Crisis of Democracy, Anti-Gender Politics, and Feminist Resistance : Islam and Gender in the Age of Right-Wing Populism and Authoritarianism in Turkey

This open access book argues that anti-gender politics constitutes a core strategy of authoritarian rule, reshaping moralized political imaginaries through narratives of family, religion, and national belonging in Turkey.

This open-access book examines the entanglement of authoritarianism, right-wing populism, and anti-gender politics through an in-depth analysis of Turkey under the rule of the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP). It argues that anti-gender politics is not merely a backlash against women’s and LGBTI+ rights, but a constitutive axis of authoritarian rule that legitimizes exclusion and repression in defense of the nation, family, and children. The book conceptualizes this process as moralized authoritarian rule, in which political authority is justified through moral binaries and sacralized institutions such as the family. It analyzes the Islam-gender nexus as a key site where religion, nationalism, and gender converge to produce authoritarian politics. Moving beyond state-centric accounts, the book introduces the concept of an Islamist anti-gender power bloc to show how state institutions and Islamist mobilizations co-produce anti-gender agendas. It also examines feminist counter-movements as key sites of resistance and coalition-building under conditions of democratic erosion. By theorizing anti-gender politics within an Islamist authoritarian regime, the book illustrates how gendered moral projects sustain authoritarian rule while feminist counter-forces generate alternative democratic imaginaries.