De-democratization under the New Turkey? Challenges for women’s organizations

Abstract

This article is an endeavour to explore the changing networking strategies of women’s non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Turkey over the last decade. We delineate the shifts and changes during what we call the de-democratization process where secular women’s organizations face significant constraints and difficulties while networking and lobbying the government. Under these constrained conditions, yet, secular women’s organizations make an exceptional effort to sustaining their lobbying activities and changing their networking strategies as well as partners. Relying on the related literature and 26 semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted with activist members of these organizations with about a 15-year time difference, this paper contends that Turkish women’s organizations under the New Turkey are forced to find alternative allies and adjust their velvet triangles of support. Though their strategies were similar in some ways, the type of partnerships formed and who these partners are changed from the first and second decade of the 2000s. Thus, the paper shows how the secular women’s organizations adapt to new resources as they mobilize and how they shift away from employing the single target approach to double while changing their initial networking and collaboration partners.