlein and Bergstrand 2013)—while biographical availability denotes periods in one’s ­life-course that are suited for public involvement, in politics or in social movements biographical unavailability captures the use by female politicians of their political involvement as a justification not to engage in extensive child-rearing. Among several interviewees in a similar situation, Fatma, the young head of the AKP’s Izmir women’s branches, praised those who choose full-time maternity as their life vocation, but she herself privileges political activity over marriage and family.2 Female politicians within the DBP which, like the AKP, often operate in conservative environments, also use their political involvement to remove themselves from the marital market. Among the sixteen female members of the Diyarbakır metropolitan council elected in 2014, nine were single, two divorced, one widowed, and three married with a maximum of two children. In the southeast region, families tend to display greater tolerance for women’s work in gender-mixed collectives and their late-night arrivals if they are involved in political work. Political involvement thus enlarges women’s margin of action in the public sphere but it doesn’t erase other limits to autonomy aimed at protecting their “chastity”—for instance, several interviewees reported that their family opposes them renting an apartment for themselves in Diyarbakır. Within the DBP and the pro-Kurdish parties that preceded it, the extended tolerance of women’s political activity is rooted in the authority and

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respectable image of female guerilla fighters. Since the PKK is known for its ban on sexual relationships, joining the guerilla has progressively become an act of chastity in the eyes of the Kurdish movement’s supporters. For young girls, joining the PKK represented not only an ideological choice but also an alternative to marriage for those who wished to escape the associated subjugation (van Bruinessen 2001, 105). While in politics sexual relationships are indeed not prohibited, the political sphere is often seen as an extension of that of the guerilla, which in turn allows for women’s greater mobility in the public space. In both the AKP and DBP, political activity is a way for women to negotiate their intimate choices amid conservative norms. Women’s political experience can create tension with their party ideology and, as Prunelle Aymé underlines, such tension can generate new practices and roles (Aymé 2017, 21 Aymé’s research is about the AKP). Arsun, an unsuccessful parliamentary candidate for the AKP in Trabzon, for instance, argued for the quota, departing from the official party line after she experienced gender-based discrimination during her electoral campaign.3 Çimen, a member of the AKP’s directorate of district women’s branches in Trabzon, noted that men slow down women’s careers and then claim that there is a shortage of female candidates.4 In their analyses, both women entered into tension with the official party line. The dominant ethos in conservative political parties is the ethos of self-sacrifice, fedakârlık, related to the image of motherhood. Embodying the altruistic carrying female is an imperative for women— especially in the AKP and the MHP. However, women also negotiate with these prevalent images. By over-compliance with the conservative party norms—by themselves propagating these “female qualities”— they show themselves to be legitimate political players. Their efforts are mainly directed at political survival and their over-adherence to conservative discourse helps them to avoid rumors that would destroy their political careers. In the following section, most of the examples are drawn from the CHP, which offers a very different party environment, open to some degree to women’s ambition, and in which women are rarely represented as tokens. Such an intraparty configuration allows for more overt individual political strategies and more open competition among female candidates.

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6.2   Individual Strategies: Between Ephemeral Change and “Butterfly Politics” Women who openly display their political ambition are mainly found within the CHP. What differentiates them from their counterparts in conservative parties is the generalized understanding that gender inequality in politics exists. Contrary to the strategies of accommodation discussed above, women in the CHP do not necessarily hide their ambition. This is the case for Fidan, a 37-year-old municipal councilor from Izmir, whose political career has been already discussed in connection with women who build their careers as promoters of women’s rights. Fidan’s advancement in local politics reveals her proactive strategies combined with the role of her family capital in politics. The following excerpt reveals the concrete elements of her proactive approach to her political career: My grandfather was a mayor in another city. After my mother retired, she also entered politics and became the head of local women’s branches three times. The first reason for my entering politics is this family tradition because I was familiar with this environment thanks to my mother. The second reason is related to my profession. There are not many women like me who have their career, family, are young and are interested in politics. I think that is why I was encouraged to apply for municipal councillorship. Who solicited you and when? It was in 2012. I was solicited by the district directorate of the party to join them. I liked the idea even though my first thought was whether it was necessary to have all the family in politics. I talked about it with my husband, but it was rather symbolic. at that stage I knew I was going to accept. Prior to the municipal election, they asked whether I would think of applying for the councillorship. I said yes. I didn’t receive any guarantees as to my election but I was the only engineer among all the women who applied and I was the youngest. Shortly before the closure of candidate lists, the president of the party, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, gave a videoconference for all party directorates in which he underlined that women and the youth should be placed on the lists in high numbers. I am sure this speech also helped me. […] Are you a member of any commission within the council? No, but I am the speaker of the party group [grup sözcüsü]. In one of our party meetings, the group members criticized my predecessor for not doing his job well. He resigned immediately. His reaction together with the sharpness of the critique created a situation in which no one wanted to

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take the responsibility. As nobody was willing to become the new speaker, I said “friends, I am not in any district commission and I think that a woman deserves the role of group speaker. If you find it appropriate, then I could take up the job.” No one opposed me and now they congratulate me. (Fidan, municipal councilor, CHP, Izmir, 17 June 2016)

Immediately after entering into the district party directorate, Fidan focused on becoming a party educator [parti eğitmeni] in charge of the CHP’s party academy, providing training and teaching the party’s program to its members. This step is illustrative of her political clairvoyance because this role enhances the educator’s reputation and increases contact with the party headquarters in Ankara. It also allowed Fidan to construct a political identity distinct from that of her mother, even though she does not disavow her family heritage. In her election, it was not only her mother’s network but also Fidan’s acquaintance with the mayoral candidate, with whom she used to cooperate professionally in her engineering job, which played a role. Finally, the attitude of the party president Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu may also have helped some female candidates because the conduct of the party leader is essential for the promotion of female candidates. Once in the council, Fidan’s capacity to seize an opportunity appeared during the incident with the group speaker. While all other members of the council were reluctant to pick up the position suddenly left vacant, she offered herself readily and advanced her womanhood as well as her lack of any other responsibilities on the council as the decisive factors. The latter argument signified that Fidan is not greedy—her becoming the group speaker didn’t entail any significant accumulation of functions. The former meant that in a heated atmosphere, bringing a woman to the post could appease the situation because it could be advertised on the grounds of promoting women’s role in politics rather than taking advantage of the injured pride of a departing colleague. It is most probable that if Fidan hadn’t taken the initiative, she wouldn’t have become group speaker. Uzel, the youngest CHP parliamentary candidate in 2015 in Izmir province, also advanced her youth as a means to advance her political prospects. Compensating for her lack of political experience, she readily used the discourse of the party leaders, who argued for a place for women and young people. She entered the primaries with a low chance of success but presented this as a way to make her name known and an

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investment in her future political career. Compared to other interviewees, who would often “do the count” and not engage in a race lost in advance, Uzel’s MP candidacy was part and parcel of her individual political strategy: What was the start of your political involvement? I have been member of the party for four years. Because I was working full time as accountant, I couldn’t be very active. I just went to work from morning to evening. Since I opened my own bureau, I felt that the doors of politics opened for me. First, I became candidate in the municipal elections of 2014. I was not selected by the party. This is how it goes: you choose a candidate for the mayorship who you support. But the candidate I chose was not selected by the party headquarters. Even though I then worked with the candidate who was elected, I was not accepted to the list. I took my chance. I did the same for my parliamentary candidacy. How did you organize your campaign? I had a team of four people: me, my husband, my older brother and my cousin. We were touring the districts but without any know-how because these were the first primaries to take place in Izmir after sixteen years. They put in place a system thanks to which you can send an SMS to all numbers registered in the party database. That is the means we used to inform party members that we were coming to their district. To organize local meetings with electors and have people coming, you need the help of district leaders and they sometimes demand financial contributions in exchange for their help. But I do not have money to give. I am struck by the fact that the party is searching for young candidates and women but then expects that they will have means to pay such a campaign. I told them “I will not give you money, I want to introduce myself, I want people to get to know me”. I know I angered a lot of people with this attitude. (Uzel, parliamentary candidate, CHP, Izmir, 6 July 2015)

Uzel was 37 years old at the time of our interview, married, and the mother of a small girl. She has Kurdish origins, which she seldom underlines. She grew up in a poor neighborhood in Izmir in a family of ten children with an illiterate mother. She graduated from university and envisions studying further while running her own accountancy office. Uzel represents a case of individual ascension, marking, like several other interviewees, a leap in social class compared with her family background. She proudly notes that she was the youngest, best-positioned candidate for the Parliament in the 2015 election, albeit in a non-eligible place. Through her campaigns for the municipal council and Parliament, she

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earned political experience and established a reputation on which she intends to build her future political career. Uzel conceals neither her political ambition nor her proactive stance in crafting her career. The individualism of female candidates, who presumably compete with each other instead of participating in coordinated action, is often advanced by my interviewees to explain why the CHP, the party with the most educated and longest-serving female politicians, is still far from parity representation. However, this competitive—albeit individualistic— environment also has three features that serve to empower women. First, women present themselves as being in charge of their political destinies. They do not legitimize their political involvement by invitation from a mentor and they pursue multiple candidacies on their own will. Second, women within the CHP are at ease with expressing criticism and were the only ones to debate the possibility of closing down the women’s branch, which presumably fails to assert women’s role and representation in politics. The debate from which no definite conclusion emerged was not centralized and was rather spontaneous, allowing different political visions to be articulated. A capacity to conduct such a debate presupposes a recognition of gender inequalities and the discriminating intraparty environment, which are in turn preconditions for change. Third, women engage in political competition through party congresses, including those of women’s branches. The CHP congresses of the women’s branches, especially at the local level, are the most transparent and “political” congresses among all the studied political parties. The CHP congresses are “political” because they feature multiple candidates with different visions and their outcome is not known in advance (Gerçek Izmir 2018). The national headquarters of women’s branches seldom intervenes in local congresses, which further strengthens the salience of local candidates and issues (for more see Drechselová 2019). The relatively decentralized structure of women’s branches in turn strengthens the importance of individual initiatives and efforts. In the coordinated campaign against the recommendations of the parliamentary commission on family unity, aimed at preventing divorce, the CHP women’s branches organized a simultaneous press conference in all Turkey’s provinces (Halkız Biz 2016), but the following steps were left to the local units. In local municipal councils, some female members introduced a motion denouncing the commission’s report; in other councils, this point was discussed; in others still, it was not brought up at all.

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Similarly, the attempts at change, whether within the local political order or within the party, depend mainly on the individual initiative of female municipal councilors. Leyla, lawyer and CHP councilor in Izmir province, engaged in an individual effort to increase women’s ­visibility in the council as well as during the visits of the party president. Her initiatives had an ephemeral effect, leading to her inclusion, but not to any lasting change in attitude among the party leadership. Leyla also launched a project to make the equality commissions permanent within municipal councils. If this were accepted, the equality commissions would be automatically reestablished after each municipal renewal. Back in 2009, Leyla got the support of the head of her Council of the Province and of a CHP deputy who even submitted a motion (albeit more limited in scope) to the Parliament, but the project was never seen by the relevant parliamentary commission.5 On the other hand, Zeynep, a CHP councilor in one of Izmir’s districts, took the initiative and wrote down the statutes of the women–men equality commission. Statutes allowed the commission to conduct gendered assessments of municipal employees and policies without any dossier being transmitted to it—this provision effectively remedied the passivity of equality commissions.6 Zeynep’s pioneering project was then extended to other municipalities and continues to grant a larger margin of action to these otherwise sidelined commissions. Her action is an example of “butterfly politics.” Both successful and unsuccessful attempts at change reveal much about the parties’ internal dynamics. The controversies accompanying the rise of the female quota within the CHP shed some light on the difficulties that sponsors of institutional reform encounter. The party inherited the 25% quota applicable to intraparty offices from its predecessor, the SHP. The quota was increased to 33% in 2012 and its scope was enlarged to all intraparty offices and to the local electoral lists (Tamer 2012). However, the quota doesn’t encompass lists which are determined by primaries (Dinçer 2012), which contributed to further female exclusion prior to the 2015 parliamentary election. How to explain the quota increase in 2012 and, on the contrary, the subsequent failures to make further increases since then? In 2010, the newly elected president of the party, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, was striving to build his image as a democratic and progressive leader. His objective happened to open the window of opportunity for women.

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Their demand to increase the quota was then in line with the priorities of the new party directorate. The quota was increased not as an immediate result of women’s mobilization but as a political strategy of the party leader, who used it to project his democratic and progressive image toward the electorate. The party leadership and, more broadly, the political context in 2012 were thus the main explanatory factors for the successful change to party statutes. Since then, the window of opportunity has closed. The increase in the female quota was not seriously on the agenda, even though calls in this direction are regularly voiced within the party. Collective mobilization in this sense has also suffered from several setbacks. First, female deputies from the CHP never took a clear common stand on the issue of the quota increase. Second, the former national head of women’s branches was criticized for her unwillingness to apply pressure in the matter (presumably so as not to hamper her own electoral prospects). Third, the relatively decentralized structure of women’s branches made the coordination of local initiatives harder and less efficient. As a result, the women’s branches were unable to inscribe the quota increase into the local suggestions which are then sent to Ankara and analyzed by the party headquarters prior to the congress. To sum up, the CHP has been home to many bright political careers. These were mostly crafted by the women themselves, as the examples of Fidan and Uzel in this section show. However, these pathways remain individual, the fruits of an individual effort, and do not form part of a more collective trend. The attempts at political change in the CHP are also mainly individual: some fail or have an ephemeral effect, others succeed and inspire more lasting change. All Hirschman’s (1970) scenarios are applicable to women dealing with discontent within the CHP: some women exit the party after their electoral defeat. As women’s mandates are less likely to be renewed than men’s, women are also slightly more likely to retreat (albeit temporarily) from their party; voice is very present within the party, not only discursively but also through attempts at change; finally, loyalty appears as an ultimate brake on women’s subversive efforts. The imperative not to weaken the main opposition party “in the context of growing Islamization” or the “growing terrorist threat” keeps many women in check and allows party representatives to disregard women’s demands, including the demand for the quota increase.

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6.3  Collective Mobilization and Institutional Change While collective mobilization is close to nonexistent in the conservative political parties, it is also rather rare in the CHP, where the individual efforts of female politicians sometimes converge and produce intraparty change. The collective mobilization most often resulting in institutional change occurs in the pro-Kurdish political parties. Women in these parties are organized within two main structures: women’s party assemblies (analogous to women’s branches in the other parties) and the Free Women’s Movement (KJA)7 within the larger Kurdish movement. In this assessment, I focus on the action led by women in politics, first looking at the resources favoring their collective mobilization, then at the difficulties they encounter in instigating intraparty change. Women’s claims for gender-equal representation are justified through and sustained by the Kurdish movement’s ideology, the heritage of female guerillas, the system of intraparty education, and publications. This set of resources makes it possible for women to promote a coherent representation of their actions and to regulate the behavior of fellow party women (Lefebvre 2010, 239). This in turn favors the emergence of a feeling of belonging and solidarity, conducive to collective action. Women’s liberation holds a central place in the ideological system of the Kurdish movement, of which Abdullah Öcalan is a major architect. Women in pro-Kurdish political parties support most of their claims with reference to his writings in order to benefit from his high authority within the Kurdish movement (Dryaz 2011). Especially following his imprisonment in 1999, Öcalan penned numerous volumes and court pleas marking a shift in his thought regarding women’s status. Women, who were initially portrayed as corruptors of men, became the very condition for the liberation of the society: The rebirth of the free woman will oblige all spheres of society to organize following the principles of liberty, enlightenment (aydınlık) and justice. Everybody will be convinced that peace is more precious than war and that for peace, women’s empowerment is necessary; the society at all levels, as well as the individuals, will benefit from it. (Öcalan 2005, 5)

Women work with Öcalan’s authority to come up with demands that their fellow party members can hardly refuse as no one would openly criticize Öcalan. In using this strategy, women have pushed for the

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establishment of an independent women’s organization within the party, the quota, the co-chairing system and most recently the co-mayorship. This also explains why women do not openly criticize Öcalan8 and why they even contribute to his ideas becoming an untouchable doctrine. His texts provide a shelter for women’s claims and using his authority is a way for women to deal with intraparty opposition. This strategy contains a risk: it becomes dangerous for women’s assemblies to engage in a critical reading of Öcalan’s texts because it may backfire and potentially also call several of their achievements into question. The heritage of female guerilla fighters is another symbolic resource for women’s collective mobilization. It operates on multiple levels. First, female fighters, in their confrontation with the guerilla men, are role models for women in politics. It is a widely held belief that guerilla women were the first ones to acquire gender consciousness and to fight gender inequalities (Şahin-Mencütek 2016, 480). They were pioneers in establishing the first independent female-only structures (Tokdoğan 2013, 41–42). Second, women in politics perpetuate the cult of several female fighter-martyrs, carrying on the memory of their actions in their mobilizations (for more about these iconic women see Özcan 2010; Orhan 2015). Third, guerilla women are pioneers in developing the Kurdish movement’s ideology. Notably, they were the first ones to discuss Jineolojî (literally, “women’s science”) based on Öcalan’s proposition from 2009, an approach to knowledge which not only practices gender mainstreaming but is also rooted in the Middle East. Jineolojî, albeit criticized for reinventing the wheel of poststructuralist, postcolonial, and transnational feminism (Al-Ali and Taş 2018, 14–15), has been crucial in women’s efforts to establish gender-equal ideology. Women’s collective mobilizations build upon the Kurdish movement’s ideological principles while at the same time shaping these principles through two channels: intraparty education and publications. Both are crucial since women have a vested interest in ensuring the homogeneous interpretation of the Kurdish movement’s ideology. Controlling its dissemination also allows them to control its interpretations. “Education” (eğitim)—as intraparty training is called—is a pivotal element of pro-Kurdish political parties, and women have managed to take over significant portions of it. Success in transmitting the party’s ideology can be measured through the discursive unity among my interviewees, which is indeed impressive. Still, the levels of depth and ideological

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precision within discourses vary. Heads of women’s academies and party educators provide a very complete and detailed ideological overview together with an elaborate critique of its persisting deficiencies. On the other hand, some of the municipal councilors or members of district party directorates perpetuate the official party discourse by working into their statements some seminal ideas, such as that women’s oppression dates back 5000 years and that prior to that, in the Neolithic era, society functioned more equally or was matriarchal.9 The educational training is of two kinds: one is targeted at the employees of pro-Kurdish municipalities and ordinary party members and the other is intended for party representatives and elected officials. In May 2015, I took part in a half-day seminar for municipal employees in Diyarbakır led by a sociologist, Şeyma, who had been living in the southeast region for about ten years. The seminar was an awareness-raising project about gender equality, with the objective of ­ identifying which daily inequalities women are confronted with, including those which may not intuitively be considered as such. Şeyma solely gave examples from other women in the region, all of which were tangible for the public of around 60 women from the municipality. She touched upon several major topics—social pressure on female beauty, gendered features of the common language, the gendered division of domestic labor, and misconceptions about female sexuality and reproduction.10 The seminar was dynamic and full of concrete examples, accompanied by vivid participation from the audience. The training designed for elected party representatives is very different. It takes the form of intensive camps between one and four weeks long. Participants are expected to reside in the training area, share rooms in groups of three or four, eat together and participate in an evening program after each day of seminars. This training by immersion, nonexistent in other parties, is also meant to force participants to live through the principles of their political party, experiencing the implementation of gender equality, ecology and communitarian decision-making for themselves. Some of the training is specialized, such as that addressed only to co-mayors, which I was able to follow in February–March 2016. Other training is exclusively for women. In contrast to the seminar for municipal employees, the training for party representatives is highly theoretical and aims at conferring dense knowledge from the fields of sociology, political science, and philosophy. Even in 2016, when military operations

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and curfews paralyzed the southeast region, this training was not discontinued. This proves its importance in the eyes of party leaders, but also of organized women who form the majority of trainers. Besides intraparty education, publications—and the media more generally—are another channel that women use to transmit the principles of gender equality. On the one hand, since the 1990s there have been publications directed specifically at women, such as Roza, Jujin, Jin û Jiyan, Yaşamda Özgür Kadın, or Hêviya Jinê (Açık 2002; Tokdoğan 2013), which only had ephemeral existences and various levels of proximity to the Kurdish movement. The most recent publication addressed to women was issued between 2015 and 2016: the magazine KJA, based on the abbreviation of the Free Women’s Congress (KJA). With the closure of the eponymous women’s organization by state decree in 2016, the magazine ceased to exist as well. The second most recent publication is the magazine Jineolojî, which is still in circulation as of the end of 2019. Issued four times a year, Jineolojî progresses in thematic issues which cover, one by one, all domains of life as well as all the ideological principles of the Kurdish movement (criticism of social sciences, ecology, women’s self-defense, ethics). It does what “women’s science” intends to do: review all knowledge from a woman’s perspective. It does so by featuring articles of an academic nature, translations of foreign feminist writers, essays, poems, and transcriptions of debates among Kurdish activists pertaining to the theme of each issue. It easily reaches 250 pages per issue. I would suggest that the Jineolojî magazine is an underestimated and not widely circulated source, but one that progressively reimagines the whole ideological system of the Kurdish movement and has the potential to become a key source for the women’s movement in the future. Women’s writing and topics are also present in the generalist press and TV channels close to the Kurdish movement. The program “Mor Bülten” (Purple Bulletin) was aired daily on the channel IMC TV. The newspaper Özgür Gündem featured women’s issues on the second page every day and once a week published a supplement, “Binevş,” entirely devoted to women’s status and projects. Through their efforts to consolidate institutional achievements, women within the Kurdish parties contribute to ideological unity while simultaneously propagating women-friendly principles. However, progress in ideological learning is far from smooth. Jineolojî remains on the margins—very few of the elected

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municipal councilors actually read the magazine. While Özgür Gündem was widely read, there is no research to suggest how it was read— especially by men with regard to women’s issues. It is unlikely that anybody would confess to skipping the second page. The closure of the IMC TV channel and the ban on Özgür Gündem and KJA magazine made the dissemination of gender-equal ideology more difficult. The exposure of the general public to topics pertaining to women diminished as a result of these state-ordered closures. The state action thus contributed to weakening women’s mobilization against intraparty opposition. The women’s achievement that remains is the discursive adherence to the principles of gender equality by men within the party, although their daily practices have been criticized by my interviewees. Even though the collective mobilization of women within the pro-Kurdish parties continues to transform them, the application of crucial institutional achievements, the quota and co-chairing, met with systematic intraparty opposition. From 2002, the quota was in party statutes but was not implemented. It was announced for the 2004 municipal election but the designation of “female-only constituencies” ended in chaos. Men who had already applied to the mayoral position in those areas were forced to retrieve their applications and women were encouraged to replace them. A couple of weeks later, it became clear that many female candidates were proxies of the initial male contestants and that the Kurdish women’s movement faced serious issues with logistics. The quota was first applied in 2007, five years after it was announced in party statutes. Gültan Kışanak, the female co-mayor of Diyarbakır and former head of a pro-Kurdish party and Member of Parliament, said that she experienced harder times while pushing for the implementation of the quota in the wake of the legislative election of 2007 than while being tortured in Diyarbakır’s prison in the aftermath of the 1980 military coup (Kışanak et al. 2016; Kışanak 2018; Al-Ali and Taş 2018, 10). The co-chairing system was proposed by the founder of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, in his writings from prison. Women in the political party seized the initiative and started discussing avenues for the introduction of the system which instituted a man and a woman jointly presiding over all party levels. Tara, one of the founders of the Democratic Free Women’s Movement (DÖKH), an umbrella platform for women’s political and social organizing and a predecessor of the KJA (Dorronsoro and Watts 2013, 105), described the difficulties related to the establishment of the co-chairing system:

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The men were against. They said the timing was not right. Their argument was that women would cause the closure of the party because the ­co-chairing was against Turkish law. To that women replied that without putting pressure, the situation would never change. During the meeting of DÖKH in Diyarbakır, we discussed Öcalan’s propositions and decided to put co-chairing in place in spite of the legal system. We decided to create a de facto situation. We prepared the list of ten women who could become the female co-chair and Aysel Tuğluk was selected from among those names. Outside of DÖKH, no one was aware of our decision. The day before the party congress in 2005, we assembled all women who were about to participate and who represented around 30% of the delegates. They agreed to support our plan. The day of the congress, we published a feature interview with Aysel Tuğluk in the Özgür Gündem newspaper. In the interview, we presented her as the co-chairing candidate of all women from the party. The men learnt about the situation from the journal the same day and couldn’t organize their opposition because we argued in line with Öcalan’s texts. (Tara, activist, co-founder of DÖKH, London, 24 May 2017)

With the co-chairing put in place in 2005, the pro-Kurdish party managed to maintain this de facto system of double presidency until its legalization in Turkish law in 2014 (CNN Türk 2014). In the same year, under the leadership of women’s assemblies, the party took the decision to implement co-mayorship, an analogy of co-chairing at the municipal level. A pilot co-mayorship scheme was put in place in Diyarbakır in 2009 and one of the female councilors was designated as co-mayor to the elected mayor, Osman Baydemir. In 2014, the system was to be generalized to all municipalities won by the pro-Kurdish party, but intraparty opposition was significant. Its main argument was that neither the party structure nor the electorate were ready for such a change. Women’s arguments were, on the contrary, that immediate implementation would lead to the improvement of the system along the way and to the perennation of women’s institutional advancement. During the electoral campaign of 2014, all party posters featured two candidates for the municipality, a man and a woman. The co-mayorship was applied in around 100 municipalities in 2014, generalizing women’s representation at the mayoral level. However, the informal female quota of 30%, which had been implemented in previous elections, did not totally disappear. Even though the party stressed that both mayors are equal, only one was recognized by the state, had

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the authority of official signature and was technically the one receiving the salary. Thus, women elected as informal co-mayors risked being seen merely as assistants to the “real” mayor, dealing at best with women’s issues. The fact that around 30% of the officially elected mayors were women is a result of the cautious approach by the women’s assemblies: even if the implementation of the co-mayorship proved disappointing, women would still hold 30% of the official mayoral offices. In addition, while co-mayorship represented the generalization of women’s presence at the mayoral level, it also ended the exclusion of men from f­emale-only constituencies which were only open to female applicants under the quota system. Thanks to co-mayorship, in each municipal race of the pro-Kurdish party, there was also a place for men. The co-mayorship represents the most recent institutional innovation pushed forward by the Kurdish women’s movement. It increased women’s visibility in the most prestigious local office and is thus crucial for this study given the “Turkish paradox” of lower female representation at the local level than in Parliament. Co-mayorship has a socially transformative potential since it marks an increase of women’s symbolic representation and women’s visibility and sends out the message that women are able to hold offices of responsibility (Sumbas and Koyuncu 2016; Erel and Acik 2019). However, the exercise of co-mayorship varied based on localities. In Spring 2016, I had occasion to interview a dozen ­ co-mayors, mostly female, from different municipalities in the southeast region. Their accounts reveal how different the implementation of the system was in each district. In some areas, the male co-mayor kept the largest office, most of the powers and de facto ruled the municipality, with the female counterpart receiving only women’s demands in a much less glamorous setting. In other places, co-mayors shared the office with the woman sitting on the side, giving the impression of an assistant rather than an equal. But in some municipalities co-mayors came up with a functional compromise not only with respect to the spatial arrangement of their offices but also with respect to common decision-making and the division of tasks. While women coming to the municipality primarily addressed their demands to the female co-mayor, whose presence facilitated their visit in the first place, other topics were supervised jointly by both co-mayors and the division of tasks was organized ad hoc on a ­day-to-day basis. The intensity of the pro-Kurdish party’s local implantation appeared as a useful aid in overcoming the difficulties experienced by female

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co-mayors. In the center of Diyarbakır province, where the party holds the majority of offices and has been electorally present since 1999, the women’s movement is well implanted and active. When female ­co-mayors had difficulties exercising their mandate, other party women were able to intervene and to follow up on the issue. On the contrary, in several rural districts of the Ağrı or Erzurum provinces, which the party won for the first time in 2014, the female co-mayor was often the only woman in the municipal building, with no other female councilor or employee. In such cases, not only were all actions and public appearances of the co-mayor under heightened scrutiny, but any policies and institutional changes spearheaded by the female co-mayor had to be delegated to male employees. This slowed down their implementation. Concretely, the department of women’s status was not created in the first year following the election because the municipality sought a female sociologist on whom the responsibility could be conferred. Berzê, a young female co-mayor in one of the newly won peripheral districts outside of Diyarbakır, shared her situation: For centuries women here have not received any education, they were confined to their houses and to child-rearing. In this district, there are some women who see the life only through the window of their house. By what should I start? First, I show to these women that one of theirs can be at the municipality. I am planning to establish a Department of Women but I am still waiting for a sociologist to take charge of it. I can’t talk to these women about the Free Women’s Congress and women’s liberation. They would look at me like at a crazy person, but I can start with s­ocially-oriented events. I want to launch seminars about child health and education and by that make women come out of their houses. (Berzê, co-mayor, district outside of Diyarbakır, interviewed in Diyarbakır, 3 March 3016)

Berzê also developed strategies to succeed in office. When a new situation occurs, she either calls her husband, who has a university degree, or searches for relevant information on the internet. Her case shows that co-mayorship presents women with a political space for learning by intense immersion. The difficulties related to the implementation of the system were the main theme of discussions—and controversies—during the intraparty training I observed in Diyarbakır in February–March 2016. The DBP organized two-week intensive training courses in municipal politics,

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party ideology and gender-sensitive approaches for the newly elected co-mayors and these were still ongoing two years later. Besides facilitating information transmission, these meetings were an opportunity for the exchange of best practices and experiences as well as for criticism. No female co-mayor was openly criticized based on her gender, but the scale of criticism directed toward co-mayorship (mainly the lack of preparation prior to implementation) showed the scale of intraparty discontent. Even though the co-mayorship was heavily criticized within the party, it is in line with its ideological premises. However, it can be seen as subversive at two levels: that of society and that of the state. Avşîn, one of the young co-mayors in the peripheral district of Mardin, mentioned that there are still elderly men who refuse to shake her hand when they come to the municipal building and always insist on talking to the male co-mayor.11 In this regard, co-mayorship is disruptive of conservative social norms pertaining to the gendered division of labor. On the other hand, co-mayorship remains illegal in Turkey, in contrast to the ­co-chairing of political parties, legalized in 2014. Thus, it is treated as such by the state, and since the election of the first co-mayors various state actors made the exercise of the co-mayorship difficult. Several municipalities were permanently subject to audits by the Interior Ministry. When I talked to Avşîn in March 2016, her municipality has already seen four audits since the beginning of the year. Some governors slowed down the processing of documents which bore the signatures of both co-mayors, others didn’t accept them at all and still others opened judicial trials for illegal practice. When, in 2016, the dismissals and arrests of pro-Kurdish mayors began, in some districts both co-mayors were arrested, while in others only the officially elected mayor was pursued in the courts. It was increasingly difficult to follow the trajectories of my interviewees during this time. Avşîn, for example, was arrested in March 2016, released a few weeks later and detained again in December 2016 together with Gülistan, another female co-mayor. The co-mayors Mihriban and Berzê were both arrested in January 2017.12 In the local elections of 2019, the co-mayorship system was continued by the pro-Kurdish party. The dismissals and detentions started again a couple of months later and were ongoing throughout 2019. This time, both co-mayors were systematically pursued. This may mean a de facto recognition by the state of the system implemented by the pro-Kurdish party. However, the widespread criminalization of pro-Kurdish politicians made it difficult for the party to establish a balance sheet for the

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practice of co-mayorship. This is a major impairment for the DBP (and currently the HDP), since the party evolves thanks to internal assessments and critiques. Thus, the narrowing of the political space makes any introspection and improvement harder. In parallel, the training that women’s assemblies and the KJA organize for male and female party representatives at all levels is often disrupted by the detention of the participants as well as the training organizers. Thus, any sustained efforts toward transforming the “patriarchal mentality” are impaired by the forced removal of senior and less senior party executives. The case of the HDP in Izmir reveals how the gender-equal party ideology is translated in a different region of Turkey, here in the context of relatively recent party implantation. In 2014, the HDP didn’t win any electoral offices locally, but it managed to elect two deputies in the 2015 national election and to spread its bureaus throughout the Izmir province. Women that I met in the Izmir branches of the party suffered from the relative absence of organized women’s assemblies. While women’s branches and the KJA are very active in Diyarbakır, in Izmir, it is the task of female members of the district party directorate to initiate and implement gender-sensitive projects. In 2016, they started the “Women’s Fridays” gathering of women in the party bureau based around a topic or a project. On that day, the party offices were supposedly open solely to women. However, in practice only two meetings took place in the first couple of months. During one of them women wrote letters and prepared small gifts for their imprisoned female colleagues; during the other one, they invited one local Turkish female NGO to get to know its work and projects. The women-only Fridays were also slow to materialize because men kept coming to the bureau—most of the time, they argued, because they needed to coordinate political activities for the upcoming weekend. Co-chairing was a generalized practice in Izmir in 2016. Each new party directorate was automatically presided over by a man and a woman. For all municipalities in 2014, the HDP also ran two candidates in line with the envisioned co-mayorship system, but none of them was elected. At times, relations between the two co-chairs deteriorated. In the absence of a strong Kurdish women’s movement that could intervene in the event of crisis, such situations were a test for the institutionalized intraparty mechanisms. In one of Izmir’s districts, Sibel, the female co-chair, experienced such difficulties with her male colleague that she decided to call for an extraordinary party congress:

232  L. G. DRECHSELOVÁ We became co-chairs prior to the legislative elections of June 2015 and we coordinated the electoral campaign of our party. But it didn’t go well. Our relations were tense. My male colleague is a conservative person. He also saw himself above me. For example, he used to say “it’s me the chair” and expected me to accept it. When all the members of the party directorate were supposed to be on duty in the party bureau, the co-chair removed his name from the list because “he is the president of the district, he is not obliged to do the duty office” but he left mine. (Sibel, co-chair, HDP, Izmir, 3 June 2016)

Sibel faced not only practical but also discursive exclusion by her male co-chair. Discursive exclusion is extremely rare in the pro-­Kurdish party because gender equality has become the accepted norm within the party on the level of speech. In the absence of a strong organized women’s assembly, Sibel used the available mechanisms enshrined in the party’s statutes to call for an extraordinary congress. The congress even took place at an extraordinary time—in the midst of an electoral campaign prior to the snap election of November 2015. As a result of the congress, both of the co-chairs were replaced by another tandem. It is hardly conceivable that any political party would authorize a—potentially destabilizing—change of leadership during such a critical period. The fact that Sibel’s demand materialized shows, on the one hand, the urgency of dealing with the crippling tensions between the co-chairs and, on the other, the priority accorded to an effective gender-balanced functioning of the co-chairing system. This case underlines the essential role that institutional arrangements can play for women’s political agency. Simultaneously though, Sibel’s capacity to make use of the existing arrangements was not automatic. She is an experienced Turkish left-wing activist—a member of the 1978 political generation who endured state torture and imprisonment in the aftermath of the 1980 military coup. She is also an experienced feminist activist and labor union organizer. The HDP’s institutional arrangements and Sibel’s activist capacities combined to make her use of existing rules effective. Of the newly elected co-chairs replacing Sibel and her colleague, the male co-chair was an experienced man from the Kurdish movement, aged over 50, and the female co-chair was a young woman (this time also Kurdish) and a member of a religious minority who had recently finished university. Such a division of identity traits between the co-chairs is not uncommon. The HDP choses a complementary duo of politicians not only to satisfy the gender-balance requirement, but also to appeal to the

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widest possible electorate by making the co-chairs embody as many identity traits and affiliations as possible. This set of characteristics, so strategic for the party recruiters, then makes it harder for women to exercise their duty on an equal footing with men. For the female co-chair, the chances of her being a relative newcomer to politics are higher in Izmir than in Diyarbakır, where “people are born into politics” as the Diyarbakır municipal councilor Şeyda put it.13 Women’s collective organizing within the pro-Kurdish parties reveals their capacity to rely on multiple resources in advancing their demands. Women proved their ability to question dominant paradigms; the criticism of patriarchy has become part of the dominant party ethos, not a subversive act. Thus, by their discourse and action, women within the DBP and HDP help to stretch the horizon of possibilities for institutional change and the gender-equal functioning of a political party. However, their experiences also confirm that measures don’t only need to be introduced, but also sustained. The implementation of the gender-equal provisions appears directly correlated to the solidity of women’s organizing locally (and thus varies significantly among provinces). Moreover, it has been systematically threatened since 2015 by the military operations in the southeast region, the criminalization of ­pro-Kurdish politicians and the dismissal of almost all elected pro-Kurdish mayors.

6.4  Concluding Remarks Accommodation practices prevail among the strategies of local female politicians. Given the mechanisms aimed at excluding subversive profiles, it is no surprise that most elected municipal councilors learn the rules of the game and adapt to them in order to succeed. Their adaptation is rewarded by their inclusion on the electoral list. However, individual accommodation strategies then limit the avenues for coordinated collective action given the politicians’ over-adherence to the parties’ discourse. Especially within the AKP and the MHP, women’s organized action is thus inhibited. However, accommodation practices do not entail inaction. Even without openly displaying their political ambition, women still manage to craft their political careers, mainly because they know how to navigate the intraparty rules, over-adhere to the party ethos and display loyalty. In addition, some female politicians use their political involvement to avoid marriage and maternity while still encouraging

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their supporters to “have at least three children” (in the case of the AKP). Thanks to politics, they become biographically unavailable for child-rearing which is one of the cornerstones of the discourse they preach about legitimate femininity. Each party provides a distinctive set of rules and a distinctive “ethos” that women have to deal with. Thus, female politicians find themselves navigating rules of politics which they didn’t elaborate. As a result, the party ethos also influences women’s attitudes with regard to intraparty gender inequality. Their attitudes range from the denial of gender-based discrimination, to the criticism of inequality and demands for change. My research has shown that women rarely deviate from the dominant ethos of their party. Thus, in line with the party ethos, women in the AKP embrace maternal values and women’s complementary role with respect to men, women in the CHP criticize inequality and patriarchy, while women in the pro-Kurdish parties, the DBP and the HDP, demand social transformation and paradigm change as they do not “wish to be equal with men under such conditions.” While these attitudes are vastly different from one another, each of them is in line with the dominant party ethos. The same logic is in place when considering women’s strategies to advance their political careers. It is rare to encounter subversive careers because these are discarded along the way. Acting in line with the party ethos doesn’t necessarily mean that women lack courage or imagination. Rather, it represents a viable strategy to make conceivable gains: women who act in line with their party ethos talk to power in a language which is likely to be understood. Political parties display various attitudes toward women’s attempts to change. According to Lisa Young’s typology, some of them are receptive, while others are either non-reactive or even oppositional (2000). For Turkey’s political parties to fit into these categories, the grid would need to be more complex. It is possible to add four dimensions for analysis: theme, temporality, actors, and mechanisms of change. With respect to the “theme,” most of the parties appear to be selectively receptive, especially to demands which are in line with their ideology and ethos. On other topics though, they are non-reactive, as is the CHP toward women’s demands to increase the electoral quota which just does not appear to be on party’s agenda. The dimension of temporality allows to differentiate among parties based on the stage the institutional change has reached. At the early stage of almost all initiatives, we encounter oppositional attitudes toward

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women’s demands. This is also true for the pro-Kurdish parties: every time women have claimed a new institutional advancement there have been actors with openly oppositional attitude within the party. Parties are also more likely to be non-reactive to women’s mobilization if they perceive ignoring women’s demands will go without consequences. All the parties used at some point in time the “imperative of party loyalty” to silence women’s demands: the AKP in the aftermath of the 2016 coup attempt; the DBP and HDP from roughly the same period, when the party representatives were incarcerated en masse; the MHP during the intraparty contestations which led to a split and the creation of the İyi Parti; and the CHP to varying degrees for more than 15 years, in order not to weaken the main opposition party. On the other hand, the non-reactivity of a party can backfire. The creation in 2014 of the Women’s Party (Kadın Partisi) mostly by members of the CHP, and to some extent the creation in 2017 of the İyi Parti by members of the MHP, constitute two examples illustrative of this trend. When women’s grievances are formulated, the party can oppose them for some time but the development of women’s campaigns, the strategic use of the media and the change in the balance of forces after a party congress can help to shift the equilibrium toward the acceptance of institutional reform, and as a result, the party can become “receptive.” This may mean that the CHP’s non-reactivity or opposition to the quota increase is an attitude inscribed in a specific temporality and we may see the party becoming receptive in the future. To account for changes in party attitudes, the following two criteria can also be added to Young’s grid: the analysis of actors and mechanisms that lead to change or to the absence thereof. The comparison between the CHP and the DBP shows differences in both. On the one hand, most of the efforts to initiate change in the CHP are individual projects which depend on the abilities and networks of a given female politician, while most action in the DBP is presented as collective from the onset. This is related to different intraparty environments, with the DBP women’s assemblies enjoying a much stronger position than women’s branches in the CHP. The actors of the intraparty opposition are thus important to consider. Their influence varies based on their numbers but also their position within the party and their closeness to the leadership. Finally, the mechanisms of change account for how change takes place. It includes considerations about multiple elements: the party ethos, ideology, party structure, and specific windows of opportunity.

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Women in the DBP were able to use the party’s ideology to justify their demands and, moreover, they took over intraparty education to propagate a homogeneous interpretation of the core party principles. In the CHP, change was possible when women’s demands aligned with the president’s agenda and the image he wanted to project to the outside— only during a specific window of opportunity. All of these considerations confirm that the intraparty environment is dynamic. The patriarchal patterns of its functioning also evolve, adapting to each configuration in a given locality and party. Women’s differential positions within their parties and the dominant party rules and ethos combine to impact women’s capacity to imagine and initiate institutional change which would have more lasting effects beyond individual political destinies.

Notes





1. The AKP is known for its official discourse encouraging women to have at least three children. In 2008, R. T. Erdoğan called for women to have at least three children. During his visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina, he said that three may be little, and five children per woman is better. Finally, in 2019, the president mentioned that he systematically calls upon the younger generation to have at least three children (Çetik et al. 2008; Habertürk 2012; Birgün 2019). 2. Fatma, head of women’s branches, AKP, Izmir, 21 June 2016. 3. Arsun, parliamentary candidate, AKP, Trabzon, 21 March 2016. 4.  Çimen, member of district directorate of women’s branches, AKP, Trabzon, 13 April 2016. 5. Leyla, former councilor at the provincial level, CHP, Izmir, 29 June 2015. 6. Zeynep, municipal councilor, CHP, Izmir, 23 June 2015. 7. KJA was closed by state decree in 2016. It was replaced by TJA, the Free Women’s Movement, having the same structure and function. 8. Some researchers suggest that women do not criticize Öcalan because they are indoctrinated. For this argument, see Al-Ali and Taş (2018). However, I suggest that not criticizing Öcalan’s writings is also a way not to undermine women’s political demands. 9.  Most of these ideas come from publications which constitute a reading list for intraparty training. Among them: Pervin Erbil’s Kibele’den Pandora’ya (Erbil 2007). 10.  Şeyma finished the seminar by warning against simplistic recipes for gender equality—mentioning a woman who went home after a similar seminar and explained to her husband, who had spent the day working in a

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mine, that she was not going to cook dinner for him anymore. She was beaten by her husband. 11. Avşîn, co-mayor, DBP, peripheral district of Mardin, 2 March 2016. 12. In order to ensure the anonymity of my interviewees, I do not provide the links for newspaper articles relating the detentions and releases of the relevant female co-mayors. 13. Şeyda, municipal councilor, DBP, Diyarbakır, 6 May 2015.

References Açık, Necla. 2002. “Ulusal Mücadele, Kadın Mitosu ve Kadınların Harekete Geçirilmesi: Türkiye’deki Çağdaş Kürt Kadın Dergilerinin Bir Analizi.” In 90’larda Türkiye’de Feminizm, edited by Aksu Bora and Asena Günal, 279– 306. Istanbul: İletişim. Al-Ali, Nadje, and Latif Taş. 2018. “The Kurdish Political Movement in Turkey: Reconsidering Nationalism and Feminism.” Nations and Nationalism, Online Version of Record Before Inclusion in an Issue (January): 1–21. Avanza, Martina. 2009. “Les femmes padanes militantes dans la ligue du nord, un parti qui « l’a dure ».” In Le sexe du militantisme, edited by Olivier Fillieule and Patricia Roux, 143–65. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Aymé, Prunelle. 2017. “Engagement féminin conservateur et inclusion à la sphère politique, le cas de la branche féminine du Parti de la justice et du développement en Turquie.” MA thesis, Paris, Institut d’études politiques de Paris. Beyerlein, Kraig, and Kelly Bergstrand. 2013. “Biographical Availability.” In The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements, edited by David A. Snow, Donatella Della Porta, Bert Klandermans, and Doug McAdam, 137–38. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. http://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/ 9780470674871.wbespm012. Bezes, Philippe and Patrick Le Lidec. 2010. “Ordre institutionnel et genèse des réformes.” In Sociologie de l’institution, edited by Jacques Lagroye and Michel Offerlé, 55–73. Sociologiquement. Paris: Belin. Birgün. 2019. “Erdoğan: Gençlerimize en az 3 çocuk, mümkünse daha fazlasını tavsiye ediyorum.” birgun.net, February 20. https://www.birgun.net/haber/ erdogan-genclerimize-en-az-3-cocuk-mumkunse-daha-fazlasini-tavsiye-ediyorum-247686. Bostan Ünsal, Fatma. 2018. “‘Kadını Değersizleştiren Diskur Hayat Karşısında Çözülecek’.” Evrensel, March 19. https://www.evrensel.net/haber/347979/ kadini-degersizlestiren-diskur-hayat-karsisinda-cozulecek. Bourdieu, Pierre. 2012. Sur l’État. Cours au Collège de France. Paris: Le Seuil. Bruinessen, Martin van. 2001. “From Adela Khanum to Leyla Zana: Women as Political Leaders in Kurdish History.” In Women of a Non-State Nation, the

238  L. G. DRECHSELOVÁ Kurds, edited by Shahrzad Mojab, 95–112. Kurdish Studies Series 3. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers. Butler, Judith. 1997. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Can, Fatma. 2013. “Güldal Akşit: ‘AK Parti’de 3 Adaydan Biri Kadın Olacak’ (2).” Haberler, October 6. https://www.haberler.com/guldal-aksit-ak-partide-3-adaydan-biri-kadin-5150268-haberi/?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=tavsiye_et&utm_medium=detay. Çetik, Arzu, Turan Gültekin, and Yavuz Kuşdemir. 2008. “Erdoğan: En az üç çocuk doğurun.” Hürriyet, July 3. http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/ erdogan-en-az-uc-cocuk-dogurun-8401981. CNN Türk. 2014. “Demokratikleşme Paketi Yasalaştı.” CNN Türk, February 3. https://www.cnnturk.com/haber/turkiye/demokratiklesme-paketi-yasalasti. Dinçer, Gönül. 2012. “CHP Tüzüğüne Göre Kadın Kotası Ne Kadar?” Kazete, March 3. https://kazete.com.tr/makale/chp-tuzugune-gore-kadin-kotasine-kadar_812. Dorronsoro, Gilles, and Nicole F. Watts. 2013. “The Collective Production of Challenge: Civil Society, Parties, and pro-Kurdish Politics in Diyarbakır.” In Negotiating Political Power in Turkey: Breaking Up the Party, edited by Élise Massicard and Nicole F. Watts, 99–117. London and New York: Routledge. Drechselová, Lucie. 2019. “Women’s Political Representation and Women’s Branches in Turkey: Untangling a Complex Relationship.” 1. TEZ Gender Working Paper. Hamburg: Hamburg University. Dryaz, Massoud Sharifi. 2011. “Women and Nationalism: How Women Activists Are Changing the Kurdish Conflict.” SOAS, University of London. https:// www.soas.ac.uk/lmei/events/ssemme/file67896.pdf. Dulong, Delphine. 2010. “Au dedans et en dehors. La subversion en pratiques.” In Sociologie de l’institution, edited by Jacques Lagroye and Michel Offerlé, 249–66. Paris: Belin. Erbil, Pervin. 2007. Kibele’den Pandora’ya: Kadının Tarihsel Yenilgisi. Ankara: Arkadaş. Erel, Umut, and Necla Acik. 2019. “Enacting Intersectional Multilayered Citizenship: Kurdish Women’s Politics.” Gender, Place & Culture, June 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2019.1596883. Fretel, Julien. 2010. “Habiter l’institution. Habitus, apprentissages et langages dans les institutions partisanes.” In Sociologie de l’institution, edited by Jacques Lagroye and Michel Offerlé, 195–217. Sociologiquement. Paris: Belin. Gerçek Izmir. 2018. “CHP İzmir’de Gözler Kadın Kongresinde: 3 Aday Örgüte Ne Mesaj Verdi?” Gerçek Izmir, January 17. http://www.gercekizmir.com/ yazdir.asp?haberid=38824. Habertürk. 2012. “3 az, 5 çocuk yapın.” Habertürk, September 15. https:// www.haberturk.com/dunya/haber/776812-3-az-5-cocuk-yapin.

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Halkız Biz. 2016. “İzmir’li Kadınlar; Bizim Sizin Yasalarınıza Kurban Edeceğimiz Çocuğumuz Yok.” Halkizbiz, May 26. http://www.halkizbiz. com/izmir/izmir-li-kadinlar-bizim-sizin-yasalariniza-kurban-edecegimizcocugumuz-yok-h16588.html. Hirschman, Albert O. 1970. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Jacquemart, Alban. 2013. “Engagement militant.” In Dictionnaire. Genre et science politique, edited by Catherine Achin and Laure Bereni, 215–26. Références. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po (P.F.N.S.P.). Kandiyoti, Deniz. 1988. “Bargaining with Patriarchy.” Gender and Society 2 (3): 274–90. Kışanak, Gültan. 2018. Kürt Siyasetinin Mor Rengi. Istanbul: Dipnot Yayınları. Kışanak, Gültan, Nadje Al-Ali, and Latif Taş. 2016. “Kurdish Women’s Battle Continues against State and Patriarchy, Says First Female Co-Mayor of Diyarbakir. Interview.” Open Democracy, August 12. https://www.opendemocracy.net/nadje-al-ali-latif-tas-g-ltan-ki-anak/ kurdish-women-s-battle-continues-against-state-and-patriarchy-. Lefebvre, Rémi. 2010. “Se conformer à son rôle. Les ressorts de l’intériorisation institutionnelle.” In Sociologie de l’institution, edited by Jacques Lagroye and Michel Offerlé, 219–47. Sociologiquement. Paris: Belin. MacKinnon, Catharine A. 2017. Butterfly Politics. Boston: Harvard University Press. McNay, Lois. 2008. Against Recognition. Cambridge: Polity. Öcalan, Abdullah. 2005. Sosyal Devrim ve Yeni Yaşam. Istanbul: Çetin. Orhan, Mehmet. 2015. Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires. London and New York: Routledge. Özcan, Ali Kemal. 2010. Turkey’s Kurds: A Theoretical Analysis of the PKK and Abdullah Öcalan. London: Routledge. Özkazanç, Alev. 2013. “Butler’in Feminizmi: Siyasi Bir Okuma Için Kılavuz.” Mülkiye Dergisi 37 (4): 118–38. Şahin-Mencütek, Zeynep. 2016. “Strong in the Movement, Strong in the Party: Women’s Representation in the Kurdish Party of Turkey.” Political Studies 64 (2): 470–87. Sineau, Mariette. 1988. Des Femmes en politique. Paris: Economica. Sumbas, Ahu, and Berrin Koyuncu. 2016. “Discussing Women’s Representation in Local Politics in Turkey: The Case of Female Mayorship.” Women’s Studies International Forum (58): 41–50. Tahaoğlu, Çiçek. 2016. “Boşanma Komisyonu Raporunda Neler Var?” Bianet, May 17. https://www.bianet.org/bianet/toplumsal-cinsiyet/174880-bosanmakomisyonu-raporunda-neler-var.

240  L. G. DRECHSELOVÁ Takhar, Shaminder. 2013. Gender, Ethnicity and Political Agency: South Asian Women Organizing. New York: Routledge. Tamer, Meral. 2012. “CHP’de 1. Devrim: % 33’lük Cinsiyet Kotası Kabul Edildi.” Milliyet, February 24. http://www.milliyet.com.tr/chp-de-1devrim-33-luk-cinsiyet-kotasi-kabul-edildi/ekonomi/ekonomiyazardetay/24.02.2012/1507137/default.htm. Tarrow, Sidney. 2011. Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi. org/10.1017/CBO9780511973529. Tepe, Sultan. 2005. “Turkey’s AKP: A Model ‘Muslim-Democratic’ Party?” Journal of Democracy 16 (3): 69–82. https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2005.0053. Tilly, Charles. 2008. Contentious Performances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tokdoğan, Nagehan. 2013. “Kürt Kadınların Sesi: Bir Karşıt Kamusallık Pratiği Olarak Hêviya Jinê Dergisi.” Fe Dergi : Feminist Eleştiri 5 (2): 38–52. ———. 2015. “‘Biraz Da Feminist Olmak Lazım’ MHP ve Ülkü Ocaklarında Kadınlık Halleri.” In İradenin İyimserliği, 2000’lerde Türkiye’de Kadınlar, edited by Aksu Bora. 1st ed., 265–310. Istanbul: Ayizi Kitap. http:// www.iletisim.com.tr/kitap/milliyetcilik-ve-toplumsal-cinsiyet/9208#. Wiz5pDeDPIU. Young, Lisa. 2000. Feminists and Party Politics. Vancouver: UBC Press.

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion: Women’s Representation and the Cycles of Exclusion from Local Politics

This book addressed the issue of women’s underrepresentation in local politics in contemporary Turkey. By focusing on Turkey, a country with no legally mandated quota, it contributed to the Gender and Politics scholarship, which tends to primarily focus on the “quota countries.” The locally anchored perspective showed that nationwide lenses do not reveal the full extent of women’s political exclusion since some of its modalities are only apparent at the local level. The party-specific approach then made sense of the great interparty as well as intraparty variability. The main conclusion of the book is that, by a variety of mechanisms, women are held within Cycles of Exclusion. These cycles run throughout their careers and extend beyond the patriarchal social order to the political realm. Women’s exclusion starts well before the candidate selection process and doesn’t stop when they become elected politicians. This book followed local female politicians through the recruitment of candidates, the political strategies women deploy and the difficulties they encounter. These elements are intrinsically interconnected: candidates who come out of the intraparty selection process are often favored for characteristics which then greatly impact how they exercise their mandate. Women are either selected for their loyalty, as a consequence of which their dependence on a mentor limits their repertories of action, or they are included because they tick multiple boxes—youth, gender, ethnic, and religious minority status. This can also complicate their mandate © The Author(s) 2020 L. G. Drechselová, Local Power and Female Political Pathways in Turkey, Gender and Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47143-9_7

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since these markers often characterize women with less political experience and a weaker position in the intraparty networks. The social and political order makes women’s access to politics more limited on the local level than in parliament due to their proximity to the conservative electorate and greater day-to-day policing of women’s behavior. Political parties readily use the “sensibilities of the electorate” and images of “legitimate femininity” to limit the career prospects of their female members. Concrete mechanisms of women’s exclusion depend on each party’s ethos as well as the strength of its local party organization. Notwithstanding these exclusionary mechanisms, women’s political pathways are marked by ambition, determination, and individual as well as collective agency, which so far have been relatively little known in the Turkish context. The great variety of career paths of local female politicians not only reveal the difficulties they are confronted with but also their strategies of action and their capacity to craft their political destinies.

7.1  Gendering Political Science and Restoring Interest in Women’s Descriptive Representation This book introduces the gendered perspective to political science approaches that often pretend to be “gender neutral.” It sees political parties as gendered institutions and uncovers the gender-specific exclusionary mechanisms within them. It also restores conceptual interest in descriptive—numerical—representation, often put aside since studies tend to prioritize women’s substantive representation. As I have attempted to show, uncovering who the elected women are, what difficulties they encounter and what strategies they adopt enhances our understanding of the local political field in general, as well as from a gendered perspective. The widened apprehension of descriptive representation in this book thus includes the social attributes of politically active women, their processes of politicization, their entry points into politics, and their role-learning mechanisms. This doesn’t presume any automatic relationship between the number of women on municipal councils and policy outcomes but prepares the ground for a joint reading of both. Rather than discarding the substantive representation lens, the book shows that the descriptive perspective is often a precondition for a better understanding of gender-unequal policy outcomes.

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Accounting for the unreliability and chronic lack of statistics in Turkey, especially at the municipal level, this book compiled the most recent accessible data to provide some quantitative indicators of women’s local political exclusion. It became clear that the “Turkish paradox”—women’s more limited representation in local politics than in Parliament—still applies as the proportion of women on municipal councils has reached a maximum of 10.72% in 2014, whereas women have accounted for 17.7% of Parliamentarians since 2018. However, the “Turkish paradox” doesn’t apply to all municipalities. The biggest municipalities display a proportion of women comparable to or higher than that in Parliament (such as Izmir and Diyarbakır, respectively). Important variations in women’s representation also transpire through different types of local mandate. For instance, it is almost a rule that central districts of metropolitan municipalities have more female councilors than the metropolitan council itself. This is due to the rules dictating the composition of the metropolitan council—there is no direct election, but its members are coopted from district councils based on their position on the candidate list and the number of seats their party won. Women tend to be included toward the bottom of the candidate list: while this is enough for them to make it onto the district council, it doesn’t suffice to allow them to enter the metropolitan council. In contrast, the comparison between metropolitan and district mayors reveals a different situation: women are proportionally better represented as heads of metropolitan municipalities (the most prestigious mandates of the local administration) than they are in the regular municipalities. This was true in 2014 and was confirmed by the 2019 local electoral results. Since the responsibilities of metropolitan municipalities have significantly increased, the metropolitan mayor’s office has become at least as influential and prestigious as a parliamentary seat. Women who head these municipalities come from locally established influential families and almost all of them used to be Members of Parliament—they are thus “descending” from national politics to the local level. This observation opens avenues for future research: How can we understand women’s presence at the metropolitan level in the light of the reforms of local administration which led to a restructuring of local hierarchies? Does women’s inclusion in metropolitan mayoral offices obey a similar logic to their inclusion in Parliament? I argue, in line with the overall thesis of this book, that the answer to these questions can be found at the intersection of each local configuration and the relevant political party.

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7.2  Who Succeeds in Turkish Local Politics? Throughout Turkey’s Republican history, several periods of women’s inclusion appear to have had a symbolic function. Granting women’s political rights in the 1930s, well before many European countries, marked the regime’s willingness to appear progressive and to display its democratic aspirations even in the context of a single-party state. Women’s diminished parliamentary representation in 1946, after the country’s passage to a multiparty system, indicated that women had lost their function as markers of the regime’s progressive character. The competitive party environment was there to play the role. Similarly, the first female minister was nominated by an interim government following a military coup in 1971 and women’s parliamentary representation increased slightly in the first elections after the 1980 military coup. The creation of a women’s directorate within the state bureaucracy can also be read as a low-cost way of reiterating the democratic aspirations of the post-military coup regime. These examples all point to the symbolic role of women in politics, who are instrumentalized by decision-makers for strategic reasons. This perspective is valid but occults women’s political ambitions and agency, which was one of the primary focuses of this book. In terms of their social attributes (education, socioeconomic standing, and profession), the majority of local representatives and elected female councilors are members of the local elite. Their profiles do not revolutionize the social structure of municipal councils. Based on the few existing studies on male municipal councilors, it is possible to hypothesize that their female colleagues surpass them, especially in terms of educational levels. Simultaneously, local female politicians surpass the educational, economic and professional levels of the majority of women in Turkey. However, their absence from the political backstage and local networks of influence signals their marginal position within the local elite when it comes to politics. The majority of interviewed local female politicians have such similar profiles that it is possible to advance the existence of a “dominant female profile” in local politics. This observation applies to three of the four studied parties: the AKP, the CHP, and the MHP. The idealtypical municipal councilor is a married mother of two children, around 40 years of age, who is a university graduate, economically well-off, and professionally active. The professions best represented are the law,

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accountancy, and architecture, which all offer well-paying liberal jobs allowing for independent time-management. The perception of the municipal mandate as a technical task necessitating expertise still prevails. Women’s presumed lack of expertise in municipal policies used to serve as one of the main justifications for women’s exclusion from local politics. Since Ayten Alkan’s seminal article (2009), it has become clear that women have managed to adapt to the technical requirements of municipal jobs, and that majority of them have jobs that correspond to municipal domains of action. Even within this ideal-typical category, several elements help to differentiate among female politicians. In the first place, politically active women come from different family backgrounds. While half of my interviewees come from politically aware and active families, the other half come from disinterested families and have thus experienced ulterior socialization into politics. This underlines the importance of secondary and later socialization in the political trajectories of female local politicians. Secondly, women’s family background appears to be correlated with their party affiliation. Women in the CHP are most likely to have parents employed in the military or the bureaucracy or, more specifically, who are teachers. Underlining their ancestors’ proximity to Mustafa Kemal’s modernizing efforts, the CHP women can be considered to belong to an old Republican elite. They are also most likely to have served in a public office prior to their political involvement. However, other CHP local politicians are women with modest worker backgrounds who have risen in society due to their education. Both of these categories are relatively absent in the AKP and the MHP. In the latter, more women are from local business circles. Within the AKP, most of the councilors and local party representatives belong to the newly established entrepreneurial middle class. In contrast, the pro-Kurdish political parties are more likely to open local politics up to women with “atypical profiles.” We also find some women with “atypical profiles” in the CHP, especially when it comes to former members of the revolutionary left belonging to the 1968 or 1978 political generations. They are a small minority in the CHP, whereas they constitute a majority within the pro-Kurdish political parties. Most pro-Kurdish female politicians come from the southeast region, which is marked by underdevelopment and a population that is, on average, less economically well-off and characterized by lower levels of education. With their modest origins and lower likelihood of being

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university graduates, women in Kurdish politics can be seen as closer to the average woman than their counterparts in other political parties. However, their profiles have evolved over time. Distance learning has become a real phenomenon and most of my interviewees finished high school or university, or were in the course of completing their education by distance learning during their time in office. Simultaneously, they were more likely to be professionally active (albeit not during the exercise of their mandate) than the rest of the population. Sociologists, journalists, human rights activists, and lawyers were the most represented among the p ­ ro-Kurdish female councilors. The proportion of feminists was also much higher than in other parties. The overrepresentation of women with “unconventional profiles” in pro-Kurdish parties is due not only to the “supply” of these female candidates—which is related to the overall social structure in the southeast region—but also to the “demand” from party recruiters (Lovenduski 2016). In the pro-Kurdish political parties, uniquely, women select female candidates. They tend to privilege candidates coming from politically active families who have paid the bedel (price) of their involvement, losing relatives in state prisons or in the armed struggle. In parallel, most of these women also have their own experience with state repression. Their family heritage of bedel not only contributes to their politicization but also increases their chances of becoming successful electoral candidates. The analysis of women’s profiles paved the way to novel applications of two concepts widely used in the gender studies and social movements literature. The first is intersectionality. Most often, intersectionality describes the articulation of different systems of oppression as stemming from women’s identity markers; it demonstrates the multidimensional character of women’s discrimination (Jaunait and Chauvin 2015). In this book, I mobilized intersectionality in two complementary ways. First, I used it to describe the elite status of the majority of female local politicians, positioned at the intersection of privileges from the educational, professional, social, and economic points of view. Then, I employed this concept to grasp the paradoxical situation of women within the pro-Kurdish parties where the less privileged a woman’s profile is (for example, if she belongs to a religious and ethnic minority, has modest origins, or lacks a university diploma), the higher her chances of being included on the party’s candidate list. Thus, within the pro-Kurdish parties the intersection of several discriminating attributes results in political inclusion rather than exclusion.

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The second concept that has been reconsidered based on the Turkish case is that of “biographical availability,” which is widely used in the social movements literature (McAdam 1986) to mark periods of time in individuals’ lives that are conducive to activism. The research of Serpil Çakır and others focusing on female Parliamentarians in Turkey has shown that women tend to become deputies when their children grow up (2014). In local politics, however, I met women with very young children and they either presided over women’s branches or held a seat on the municipal council. This may be related to differences in the age groups represented in each type of office—women over thirty but under forty are more likely to find their place on a municipal council rather than in Parliament. The intensity of local political involvement can also play a role (notwithstanding the women’s economic capacity to secure childcare): in local politics, women travel outside of the province less frequently and their political work is rather concentrated around the week of the council’s deliberation. This means that young children do not necessarily represent an obstacle to those seeking municipal office. Thus, it is possible to hypothesize that biographical availability plays out differently for women in national and local politics. Simultaneously, the biographical pathways of numerous female politicians invite an inverted reading of biographical availability: women use their political involvement to make themselves “biographically unavailable” for marriage and child-rearing, which would otherwise represent an obligatory phase in a woman’s life. While women from the AKP preach the importance of having at least three children, they themselves rarely do, and they justify this by asserting that the demanding character of their political involvement necessitates “sacrifices” in the personal realm. In the pro-Kurdish political parties, the discourse equating women’s role with motherhood is less pronounced, but female politicians are more likely to be single and childless than their CHP and MHP counterparts. In the conservative social environment in which they conduct their activities, political involvement creates an exceptional situation for them personally, allowing them to avoid getting married and having children at least until their late thirties, and at the same time to benefit from a larger margin of action in the public space. The political pathways of most of my interviewees revealed that stereotypes about their political inexperience are nowadays largely unfounded. Proximity to an influential (male) party member often played a determining role in their careers, but female candidates were still recruited from

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among women with previous intraparty political experience. In the AKP, women overwhelmingly experienced at least one lost congress before the head of their faction got to the local leadership position.1 The loss was their inaugural political experience and gave them time to become active within the party in preparation for the upcoming contest. The majority of female local politicians thus have political capital. But the structure of this capital doesn’t allow them to access the most prestigious offices, such as those of mayor or deputy. The royal road for these mandates leads through the posts which women seldom occupy—those of president of the district and president of the provincial party unit. In this sense, women’s careers within political parties already make their prospects for the most influential electoral offices bleak. Women who apply for the mayoral seat have higher chances if they have some exceptional qualities or characteristics, such as being the first woman in a profession or with a particular representative function (such as the mayor of Konak in Izmir, who was the first female president of the local bar association). Besides women with excellent profiles, women with considerable economic means and high vote potential are favored by the parties. Gendered inequalities within the social order diminish the number of women in such positions: there are, indeed, fewer female industrialists, real estate investors, or well-known figures such as heads of local hospitals. Femininity in politics appears to be an “unsurpassable” characteristic (Dulong and Matonti 2005). Female politicians are constantly reminded of their gender by the electorate as well as by their party colleagues. However, gender doesn’t always represent a stigma. Several of my interviewees were able to mobilize their womanhood as an asset, but even in their cases gendered capital remained contingent (Dulong and Lévêque 2002). In the AKP, where the logic of women’s inclusion is tokenistic, only one woman—most often the head of the local women’s branch— has a good chance of being elected to office. She then represents the category of women and paradoxically diminishes the electoral prospects of other women. Within the CHP, the quota on female candidates contributes to directly putting women in competition with each other— even more so in a context where most recruiters are men. However, among CHP women several managed to build an image as “champions of women’s rights,” focusing their discourse and activities specifically on women and the problem of inequalities. The contingency of gender as a political resource appears most openly in their case: on the one hand,

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by their strategy these women monopolize the title of “women’s rights promoter” to the extent that it becomes their brand; on the other, the exclusivity of this title together with the second-order importance of gender equality for decision-makers undermines their position within the party structure. The failure of some of these women to be reelected in 2019 confirms this trend. Only in the MHP was I unable to identify any instances of gender belonging being transformed into political capital. Rather than less objectification of women, this situation reveals yet another level of closure of this political party to women. In the pro-Kurdish political parties, womanhood plays out differently due to the parties’ unique process of candidate selection. According to the “women select women” rule, the party’s women’s assembly has a major say in who the female candidates are. Since the party also has a 40% female quota, being a woman doesn’t directly lead to a discriminating experience in the candidate selection process. The fact that women select female candidates also causes different aspects of the candidate’s trajectory to be valorized, such as experience with women’s rights advocacy and individual and family experience with state repression. The case of the pro-Kurdish parties shows that opening up a space for women transforms both the logic of candidate selection and the profile of women who get elected. Within the parties, there is a plurality of routes leading to women’s election: some women pursue their intraparty career within the main party unit, ana kademe (be it in local units or national party headquarters); others accept duties within the women’s branches; and a third group does both. Within the CHP, elected women mostly occupied the intraparty functions within the main party unit. This can be explained by the marginalization of women’s branches. Simultaneously, the confinement of women to women’s branches within the AKP explains why most AKP candidates are recruited from them. For the most prestigious local electoral office—metropolitan mayorship—most women follow a “descendant” career, first holding the office of a deputy then becoming mayor. This is the case across all political parties: Gültan Kışanak was an MP and a party leader before becoming metropolitan co-mayor of Diyarbakır; Özlem Çerçioğlu resigned from her position as an MP to become CHP’s metropolitan mayor of Aydın; and Fatma Şahin from the AKP was not only an MP but also a minister prior to becoming metropolitan mayor of Gaziantep. In the pro-Kurdish political parties, female politicians circulate between different representative positions in

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much less linear ways. It is not unusual for a head of department in the municipal bureaucracy to become a parliamentary candidate, neither is it uncommon for a former deputy to chair a women’s organization. Alongside the “descendant” careers of women moving into local politics from the national level, linear “ascendant” careers are rare. Few women have become municipal councilors or local party representatives from a position of being “ordinary party members.” This phenomenon, that I call a “broken party ladder,” is especially visible within the AKP due to the size of the party’s women’s branches, which assemble ordinary female members. For the majority of them, the highest possible role in the party is that of a neighborhood representative (mahalle temsilcisi). Among the interviewed municipal councilors, nobody used to be a neighborhood representative. This points toward a gap between elected female politicians and ordinary female members. This gap plays out on two levels: in terms of profiles, elected women have a higher economic standing, a superior educational background, and a more elevated professional status while the neighborhood representatives are recruited from among housewives and stay-at-home mothers anchored within their immediate neighborhoods with limited mobility and less educational and professional capital. These two groups also have different entry points into the party. While the future municipal councilors are invited into the party and immediately join the local party directorate or the women’s branch directorate, neighborhood representatives start out and remain as ordinary party members, recruited during the party’s door-to-door campaign or actively obtaining their own membership cards. Even though the trajectories of women within the DBP appear more “grassroots” than in other parties and women within the CHP mainly got involved without an invitation, the overall trend is that of preselection of female local politicians. This preselection happens at the moment of women’s entry into the political party and demonstrates that women are positioned differently from the outset, which also shapes their chances for political advancement. The local political field in Turkey has seen a multiplication of spaces for women’s involvement. There are more and more women gravitating toward municipal politics without being directly involved in any political party—Women’s Assemblies (Kadın Meclisleri) within the NGO-staffed City Councils (Kent Konseyleri) exemplify this trend. Most members of women’s assemblies are simultaneously presidents of local women’s associations. If some of them may end up being solicited by political parties,

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this pattern of inclusion remains marginal and doesn’t point toward a new entry point for women into local politics. The position of women muhtars—elected neighborhood representatives positioned between bureaucrats and people’s representatives—can be more conducive to future political involvement. I met several muhtars with political ambitions and one former muhtar who entered the municipal council. From the point of view of party recruiters, the non-political neighborhood elected office of muhtar increases the person’s potential to garner votes, especially in larger neighborhoods. While some authors see the office of muhtar as an antechamber to local electoral politics (Yildirim 2015; Yildirim et al. 2018), this remains to be scrutinized in the light of a future increase in women’s representation among the elected muhtars. Besides these general trends, it is possible to hypothesize a strengthening of the associational recruitment pool specifically for the AKP. This is related to the rise of KADEM (the Woman and Democracy Association), which is linked to the family of the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. KADEM has been successful in recruiting female former local politicians and it is possible to imagine that it will start sending its “home-grown” candidates to municipal offices in the future. KADEM and other associations close to the governing AKP thus have the potential to rival the party’s women’s branch in female political recruitment. The pathways of my interviewees demonstrated that women contributed greatly to their political ascension. The experiences of Dilruba, Fidan, Ezgi, Beyza, and many others show that women manage to organize their political careers despite numerous limitations inherent to their parties. They are far from being mere objects of intraparty bargaining. Existing research sometimes considers political women as proxies of the men in their families (Tawa Lama-Rewal and Ghosh 2005). In the Turkish context, I considered it more relevant to approach the issue by making sense of “multiple family involvements” rather than simply seeing women as proxies. The MHP provided many examples of multiple family involvements, since several members of the same family were often involved in politics at the same time. One of the signs that these women were not simple proxies of men was the intrafamily splits in the controversies over party leadership. We could find within the same family supporters of the current party leader as well as supporters of his challengers. Women were able to support different personalities than other politically active family members.

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While prior research on Turkey considered women in municipal politics as less educated housewives or proxies of male relatives, my analysis of the profiles of 200 female local politicians revealed that most of the current municipal councilors and female party representatives belong to a local elite with a profile comparable to that of deputies. Moreover, addressing the specific issue of technical expertise as one of the aspects limiting women’s access to the municipal field, elected female politicians have professional careers matching municipal domains of action, such as architecture, accountancy, engineering and law. Most often they also get a seat on a municipal commission corresponding to their expertise. However, their electoral success is not only a function of their selective profile but also of a strategy of the intraparty recruiters, most of whom are men.

7.3  Gatekeepers: The Key Role of Political Parties Women’s inclusion in local electoral politics in Turkey occurs overwhelmingly through political parties. This confirms the primary importance of parties, which effectively control the access points to electoral offices in Turkey’s political life. Political parties feature different approaches to women’s rights in their statutes and employ a variety of measures to promote women’s political representation. The panorama ranges from no identifiable measures within the MHP, passing through informal guidelines within the AKP to a quota in the CHP and parity and co-chairing within the pro-Kurdish parties (DBP and HDP). Levels of women’s local descriptive representation within the parties match almost perfectly the presence or absence of positive action measures, with the MHP displaying the lowest level of women’s representation and the DBP the highest. However, the assessment gets more complicated when the AKP and CHP are compared at the local and parliamentary levels. In Izmir’s metropolitan municipal council, the AKP closed the gender representation gap with the CHP between the 2014 and 2019 local elections. After the 2018 legislative election, the AKP sent proportionally more women into Parliament than the CHP. Historically, the mass rightwing parties often elected similar percentages of women to the centerleft CHP and the most recent statistics confirm the relevance of this trend even today. In light of the statistical data presented throughout this book, what sense can we make of the oft-repeated claim that the AKP opened the

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doors of politics to women? The distribution of seats in the post-2014 municipal councils in Trabzon is telling in this regard because the AKP won the overwhelming majority of the seats. In 10 out of 18 Trabzon’s districts, there was no woman on the council. In the remaining districts, the number of elected women depended mainly on the size of the AKP’s majority, women having often been elected from the bottom of the candidate lists. The only exception was the central district of Trabzon where women’s representation reached Turkey’s average of 10% and where the AKP elected five female councilors. In passing, we can note the widespread failure to respect the party’s internal guidelines, which stipulate that one-third of candidates should be women and that there should be a female candidate among the first three on the list. In explaining women’s political representation, the party criterion prevails over the characteristics of the local configuration. Diyarbakır displays the highest women’s presence in the municipal council because most of the councilors are from a pro-Kurdish political party. The reverse is true for Trabzon. However, as I have strived to demonstrate, the local political field isn’t just a “stage” for party politics; it shapes parties’ adaptation strategies in each city. For example, in Trabzon, where the possibilities for conducting left-wing politics are significantly restricted, the CHP is further to the left than in Izmir, where the party is the dominant political force. This is because women with revolutionary left backgrounds, who mostly entered the HDP in Izmir, are active in the CHP in Trabzon, helping to pull the party more toward the left. This shows that by virtue of the different political pathways of its members, the CHP in Izmir is a different party from the CHP in Trabzon. In addition, political actors do not hesitate to use attributes of the local configuration to their advantage. For instance, the AKP recruiters in Trabzon explain the lack of female councilors by citing the conservative sensibilities of the electorate. They presume that more women on the list would alienate the electorate. Such excuses actually confirm the primacy of party policies for women’s inclusion because the DBP has to deal with an electorate in Diyarbakır at least as conservative as that the AKP has to face in Trabzon, and still the DBP elects female councilors in high numbers. The conservative electorate votes for the party because it belongs to the Kurdish movement, in spite of the (for some voters disturbingly) high women’s presence. It is possible to suppose that if the AKP made the same choice as the DBP, women’s inclusion would not deter its voters, regardless of what the party recruiters say.

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However, with its capacity to present women in conservative areas together with its specific features (women selecting women candidates, co-chairing and the 40% female quota), the pro-Kurdish party distorts the picture of women’s representation in Turkey. If the DBP were taken out of the equation, local characteristics would gain importance in explaining levels of women’s inclusion. Leaving out the contribution of the DBP, women would be, on average, better represented in local councils in Western rather than Eastern Turkey, and women in bigger cities would be better represented on local councils than women in smaller constituencies. Based on this observation, we can draw several conclusions. First, the size of the “candidate pool” matters for women’s representation. In cities, such as Izmir, with higher proportions of women with university diplomas and active in professional life, the number of female councilors is higher than in places with lower proportions of women with such characteristics, such as Trabzon. The status of women in a given locality—the size of the candidate pool—plays an especially important role in the absence of explicit party support for female candidates, so that identical identity traits of female politicians have different significance based on the locality. A female lawyer is much more of a rarity in Trabzon than in Izmir, and has a better chance of being included on the party list. In addition, being a member of the CHP plays out differently in Izmir and in Trabzon: in Izmir, where the CHP dominates, it is a precondition for election, while in Trabzon it is more of a stigma, which not only diminishes a woman’s electoral prospects but can also complicate her professional career. Second, the parties seem to present only as many women as they “have to” in a given locality, playing with the conservative sensibilities of the electorate where possible, which benefits women in cities with a progressive reputation but strengthens their exclusion in inner Anatolia. Third, less-represented parties are influenced by the locally dominant political party—we can speak of a certain contagion effect (Matland and Studlar 1996). In this sense, the DBP’s inclusion of women has an impact on the AKP’s inclusion of women in the conservative southeast region (Şahin-Mencütek 2016, 476). The contagion effect also partly explains why the AKP and the CHP include similar proportions of women on their lists in Izmir. The local adaptations of parties also take the form of specific activities led by women in the given locality—for example, the AKP in Izmir focuses on demonstrating its ­non-reactionary

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character to voters. Finally, the characteristics of each local configuration have an impact on women’s political action. Especially in Trabzon, my interviewees shared a myriad of personal strategies to avoid rumors and doubts about their chastity. In contrast, the political involvement of women within the DBP enlarged their margin of action in the public space, because there was greater family tolerance of their late-night mobilizing activities in mixed groups. In Izmir, such considerations were largely absent from my interviewee’s accounts. The candidate selection process is mostly controlled by men and results in the “omission” of women (Robinson 1995). The lack of respect for the parties’ own measures to encourage the selection of female candidates can be puzzling as Turkish political parties are known for being hierarchical and authoritarian structures. Party headquarters have many instruments at their disposal to enforce intraparty rules in local units. Nevertheless, the parties systematically fail to enforce rules pertaining to women’s representation. My analysis of candidate recruitment suggested that this can be explained by the non-centrality of women’s inclusion in the eyes of most party recruiters. It is because women’s inclusion is of second-order importance that party headquarters do not intervene and positive action measures often remain purely theoretical. In addition, the institutional mechanisms that women could use to protest against contraventions of intraparty rules are either non-existent or extremely hard to put into effect. The lack of institutionalized rules is detrimental to women, who are often the victims of last-minute evictions from the lists. While the local party organization excludes female candidates, the party headquarters in Ankara corrects the lists only occasionally. Women with links to Ankara play on their networks to reverse their exclusion from the lists, sometimes securing a last-minute inclusion. What all these interventions have in common is their informal and arbitrary character. If the candidate list constitution remains defined by these principles, women’s descriptive representation is likely to remain sporadic or, at best, volatile in future ballots. The modalities of the candidate selection process reveal—beyond the gendered perspective—how political parties in Turkey operate. Many instances of women’s inclusion and exclusion are in fact illustrative of bargains struck between different factions within the parties. Local party leaders claim to know their local electorate’s affinities, increasing Ankara’s sense of information gap vis-à-vis the local configuration. Each time concern is voiced over the lack of female candidates, the local party

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representatives insist that all the male names need to be on the list otherwise the party’s electoral fortunes would suffer. Thus, local party players exercise much greater control over candidate selection than might be expected from the autocratic and hierarchical party structures.

7.4  Constraints on Women’s Collective Action Women’s position within each political party has a tremendous impact on their capacity to organize and to collectively demand institutional change which could improve women’s electoral prospects. Most women’s initiatives aim to strengthen the place of women’s branches in the party statutes or increase the gender quota. But everything within the parties is organized to dissuade collective action that might transform the intraparty order. For this reason, women’s mobilization is compromised and individual strategies of political advancement prevail. Even formulating an individual strategy is not without its difficulties, since women have to deal with the image of “legitimate femininity” and quickly learn what constitutes acceptable behavior in politics. Women’s role-learning within political parties is closely linked to the dominant party ethos, which defines “legitimate femininity” and constrains women’s initiatives, both on an individual and on a collective level. The image of “legitimate femininity” is built through primary and secondary socialization and is anchored in the current social order. It outgrows the social order and has a decisive impact within the political field. I argue that women who “play by the rules” are not passive objects but can be seen as inventive actors who dissimulate their political ambitions. However, conformity to “legitimate feminine” behavior doesn’t only impact female politicians; through their actions and public appearances it is reflected back to society. In this way, female politicians often contribute to the maintenance of the conservative norms which weigh on all women. If women across parties display major discursive and behavioral differences, their actions are most likely to be in line with their party’s ethos. Within the AKP, the intraparty ethos venerates the selfsacrifice (fedakârlık) of women, who thus need to project a selfless image without apparent political ambition. Promoting such femininity, party recruiters do not hesitate—in the same breath—to justify low numbers of female politicians by pointing to the lack of female candidates who put themselves forward. Displaying ambition also plays against

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women within the MHP. Candidates openly asking for office are either placed in n ­ on-eligible positions or excluded from the race altogether, only to be replaced by those who are willing to represent women from a non-eligible position. The party ethos within the AKP and the MHP shares many features of the conservative image of femininity. As part of their strategies of individual advancement, women embrace the party discourse to avoid triggering intraparty opposition and to expand their action radius. Ostentatious displays of agreement with party leaders, national as well as local, can translate into greater autonomy for the heads of women’s branches, who become trusted because they are unlikely challengers and closely follow the leader’s political line. While such strategies can be seen as forms of negotiation with the party ethos, they are mainly accommodating practices. The dominant party ethos makes subversion very costly and places open expression of critique outside the “horizon of possibilities” within the right-wing parties (Avanza 2009). Women’s careers depend on their mentors and this imperative of loyalty to the mentor impedes their independent action. It is not insignificant that the AKP and the MHP are also the two parties in which the male local party leaders exercise the greatest control over the selection of the president of the local women’s branch. The concentration of municipal decision-making power in the hands of the mayor further strengthens (not only for women) the principle of loyalty within local politics. In the council, a united vote is a norm and even the party meetings prior to the council seem to be void of discussion. All important matters are decided by the mayor, which makes him the sole arbiter and locus of lobbying activities by the councilors. Proximity to the mayor becomes decisive in pushing for any agenda in the council and reinforces the loyal behavior of female councilors. In the CHP too, the party ethos and women’s position within the party are interconnected. With its 33% quota on the less-represented gender, competitive congresses of the women’s branches and highly educated and experienced female members, the CHP offers a different environment for action than the conservative right-wing parties. Even though women are still most likely to work on their own career advancement individually, they do so in a context where democratic debate, political competition and intraparty critique are possible and, to some extent, cherished. However, collective action is rare and when it occurs the chances of success are limited. Demands to increase the women’s quota to parity level have systematically failed for a myriad of

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reasons. One of the most efficient neutralizers of women’s attempts at institutional reform is their support of the party above all else. As the CHP has been in opposition for many years, women are expected to put up with any troubles so as not to weaken their party even more. This takes away any leverage for their reform demands since the party ­decision-makers know that their refusal to listen to women’s demands will have no consequences. The individual agendas of highly positioned female CHP representatives also act as impediments to party reform. The heads of women’s branches were systematically accused of compromising intraparty reform to improve their own electoral prospects. However, this strategy did not bear fruit because under the leadership of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the chances of the heads of women’s branches to get an electoral mandate are lower than ever. The fact that female CHP deputies haven’t issued a united call for gender parity has undermined the institutional reform initiatives led by the hierarchically inferior women’s branch. The rather decentralized character of the women’s branches plays out positively in the congresses as each branch elects its leadership without hierarchical intervention, but it complicates the coordination of collective action. The women’s branches were unable to secure women’s participation in the local working groups drafting the suggestions for the whole-party congress. As a result, their demands for parity remained sporadic and the party headquarters could disregard them with greater ease. Finally, women’s efforts to increase the quota in the CHP appear to be effectively blocked by the leadership’s lack of willingness to introduce the reform. In 2012, when the quota was increased from 25 to 33% it was mainly due to the agenda of the CHP’s presidency. It seems that organized women’s action has hit a wall and will not be viable until it suits the party leaders to support it once more. Within the HDP and DBP, a very different set of rules shapes women’s collective action. Strong intraparty women’s assemblies and generally respected positive action measures open up a space for the political involvement of women in large numbers, which, in turn, is conducive to women’s initiatives. However, numbers are not sufficient to instigate collective action—if they were, the political environment within the AKP would be particularly suitable for women’s organized action given its 4.5 million female members. What fuels attempts at intraparty change within the pro-Kurdish parties in opposition to the AKP are the distinctive organizing patterns of women’s assemblies and a shared understanding

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of gendered inequalities. A feminist perspective prevails in pro-Kurdish women’s discourse, which denounces patriarchy and systemic discrimination, while the AKP mostly reproduces the discourse of the complementarity of genders which facilitates women’s political exclusion. In these two contexts (the AKP and the pro-Kurdish parties), women provide a very different experience of mixed spaces for their male colleagues. In the AKP, women choose either to blend in, adopting the dominant male behavior, and are eventually accepted as exceptions to the rule, or they insist on their femininity, forcing the men to obey the traditional precepts of their masculinity by demanding respect in speech and posture. Neither of these strategies identified within the AKP shifts the dominant gendered norms within the party. In the pro-Kurdish political parties, the situation is different. Women are present at each level of the party hierarchy and in almost all of its municipal councils. They insist on equal speech time in meetings and openly criticize men’s sexist expressions and forms of behavior. While this surely seems subversive in comparison to the other political parties, it is in line with the pro-Kurdish party ethos, which integrates—at least discursively—principles of gender equality, and according to which the criticism of patriarchy is a norm and not an exception. The party ethos in the pro-Kurdish parties promotes collective action but does not guarantee its success. The ingredients of the successful female initiatives are women’s effective use of the party’s official ideology, their control over intraparty educational training and a multitude of publications. Thus, women not only secure a homogeneous interpretation of the party’s ideology but also ensure that their achievements are considered to be a characteristic feature of the pro-Kurdish parties. Initially facing intraparty opposition to many of their initiatives, including the co-chairing system, women registered a major victory when the co-chairing system was introduced in Turkish law in 2014. However, its variant, co-mayorship, remains illegal at the level of municipalities. Indeed, the road to these achievements was not always smooth. The fact that the HDP was a marginal political actor in Izmir while the DBP was the dominant actor in Diyarbakır also had a significant impact on the practical realization of women’s achievements.2 Izmir represents a case of regional learning of the Kurdish movement’s gendered norms. The HDP in Izmir presented two candidates for the office of the mayor in line with the co-mayorship system and respects the 40% female quota in composing its party directorates. However, the party’s limited presence

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and the subsequent weakness of the Kurdish women’s movement made it harder for women to ensure that the party principles were respected. In this context, the use of institutionalized mechanisms appears to have been one of the few remaining options in Izmir. A disagreement between co-chairs—which in Diyarbakır would likely have been solved by the intervention of organized party women—provoked an extraordinary party congress to elect new local leadership in Izmir. Among the current difficulties impeding women’s collective action is the criminalization of pro-Kurdish politicians in contemporary Turkey. This generates increased circulation of the party’s representatives (between different provinces but also between the public space and prison) and it makes it hard to sustain efforts to change sexist behavior. Institutionally, it prevents the party from engaging in a self-reflective process to improve the functioning of its positive action measures. The patriarchal structures within the party benefit from the state’s crackdown on Kurdish politicians as women’s assemblies are weakened and have to focus on priorities other than their established transformative agenda.

7.5  Women and Democracy: A Troubled Relationship Women’s representation is not automatically enhanced through “democratic measures,” nor does it automatically suffer in a non-transparent authoritarian context. Both of these assertions point toward a troubled relationship between women’s representation and democracy. The gendered patterns of the candidate selection process within the political parties illustrate this. For example, the primary elections organized within the CHP didn’t yield an increase in the number of female candidates. Even though primaries are presented as more democratic than a centralized designation of candidates, women—lacking economic resources and media coverage—were seldom among the successful candidates. The centralized interventions of the party headquarters ensured that some women were present on the candidate lists. But these were women from outside the city who happened to be close to the party leader and were not established local female politicians. However, political will could make the primaries, and thus the decentralization of candidate selection, more women-friendly. This could include making women and men compete on separate lists and then composing the final list by alternating male and female candidates from the gender-separate lists.

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The experience of the pro-Kurdish DBP points toward another counter-intuitive pattern: the highest levels of women’s political representation in Turkey’s politics are achieved through a centralized and non-transparent procedure. While the party put in place a major innovation—the “women choosing women” rule—the selection process takes place behind closed doors and is spearheaded by the small circle of leaders within the national women’s assembly. While local consultations are systematically organized and suggestions from constituency-based female activists are taken into consideration for the positions of municipal councilors, the co-mayor candidates are specially preselected by the women’s assembly. This corresponds to the strategy of the Kurdish women’s movement to nominate women with strong feminist stands, ideological expertise and political experience who may have a better chance of standing up to the potentially usurping male co-mayor. Until the solidification of the co-mayorship system and a clear division of tasks between the co-mayors is achieved, the women’s assembly is likely to monopolize the selection of female co-mayors. While it is widely asserted that women’s representation and gender parity in politics are key components of democratic regimes ­(Pantelidou-Malouta 2006), the link between them is far from straightforward. Women’s suffrage was legalized as part of the Kemalist regime’s attempts to assert its democratic and progressive character. However, with the passage to multiparty competition, women lost the status of democracy markers and their proportion in Parliament dropped for several decades. Since the democratic backsliding and generalization of authoritarian practices in Turkey from 2015 onwards, women’s political representation has been fluctuating. In local politics, several local statistics that I compiled for this book based on the 2019 ballot do not suggest any significant increase in women’s presence in municipal councils or in mayor’s seats. In national politics, the decrease in female representation was mainly due to the criminalization of pro-Kurdish political actors and the subsequent removal and incarceration of several Members of Parliament. In 2018, women occupied over 17% of parliamentary seats—a rise in comparison to the November 2015 election. While the HDP was able to maintain the highest proportional level of women’s representation (reflecting the party’s 40% quota), it was the governing AKP that was mainly responsible for the nominal increase of female deputies, proportionally surpassing the CHP for the first time.3 This increase

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in the proportion of female deputies within the AKP may correspond to a logic similar to that of the Kemalist regime in the 1930s—promoting women’s political representation as a means of signifying the democratic aspirations of the regime. The HDP Member of Parliament, Filiz Kerestecioğlu, sparked a debate when she noted that there was no woman among the trustees appointed by the Ministry of the Interior to replace the pro-Kurdish party mayors who had been dismissed (T24 2016). Her critics asserted that gender parity among the trustees would not change the authoritarian logic of the dismissal of elected representatives (Kızıldağ 2016). However, the technocrats replacing elected mayors are not only male but are also representatives of a patriarchal and paternalist logic of governance. Their nomination corresponds to what Deniz Kandiyoti termed “masculinist restauration” (Kandiyoti 2013) and it demonstrates the capacity of the patriarchal regime to deal with the feminization of pro-Kurdish politics. In line with the most recent developments in Turkey, future research on women in politics should incorporate several dimensions. First, it should take into account the shifts within the state hierarchy and the reinforcement of local administrations, as well as the central government’s attempts to exert more control over them. Ten years ago, Anne-Marie Goetz asserted, “local government will be the political ­ arena of women’s participation to watch over the next decade” (2009, 17); this is the case for the upcoming decade as well. Women holding the office of metropolitan mayor, rising numbers of female muhtars and stagnating proportions of female municipal councilors need to be assessed in line with the changing role of local administrative bodies in Turkey following the country’s transformation into a presidential regime since 2017. Second, and in parallel to this, Turkey will yield important observations in the field of study of “women in authoritarian regimes.” The most recent rise in the numbers of the AKP’s female MPs and the ongoing criminalization of the most feminized party (HDP) are both illustrative of the “complexity, reversibility and fragility” (Achin and Naudier 2013, 126) of the emancipation processes in Turkey. Local Power and Female Political Pathways in Turkey explained women’s underrepresentation in Turkey’s local politics by providing examples of the difficulties women encounter at each stage of their political careers. The distinction among political parties, as well as local configurations, demonstrated the richness of local realities and institutional party arrangements in contemporary Turkey. It further underlined the

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relevance of investigating the local implantation of political parties. The gendered assessment of political parties provided a more general understanding of the functioning of the party system and showed its relevance beyond the “Gender and Politics” literature. It demonstrated both the opportunities provided by systematically gendering political science and the added value of the feminist critique of neo-institutionalism. Through the notion of Cycles of Exclusion the book sought to show that gendered discrimination starts with gendered patterns of socialization. It runs through the candidate selection processes, which are not limited to the period prior to an election but operate at every stage of a woman’s political career. It then continues during female politicians’ time in office, when they learn their roles in line with the dominant party ethos, encouraging specific forms of women’s behavior and constraining other forms of political action. Finally, the book strived not only to provide a sense of the violence of the patriarchal order and systems of oppression that burden female politicians in Turkey but also to reveal women’s agency and capacity to craft their own political destinies. Women appeared as inventive negotiators within a highly constraining environment, sometimes conforming to the rules for individual advancement and sometimes pushing beyond the horizon of possibilities to achieve lasting change.

Notes 1. These were women who entered the AKP around 2009 and earlier, when the congresses were still a space of competition among several candidates. After that time, the party headquarters encouraged the congresses to only feature one candidate. 2. On the one hand, the past tense in this sentence is a reminder of the dismissal of elected mayors from the pro-Kurdish parties by the Ministry of the Interior (after both the 2014 and 2019 municipal elections); on the other hand, it signifies that in 2019, unlike in 2014, the HDP became the only party representing pro-Kurdish electoral politics in the whole country, including in the southeast region. 3.  It should be noted that since 2002, the CHP has had proportionally higher women’s representation in Parliament, but after three legislative elections the similarity of the proportions of female MPs from the CHP and AKP was striking: in 2007, 8.7% of AKP MPs and 8.9% of CHP MPs were women; in 2011, the respective figures were 14 and 14.1%; and in June 2015, 15% of the MPs elected in each party were female (Dokuz8Haber 2019).

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Index

A Accommodation (practices), 233, 257 Adaptation (strategies), 146, 206, 253 AKP. See Justice and Development Party Akşit, Güldal, 55, 209 Akyol, Februniye, 124, 160 Alevi, 58, 117, 125, 129, 155, 160, 164 Altıok, Zeynep, 117 Anter, Musa, 60 Association for the Support of Female Candidates, 11 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal, 41, 45, 47, 78, 144 Authoritarian structures/governance, 6, 28, 97, 105, 255 Aydın, Vedat, 21, 60, 69, 128 B Bahçeli, Devlet, 165, 166, 169 Başkent Kadın Platformu. See Platform of Women of the Capital Baydemir, Osman, 129, 227

Bedel, 153–155, 162, 175, 246 Biographical availability, 147, 214, 247 Biographical unavailability, 214 Boran, Behice, 50 Bostan Ünsal, Fatma, 211 Butterfly politics, 206, 216, 220 Büyükşehir belediyesi. See Metropolitan municipality C Candidate pool, 66, 103, 146, 254 Capital, political/economic/educational/of gender, 69, 70, 94, 96, 99, 133, 169, 170, 173, 176, 244, 248, 249 Centralization, 16, 120, 123, 126 Çerçioğlu, Özlem, 69, 128, 249 Child brides, 160 CHP. See Republican People’s Party Çiller, Tansu, 51 Co-chairing, 59, 61–63, 73, 119, 120, 125, 127, 165, 169, 223, 226, 227, 230–232, 252, 254, 259

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. G. Drechselová, Local Power and Female Political Pathways in Turkey, Gender and Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47143-9

267

268  Index Co-mayorship, 3, 6, 23, 61, 64, 65, 75, 80, 122, 123, 129, 158, 169, 191, 223, 227–231, 259, 261 Configuration, local, 13, 16, 17, 19, 21, 29, 75, 134, 145, 146, 149, 161, 174, 190, 201, 243, 253, 255, 262 Critical acts, 15 Critical mass, 15 D DBP. See Party of Democratic Regions Decentralization, 9, 60, 115, 121, 260 Democratic Peoples’ Party, 19, 60, 120 De-radicalization, 139, 148 Descriptive representation, 15, 19, 242, 252, 255 Dink, Hrant, 70 Distance learning, 159, 175, 246 E Elite, local, 17, 134, 244, 252 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip, 4, 53, 55, 112, 118, 144, 166, 188, 211, 236, 251 Eşbaşkanlık. See co-chairing and co-mayorship Ethos (party ethos), 195, 206, 233– 235, 242, 256, 257, 259, 263 Exit, voice, loyalty, 221 F Family background, 11, 24, 28, 48, 116, 117, 135, 174, 209, 218, 245 Fedakârlık. See Self-sacrifice Free Republican Party, 47 Free Women’s Congress, 170, 225

Future Party, 7 G Gelecek Partisi. See Future Party Generation, of 1968/1978, 161, 245 Gönül, Sibel, 109, 110 Good Party, 56, 78, 97, 105, 106, 187 Guerrilla, 59, 122, 150, 151, 155 Gülen movement, 7 H HDK. See Peoples’ Democratic Congress HDP. See Democratic Peoples’ Party Headscarf, 144, 146, 147 Horizon of possibilities, 233, 257, 263 I Intersectionality, 17, 28, 134, 158, 162, 175, 246 İyi Parti. See Good Party J Jineolojî, 223, 225 Justice and Development Party, 2, 4, 9, 19, 53 K KADEM. See Woman and Democracy Association KA-DER. See Association for the Support of Female Candidates Kadın Koalisyonu. See Women’s Coalition Kadınlar Halk Fırkası. See Women’s Populist Party

Index

Kardelen, 170, 199 Kemalism, Kemalist regime, 4, 43, 45, 47, 261, 262 Kılıçdaroğlu, Kemal, 58, 77, 113, 117, 217, 220, 258 Kışanak, Gültan, 69, 123, 198, 226, 249 KJA. See Free Women’s Congress Kontenjan, 115, 117 Kurdistan Workers’ Party, 56, 59, 150 L Law on Political Parties, 62, 76, 97 Legitimate femininity, 182, 185, 209, 234, 242, 256 LGBTQi, 61 M Metropolitan municipality, 20, 62, 67–69, 73, 82, 102, 129, 198 MHP. See Nationalist Movement Party Millî Görüş. See National Outlook Muhiddin, Nezihe, 46, 48 Muhtar, 21, 43, 64, 80, 251, 262 N Namus, 51, 185 Nationalist Movement Party, 19 National Outlook, 53, 78 O Öcalan, Abdullah, 56, 59, 222, 223, 226, 236

  269

P Party of Democratic Regions, 19, 60, 120 Patriarchy, 45, 61, 188, 205, 206, 233, 234, 259 Peoples’ Democratic Congress, 160 PKK. See Kurdistan Workers’ Party Platform of Women of the Capital, 211 Political rights, women’s. See Suffrage, women’s Political socialization. See Socialization, into politics Primaries, 97, 115–117, 119, 129, 140, 159, 172, 184, 217, 220, 244, 256, 260 Privilege, 17, 63, 170, 214, 246 Proxy/proxies, women as, 167, 168 Q Quota, 3, 8, 10, 15, 52, 53, 55, 57–59, 61, 63, 66, 76, 77, 79, 96, 99, 100, 103, 106, 114, 115, 118, 120, 122–125, 127, 143, 155, 163, 164, 169, 172, 208, 215, 220, 221, 223, 226–228, 234, 235, 241, 248, 249, 252, 254, 256–259, 261 R Refah Partisi. See Welfare Party Repertories of action, 205, 241 Republican People’s Party, 19, 57 Resource, political, 113, 125, 126, 172, 175, 248

270  Index S Şahin, Fatma, 55, 69, 249 Sayek Böke, Selin, 117 SCF. See Free Republican Party Self-sacrifice, 207, 215, 256 Selva Çam, Lütfiye, 2, 109, 110 Şener, Şennur, 111 Sensitivity of the electorate, 242, 253 Socialization, 140, 153, 161, 174, 175, 181, 184, 189, 245, 256, 263 into politics, 136, 137, 140, 153, 154, 156, 157, 175, 245 Social order, 1, 10, 18, 29, 99, 127, 156, 172, 181, 182, 185, 186, 199, 200, 241, 248, 256 Soylu, Süleyman, 166, 167 State feminism, 43, 51 State repression, 151, 152, 154, 156, 246, 249 Substantive representation, 242 Subversion, 29, 104, 137, 176, 195, 205, 206, 212, 221, 230, 233, 234, 257, 259 Suffrage, women’s, 46, 47, 201, 261 Supply/demand model, 95 T Taşlıçay, Nevin, 111 Tribe, belonging to a, 161 Trustee, 23, 71, 199, 262 Tuğluk, Aysel, 227

Türkeş, Alparslan, 56, 128 Turkish paradox, 2, 8, 28, 41, 42, 63, 65–67, 76, 228, 243 Turkish Women’s Union, 46, 48, 78, 171 Türk Kadınlar Birliği. See Turkish Women’s Union W Welfare Party, 136 Woman and Democracy Association, 251 Women Friendly Cities, 72, 196 Women’s assemblies, 62, 72, 120–122, 125, 223, 227, 228, 231, 235, 250, 258, 260 Women’s branches, 2, 12, 21, 22, 28, 50, 55–58, 69, 77, 95, 96, 105–114, 118, 121, 126, 128, 129, 135, 143, 144, 146, 148, 159, 163, 164, 166, 168, 169, 176, 177, 184, 187, 189, 193, 199, 200, 207–209, 212, 214, 215, 219, 221, 222, 231, 235, 247, 249, 250, 256–258 Women’s Coalition, 11 Women’s Populist Party, 45 Z Zana, Leyla, 60, 169