Disappointment with democratic expansion and the rise of authoritarian, nationalist, and conservative tendencies during the past decade have had a direct impact on gender (in)equality. A wave of deterioration in the pursuit of progressive policies for gender equality has passed through many countries that show indications of a decline in democracy and democratization, including Egypt, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Thailand, and Turkey. Among these countries, the regimes in Russia and Turkey show striking parallels in their drift toward authoritarianism accompanied by the concurrent revival of traditional gender discourse. In the last few years, opposition to the West has accelerated the consolidation of the authoritarian tendencies of Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Russia and Turkey, respectively. In this wider sociopolitical context, both leaders have started to lean on nationalist narratives that foreground the cultural authenticity, traditional values, and religious traditions of the Russian and Turkish nations. This has implications for gender, which is one of the most important areas for reinforcing tradition against egalitarian achievements. While there are significant differences between the cases of Russia and Turkey, the current authoritarian drift in the two countries is accompanied by a reinvigoration of traditional gender norms to signify national and cultural authenticity in opposition to Western culture and to gain political legitimacy and support for the continuation of authoritarian regimes that, in contrast to fully authoritarian regimes, are dependent on electoral hegemony.
State-promoted “neo-traditionalism” and “neo-conservatism”—the masculinist restoration of the traditional gender order—represent autocratic leaders’ ambitions to ensure political stability, security, and legitimacy by promoting traditional values. In Putin's and Erdoğan's regimes, these values, which are understood as commonly held in the form of family values, constitute the main source of political legitimacy, which relies on repeated victories in elections. These values are mobilized for the purpose of restoring national power and pride against the West and invigorating social unity and homogeneity against foreign and domestic enemies that are associated with the West and/or pro-Western agencies in Russia and Turkey. In this framing, biological sex differences, which are normalized in reference to masculinist interpretations of religion, culture, and traditional values, have become the rationale for promoting gender inequality and gendered hierarchies—rather than gender equality—in political discourse, law, public policy, popular discourse, and the media in Russia and Turkey.
This article proceeds by providing a theoretical framework derived from the literature on gender, state, and legitimacy. The framework is based on the conceptual pairing of gender order and gender climate, which together enable me to address the sociopolitical dynamics of increasing gender inequality. In the second section, the case selection and the method used are explained. The third section provides a brief historical account of the role of gender in the Russian and Turkish polities. The anti-Western component of the rising authoritarianism that surrounds the prevailing gender climates in Russia and Turkey is then discussed. In the last section, the empirical findings are presented, grouped into thematic units that represent the prevailing gender climates in Russia and Turkey: institutional restructuring, pronatalist policies, female labor force participation, and domestic violence.
CASE SELECTION AND METHOD
Russia and Turkey constitute different cases that produce similar outcomes that are evident in the historical trajectory of the relationship between gender categories and the quest for legitimacy. In Russia and Turkey, whose state ideologies and mechanisms are strong but different, political authorities use gender categories as an important strategy for governing and mobilizing society through certain symbols and premises. After the Soviet and Republican revolutions, the newly established regimes embraced state-led ideologies of women's equality as a part of divergent but modernist views. These ideologies became an important tool for breaking down the influence of the prerevolutionary order and managing social perceptions of the benevolence of the former; they also served as a symbol of non-Western countries’ achievement of a high level of modernity. Almost a century later, the two countries have converged in their recent efforts to seek the support of the electoral majority by promoting masculinist interpretations of traditional and religious values regarding gender. While the early Soviet and Republican states supported egalitarian women's policies with the goal of modernization, opposition to the West that accompanies the recent authoritarian drift in both Russia and Turkey has underscored the substance of common traditions and religious values in direct opposition to the moral authority of the West. Thus, both countries have shifted from being beacons of women's equality to being among the avant-garde of global masculinist revival, which serves the purposes of regime legitimacy and survival through masculinist and nationalist rhetoric.
This study relies mainly on empirical data obtained through semistructured, in-depth interviews conducted in urban areas of Russia during a two-month trip in 2011 and a two-week trip in 2013 and in Turkey during three months in 2013. In total, 60 expert interviews (31 in Russia, 29 in Turkey) were conducted with academics, representatives from international organizations and women's nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), feminist activists, experts from women's shelters, and public officials in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Ankara, and Istanbul.Footnote 1
Expert interviews have gained widespread acceptance in qualitative social research as a legitimate method of gathering information (see Bogner and Menz Reference Bogner, Menz, Bogner, Littig and Menz2009). As Meuser and Nagel (Reference Meuser, Nagel, Bogner, Littig and Menz2009, 24) propose, special knowledge, acquired not only through training and professional roles but also through privileged access to information granted by activity and possession of local knowledge embedded in the expert's milieu, is the subject matter of the expert interview. Expert interviews help researchers obtain useful information and elucidation of the issues under investigation (Bogner and Menz Reference Bogner, Menz, Bogner, Littig and Menz2009, 47).
In both cases, I selected my sample from academicians known nationally and internationally for their academic production, engagement in feminist movements, and pro–gender equality efforts; the leading representatives of long-term women's NGOs; country experts from international organizations; feminist activists; and public officers. When presenting the empirical data, I specify the affiliation of the interviewees and the geographic location of the interview, but names and other identifying information are omitted for confidentiality reasons. Except the United Nations representatives and one public officer based in Ankara, Turkey, no interviewee refused to be recorded. I conducted all of the interviews myself in Turkish, English, and Russian. Interviews conducted in Russian were transcribed by a Russian translator.
My primary concern was to situate the shift in state discourse on gender (in)equality in its sociopolitical context and to identify the foundations upon which the neo-traditional and neo-conservative gender climates in Russia and Turkey, respectively, are being built. The interviewees were asked to evaluate whether there has been a shift in state discourse, policies, and mechanisms on gender equality. To elicit information about the prevailing gender discourse, I asked them more specific questions: (1) What are the parameters of the prevailing state discourses in Russia and Turkey? (2) What are the reference points for “good” femininity mentioned by these states? (3) Does the existing legal framework provide sufficient gender equality? (4) What is the situation of women in the labor market and within the family? Do they encounter any discrimination? If so, why? The major themes emerged during the field research.
To provide background information, this article also uses the secondary literature on the history of women's equality and the current situation of gender (in)equality in Russia and Turkey. To supplement the empirical data, the public speeches and statements of political leaders and information about legal regulations and social policies related to gender (in)equality were monitored though keyword searches in newspapers and magazines, including the BBC, BBC Türkçe , the Economist, the Guardian, Russian headlines, the Moscow Times, and mainstream Turkish newspapers. The official websites of the Russian presidency, the Turkish Parliament, and the Turkish Ministry of Family and Social Policies were also consulted.
GENDER, STATE, LEGITIMACY
The relationship between the state and gender is a complicated and controversial topic in feminist literature. Although there is no single widely accepted theory explaining this relationship, and the state is not treated as a homogenous and monolithic entity, the idea that the “state” plays a role in (re)formulating gender identities and relations is a well-known phenomenon (see Randall and Waylen Reference Randall and Waylen2012). Pateman (Reference Pateman1988) draws attention to the gender dynamic in social contract theories that regulate the relationship between the state and its citizens. In a similar vein, Connell (Reference Connell1987, Reference Connell1990) addresses the gendered dynamics of the political process: the ways in which politics is reconstituted, contested, and legitimated through the notions of femininity and masculinity. The state is involved in the (re)construction of gender categories such as husband, wife, mother, and homosexual and circumscribes the range of possible relations between the sexes through legal and social arrangements.
Conversely, gender dynamics play a constructive role in the political process. Political actors benefit from cultural meanings and symbols deriving from society-wide notions of femininity and masculinity. These tools help them establish strong ties and cultural resonance with the populace and secure the political stances of incumbents among their supporters, thereby serving their performance of legitimacy (Sperling Reference Sperling2015, 6–9, 13). Yuval-Davis and Anthias (Reference Yuval-Davis, Anthias, Yuval-Davis and Anthias1994) argue that the cultural meanings of femininity and masculinity and biologically prescribed civic roles influence the ways in which political, ethnic, and/or religious communities are imagined, constituted, and legitimated. Similarly, Kandiyoti (Reference Kandiyoti and Kandiyoti1991), evaluating the role of women in nation-state building in Turkey in the 1920s, points out that the new Republican women were assigned the national duty of educating their families, children, and the nation to the end of establishing a civilized nation (see Durakbaşa Reference Durakbaşa and Arat1997; Sirman Reference Sirman1989). Najmabadi's (Reference Najmabadi2006) analysis of the debate in France over Muslim women's headscarves shows how women's outlook becomes an issue of state sovereignty and control over the modes of national belonging and identity in the postcolonial context. Gal and Kligman (Reference Gal and Kligman2000) underline the role that discourses and practices related to gender play in the nation-building process after the end of state socialism. The politics of gender, and particularly of reproduction, enables the state to (re)make the nation and its boundaries, identify what makes an appropriate member (citizen, comrade, worker, subject, etc.), and gain political legitimacy by constructing itself as a good and moral actor. Therefore, rearticulating how “good” women and men are to look, behave, and live in accordance with specific sociopolitical ambitions is a salient field of political struggle that recalls the Gramscian struggle for hegemonic domination (see Buci-Glucksmann Reference Buci-Glucksmann and Sassoon1984).
Contributing to this debate, I draw on the conceptual tools of gender order and gender climate, offered by R. W. Connell and Rebecca Kay, respectively, to link the political discourse that promotes biological differences and gendered hierarchies in reference to a masculinist interpretation of traditional and religious values to the anti-Western component of the rising authoritarian tendencies in Russia and Turkey. In her recent study on Russia, Chandler (Reference Chandler2013) argues that Putin's discourses are aimed at legitimizing his rule and ensuring a strong state role in controlling morality, conformity, parenthood, and sexual orientation. These concepts allow me to discuss how the Russian and Turkish states as represented by Putin and Erdoğan have formulated a traditional and conservative approach to gender as they seek to legitimize or gain consent for their authoritarian tendencies among their supporters with the help of anti-Western, masculinist, and nationalist narratives.
In Connell's (Reference Connell1987, 99) definition, gender order is “a historically constructed pattern of power relations between men and women and definitions of femininity and masculinity.” Kay (Reference Kay2000) contributes to Connell's framework with the concept of gender climate. In her understanding, gender order refers to the underlying norms and patterns regulating gender relations, while gender climate corresponds to the prevailing norms and patterns that regulate gender relations. In her terms, gender climate is “the way in which the gender order is packaged and presented at a given time in a given society” (Kay Reference Kay2000, 17). It creates attitudes that encourage people to either work to transform the gender order in the direction of more egalitarian gender relations—as happened in state feminism—or to protect it as vital for national power and survival (17).
This concept suggests three insights. First, gender climate functions as hegemonic discourse and praxis, as “it affects the ways in which it is considered acceptable to speak about gender” (Kay Reference Kay2000, 17). As a result, gender climate provides the conditions for hegemonic domination by managing social perceptions of and attitudes about gender, which tend to follow generally accepted values. These values are meaningful to the majority of people, even though some of them may oppose or criticize the gender ideology of the incumbent political authority. Second, gender climate conceals the inconsistencies between ideology and praxis: not all women, even if they support the government as the representative and defender of certain values, can or do practice the roles imposed upon them by a specific gender ideology. Despite this, gender climate creates a general atmosphere of homogenous unity and hegemonic domination, thus limiting the space for the expression of variations and unleashing traditional forces. Third, this concept allows for a gap between gender discourse and gender-related policies. This gap may emerge because of political concerns, social dissidence, insufficient infrastructure, fiscal limitations, and so on. With these features, the concept of gender climate enables me to elaborate on the efforts of Putin and Erdoğan, who are referred to in this study as representing the states that formulate and represent the general political discourse regarding gender, to ensure the survival of their regime from a gendered perspective.Footnote 2
TRACING THE POLITICAL DEBATE ON WOMEN'S EQUALITY IN SOVIET RUSSIA AND EARLY REPUBLICAN TURKEY
Woman constitutes an important component of a variety of political debates in both Russian and Turkish history.Footnote 3 After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the Republican Revolution of 1923, the newly established states embraced an official commitment to women's equality and linked its realization to broader social transformation, albeit through contrary routes.Footnote 4 In both cases, the new Soviet and Republican women were expected to take up the cause of the communist and/or secular nation-state and thus raise future generations along communist and secular-national premises. The new Soviet woman was envisioned as an educated and active participant in the labor force (Kay Reference Kay2000), while the Republican woman's emancipation was designed through education and conditioned to preserve morality in the desegregated public sphere (Durakbaşa Reference Durakbaşa and Arat1997; Sirman Reference Sirman1989).
Until the late 1970s and 1980s, the idea that women's equality had been fully realized dominated the political discourse in Soviet Russia and Turkey. During the disintegration of state socialism, Soviet policies were criticized for destroying the natural harmony between the sexes and the authority of men at home, leading to a crisis of masculinity (Ashwin and Lytkina Reference Ashwin and Lytkina2004). The economic and social problems of the transition era, such as high rates of unemployment, drug addiction, alcoholism, juvenile delinquency, abandoned children, sexual promiscuity, anarchic youth, and so on, were attributed to female employment, broken families, and the double burden of working women. In this context, the political authorities in late and post-Soviet Russia promoted a traditional discourse on gender that called women to return to the home (Buckley Reference Buckley1989; Marsh Reference Marsh, Wilford and Miller1998).
In Turkey, after the coup d’état in 1980, feminist women challenged the claim that legal gains would ensure women's emancipation and drew attention to the persistence of traditional norms and patterns preventing women from enjoying legal and de facto equality (Özbay Reference Özbay and Özbay1990). In addition, the pro-Islamist party and Islamist women's activism that emerged in the 1990s politicized women's issues on the basis of advocacy for the public visibility of veiled women. With the headscarf, Islamist women challenged secular modernization and brought other issues into the discussion, including male supremacy, women's social status, women's roles in family and motherhood, and women's education, careers, and leadership and challenged religious dictates to develop a feminist framework (Aldıkaçtı-Marshall Reference Aldıkaçtı-Marshall2013, 79–80). The harmonization of the legal framework with the European Union (EU) acquis strengthened the leverage of the women's rights movement. In the early 2000s, various women's groups from feminist, secular, Kurdish, and Islamist circles united to pressure the state to amend the civil code, penal code, and domestic violence legislation.Footnote 5
RISING AUTHORITARIANISM IN RUSSIA AND TURKEY
Although Russia and Turkey still have a de jure semipresidential and presidential system, free elections, and a multiparty system, particularly since Putin's return to the presidency in 2012 and Erdoğan's third electoral victory in 2011, the leaders have consolidated their power by imposing firm tutelage over the party, government, parliament, bureaucracy, judiciary, military, economy, and civil society (see Cameron and Orenstein Reference Cameron and Orenstein2012; Esen and Gumuscu Reference Esen and Gumuscu2016; Gel'man Reference Gel'man2014; Öniş Reference Öniş2013; Robinson Reference Robinson2017; Sakwa Reference Sakwa2010; Soyarık-Şentürk Reference Soyarık-Şentürk, Coşar and Yücesan-Özdemir2012).
In political discourse, authoritarian politics has relied heavily on the promotion of nationalism and cultural conservatism in both Russia and Turkey. Putin and Erdoğan have opposed the imposition of a Western-based model on Russia and Turkey and underscored Russian and Turkish history, tradition, and culture as the main beams upon which the Russian and Turkish systems should be built (Cannady and Kubicek Reference Cannady and Kubicek2014; Coşar Reference Coşar, Coşar and Yücesan-Özdemir2012; Öniş and Keyman Reference Öniş and Keyman2003). They have proposed a synthesis of the market economy, historical traditions, and cultural authenticity (including religious traditions) of Russia and Turkey (Öniş and Keyman Reference Öniş and Keyman2003; Trenin Reference Trenin2007). In Putin's framing, Russia is a unique Eurasian civilization, and the model of democracy suitable for Russia must arise from the national traditions and moral values of the country, not from Western values (Anderson Reference Anderson2007; Evans Reference Evans2008; Nechemias Reference Nechemias2016). In Turkey, Erdoğan endorsed conservative democracy, which aimed to combine neoliberal principles and liberal values such as democracy, pluralism, rule of law, fundamental rights, and freedom with community values, religious beliefs, and local customs (see Öniş and Keyman Reference Öniş and Keyman2003). In contrast to Putin's, Erdoğan's discourse is intended to fill the gap that emerged between state and nation (society) when secular ideology was imposed on the people without considering their cultural and religious values (Tepe Reference Tepe2005).
The reliance of Putin's and Erdoğan's pro-authoritarian regimes on nationalist and conservative discourses increased following two key crises on the international and domestic levels: the confrontation with the EU/Euro-Atlantic alliance and the rise of anti-regime protest movements. Since the mid-2000s, Putin has staked a claim in the post-Soviet space and aggressively reacted to the prospective expansion of the EU and NATO in Russia's neighborhood. In Turkey, disappointment with the EU has stimulated the diversification of the foreign policy orientation toward the Middle East on the grounds of the Ottoman legacy and religious similarities (Demirtaş Reference Demirtaş, Coşar and Yücesan-Özdemir2012). In both cases, the leaders have pursued the nationalism of “great power” that flatters national pride by restoring the international prestige of Russia, which lost the Cold War and became dependent on foreign aid in the 1990s (Riabova and Riabov Reference Riabova and Riabov2014, 27), and Turkey, which has been waiting for inclusion at the gates of Europe for decades (Taş Reference Taş2015). On the domestic level, protest movements broke out in both countries despite the popularity of and broad support for Putin and Erdoğan. Putin faced large-scale street protests in Moscow following the disputed elections of 2011 and the striking protest of the feminist rock group Pussy Riot in February 2012. In Turkey, the Gezi movement, which started as a civil environmental protest in 2013, turned into an anti-regime protest. Both leaders for the first time felt their regimes threatened with increasing social unrest, mobilization, and resistance. In the following period, both governments tightened state control over the media, social media, and civil society activism.Footnote 6
Against this backdrop, both leaders have endorsed the nationalist narrative, not only to rally support against the West but also to contain the opposition and forge consensus. They have tended to reinforce the simple majority and cement their ties with their core constituency, which is presented as the “real/ideal” Russian and Turkish people sharing a set of “national values.” The nationalist narrative, including the visible use of religion and traditional values, reinforces the dichotomy between “us” and “the other” by portraying the Russian and Turkish nations as organic and singular unities that lack conflict and/or diversity. These “national values” and the “real/ideal” citizens who give unconditional support to autocratic leaders—loyal Russians and Turks—are then deployed against the regimes’ opponents inside and outside, who are accused of being mobilized with the aim of destroying the Russian and Turkish nation-states. However, a significant difference should be noted. Erdoğan promotes “religiously imbued nationalism,” in the words of Coşar (Reference Coşar, Coşar and Yücesan-Özdemir2012), as opposed to the secular modernization paradigm. In contrast, Putin's discourse rests on a civic identity based on Russian civilization as common heritage and shared values that include state sovereignty, paternalism, and patriotism without losing touch with religious roots (Putin Reference Putin2012).
THE CONSTITUTION OF GENDER CLIMATE UNDER AUTHORITARIAN POLITICS
The nationalist and conservative narratives embraced by Putin and Erdoğan are predicated on the aspiration for a traditional gender order, which is believed to contain the core values and relationships vital for national unity, power, and survival. The discourse of traditional family values is extended to invigorate social unity on the grounds of a set of “commonly held” values. Traditional values and the family (read: women) as the primary representative and carrier of these values are cited to identify the boundaries of the Russian and Turkish nations, establish control over the modes of national identity, and distinguish the national authenticity and superiority of the Russian and Turkish cultures versus Western values (see Rivkin-Fish Reference Rivkin-Fish2010; Sperling Reference Sperling2015; Yazıcı Reference Yazıcı2012). This has the effect on the gender climate of restoring traditional patriarchy rather than promoting egalitarian relations between the sexes.
With their embrace of traditional family values and gender norms, moreover, these authoritarian regimes construct the autocratic leaders as the real and moral representatives of the people, including of their true values and interests; identify the modes of being real/ideal citizens, against the “others”; and portray them as the protectors of the Russian and Turkish state and nation in the global arena (see Müller Reference Müller2016). The underlying gender order, which is portrayed as morally righteous and pure, enables these authoritarian regimes to strictly order society on the basis of certain norms, roles, and identities and thus to avoid diversity, pluralism, and gender equality, which might bring about social demands to transform the regimes toward democracy.
In this way, Putin's and Erdoğan's nationalist and conservative discourses have led to the reformulation of gender categories according to the masculinist interpretation of religious values and traditional norms as the signifiers of national authenticity and the cement of national unity, thereby leading to the generation of “neo-traditional” and “neo-conservative” gender climates in Russia and Turkey, respectively. These terms were deduced from the field research, in which the interviewees tended to use them to identify the prevailing situation regarding gender. Both terms indicate rising gender inequality, sexism, and misogyny under the masculinist propagation of traditional values and religion without losing sight of the particularities.Footnote 7
The propagation of the “traditional family” marks the neo-traditional/neo-conservative gender climates in Russia and Turkey.Footnote 8 In both cases, traditional family values are said to represent Russian and Turkish national identity and culture and to constitute the basis of national unity and power, in contrast to Western culture. In Putin's speeches, family is defined as the main pillar for developing, strengthening, and supporting Russia and guaranteeing the moral health of Russian society.Footnote 9 Putin sides with the Orthodox Church, the preeminent moral authority in Russia, in enforcing traditional gender roles and opposing feminism and LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex) equality (Riabova and Riabov Reference Riabova and Riabov2014; Vasilyeva Reference Vasilyeva2016). In the Turkish case, the traditional family is depicted as having strong connections to religious culture and values and consequently as serving as the moral foundation of Turkish society (Yeğenoğlu and Coşar Reference Yeğenoğlu, Coşar, Coşar and Yücesan-Özdemir2012, 199–200). Under Erdoğan's rule, the idea that family is both the main pillar of society and a blockade to protect society in case of socioeconomic crisis has been strengthened with the help of religio-conservative values.Footnote 10 Erdoğan is committed to the Islamic notion of fıtrat, which refers to biological differences between the sexes, to justify his belief that seeking out equality between the sexes is neither possible nor natural.Footnote 11 Although the two leaders converge in their approach to religious values as the main source of traditional norms and values regarding family and gender, Putin underscores the national importance of these values in Russian civilization, whereas for Erdoğan, they symbolize “social discontent” with the secular modernization paradigm.
Drawing on the empirical data obtained in my research, I now proceed to examine the neo-traditional/neo-conservative gender climates. This data show that the revival of traditional family and gender categories is embodied in the organization of four gender-related areas: institutional structure, pronatalism, female labor force participation, and domestic violence.
Institutional Shifts
One indication of a neo-traditional/neo-conservative gender climate at the political-institutional level is that gender equality has been marginalized. Under the guise of administrative reform, women's issues come to be integrated into bodies responsible for family, youth, demographics, poverty, and social services. In Russia, the Commission on the Status of Women of the Russian Federation, the core element of the national mechanism for ensuring women's equality, was removed in 2004 and replaced by the Inter-departmental Commission for Gender Equality in 2005, which was subsequently dissolved in 2007 (UNDP 2010, 49–50). Today, there are two advisory bodies to the executive having to do with gender equality policy. The Coordinating Council on Gender Equality is under the Ministry of Health and Social Development and chaired by a deputy minister. The government has declared this council to be the national machinery of policy planning, but it does not have the authority or resources to function as the national gender equality machinery across all government agencies.Footnote 12 The other institution is the Committee on Family, Women and Children's Affairs of the State Duma. This committee does not have the power, budget, or ambition to promote government-wide gender mainstreaming in all ministries and policy areas. It has not supported antidiscrimination legislation; for example, it did not promote a draft law on domestic violence. It did, however, propose legislation limiting access to abortion and prohibiting “gay propaganda” (Temkina and Zdravomyslova Reference Temkina and Zdravomyslova2014). As an interviewee from the Consortium of Women's NGOs in Moscow stated,
Our government says that “we have the Committee on the Family in the Duma; what is the problem? And family [means] woman. We don't have women's problems but those of childhood and family.”
In Turkey, the Erdoğan government initiated an administrative reorganization that established the Ministry of Family and Social Policies in 2011 and moved the General Directorate on the Status and Problems of Women, which was established in 1995 and directly linked to the Prime Minister's Office, under the ministry. A former senior officer from the General Directorate interpreted the move as a downgrade in the hierarchical position of the General Directorate and in its power to influence public policies from a women-oriented point of view. Although the majority of the interviewees admitted the importance of having a ministry responsible for gender-related issues, they mentioned that its name symbolizes the articulation of family into gender politics at the highest state level. As a public officer from the ministry in Ankara acknowledged, the combination of the units of women, family, the elderly, and the disabled under the same administrative roof might lead to the expression of conflicting principles on gender equality, but pro-family discourse has dominated the overall approach of the ministry and other ministries. With the recent administrative change in 2018, the ministry was transformed into the Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Services, excluding “woman” from its title.
Despite the institutional differences between these cases, the administrative governing of gender-related issues is in both cases exclusively embedded in family-related institutions that predominantly focus on the social protection of mothers, as the primary caretakers of children, the disabled, and the elderly, instead of supporting women's individual rights in accordance with gender equality norms.
The Demographic Crisis and Pronatalist Policies
According to my field research, the neo-traditional/neo-conservative gender climates create a hegemonic discourse and praxis that are clearly manifested in pronatalist discourse and policies. In designing pronatalist policies, both the Russian and Turkish states gender the demographic situation by linking national survival to asymmetrical gender roles ascribed to biologically determined differences. The definition of “good” femininity as motherhood is implied in public statements by Putin and Erdoğan and in pronatalist policies that regulate reproductive rights as a sacred duty that needs to be undertaken for the sake of the Russian and Turkish nations.
Against this backdrop, in both countries, the regulation of access to abortion circumscribes women's reproductive rights in favor of national, religious, and moral ambitions. In Russia, abortion access has not yet been banned but has been restricted since 2003.Footnote 13 As most of the interviewees stated, the state has intentionally involved the Orthodox Church to revive family values and glorify motherhood, thereby justifying the stigmatization of abortion, although it cannot afford to totally criminalize abortion, considering the negative impacts of the ban during the Soviet period. In Turkey, abortion has been legal since 1983.Footnote 14 According to statistics from the World Health Organization, the number of abortions at all ages in Turkey, unlike in Russia, remained lower than 100,000 between 2002 and 2013.Footnote 15 The topic of abortion was unexpectedly brought up by Erdoğan in 2012 after 35 civilians, who were initially suspected of being Kurdish militants, were killed in an air attack along the southeastern border. He linked this incident to abortion and called it “murder.”Footnote 16 In Turkish culture, abortion is not condemned as a sin, but it is seen as a moral transgression.Footnote 17 Indeed, some interviewees from the Islamist women's movement admitted that many women from conservative circles have at least one abortion over the course of their lives. However, this debate results in de facto limitations on the right to access abortion derived from the attitude of medical staff and arbitrary violations of the law at the majority of state hospitals.Footnote 18
These legal regulations and the leaders’ speeches help create hegemonic discourse and praxis regarding abortion, even if the procedure continues to be legal. The de facto restrictions, such as emotional manipulation, humiliation, poor service conditions, and lack of anesthesia at public hospitals, as most interviewees pointed out, illustrate the power of state discourse to manage social perceptions and the state's disciplinary power over reproductive decisions. In neo-traditional/neo-conservative gender climates, women demanding abortion are condemned as sinful, murderous, and unpatriotic and blamed for defying religious and moral values at the societal level. Furthermore, as more than the half of the interviewees remarked, these disincentives lead to class-based discrimination among women with regard to access to abortion: middle- and upper-class and urban women can receive high-quality service without insult, humiliation, or pain in private clinics.
Despite the similarities regarding the nationalist and conservative content of their pronatalist policies, Putin's and Erdoğan's discourses are motivated differently. For Erdoğan, pronatalist policy reflects his ambitions to achieve a younger population—identified as an advantage against the West—and to raise a pious generation to dominate the segments with secular values and ethnic concerns. In contrast, Putin aims to reverse the negative demographic trend with a public discourse that encourages women to give birth more frequently on the basis of patriotism, national survival and the long-standing Russian traditions of love for children, loyalty, compassion, and selfless service.
Fewer Workers, More Mothers
The promotion of motherhood as a national and moral obligation in the neo-traditional/neo-conservative gender climates has deepened the existing gendered hierarchies related to the composition and patterns of women's employment in the two countries. Although the level of female labor force participation in RussiaFootnote 19 is higher and enjoys more widespread social acceptance than in Turkey,Footnote 20 where women working outside the home still raises moral concerns about the credibility and chastity of women, these two cases show similarities if considered on the grounds of women's status in the labor force, horizontal segregation, and discriminatory attitudes.
The hegemonic discourse of the neo-traditional/neo-conservative climates prioritizes fertility and family union over employment and treats the balance of work and family as a female issue. In both cases, the interviewees drew attention to the presentation of extended maternity leave as a tool for balancing work and family responsibilities as well as increasing fertility. In Russia, state-supported maternity leave was first introduced in 1981 and extended to up to three years in 2007, while extending the duration of maternity leave became a matter of discussion in Turkey under the Justice and Development Party governments.Footnote 21 The interviewees pointed out that extended maternity leave relies on the idea of a traditional family, which is depicted as a heterosexual, procreative, married couple and crystallizes its centrality in social policy by directly addressing women. Although woman-friendly at first glance, this measure relies on the conviction that women are by nature family-oriented and designed to be mothers.
At the discursive level, this measure legitimizes the confinement of women to care work on the basis of biological differences and thus, in practice, renders their participation in working life on equal terms practically impossible. The generous maternity leave scheme aggravates de facto gender discrimination in hiring, promotion, and remuneration in both Russia and Turkey. As most interviewees pointed out, private companies prefer not to hire young married women and/or pregnant women because they are seen as costing more but producing less for the company, compared with their male counterparts.Footnote 22 Despite lower salaries and status, educated and qualified women frequently choose to work in the public sector, as it guarantees their access to social rights related to pregnancy and maternity.
Pro-employment policies are not supported with free or affordable day care, which was identified in the interviews as a major obstacle to the equal participation, competition, and progress of women in the labor force. Instead, as Teplova (Reference Teplova2007) mentions, the shortage is accompanied by the promotion of a neo-familial model of care as a new trend in the post-Soviet era. Drawing attention to economic and cultural pressures, Utrata (Reference Utrata2015) discusses the grandmothers who support their single and/or married daughters in unpaid care work in the absence of men's active participation in care work and housework and of state supports for families with children. An interviewee from the Women's Union in Moscow who lived through the Soviet era stated that she has assumed the work of caring for her grandchild as her daughter cannot find a suitable day care or preschool.
While neo-familialism is a post-Soviet phenomenon in Russia, housewifization and familialism as the model for care work are the prevailing cultural norms in Turkey. The Turkish state has never had a firm commitment to providing public child care. Working mothers, if they do not quit their jobs for a temporary period, generally rely on their mothers or mothers-in-law (see Kılıç Reference Kılıç2008; Yazıcı Reference Yazıcı2012). As of 2012, 61.2% of women outside the labor force still declared homemaking as the reason for their nonparticipation (ASPB 2012). Notwithstanding this evidence, the state has chosen to compensate for the shortage of public care by introducing a new social policy called cash transfer, which is paid directly to housewives in return for caring for children, the elderly, and the disabled at home (Buğra Reference Buğra, Dedeoğlu and Elveren2012, 27). As one Turkish scholar from Ankara put it,
Public care would be much more expensive. Instead, supporting the family [with cash benefits] will cost much less. They are justifying this way with conservatism. This is a government that utilizes family as a policy tool for not only social policy but also general policy.
In Russia, another state-offered benefit that all interviewees mentioned is maternity (family) capital, which indicates the emphasis put on family in the neo-traditional gender climate.Footnote 23 Its purpose was explained as intended to resolve the dilemma of unpaid care work for women who either choose to quit work and stay at home with children or forgo having children to advance their careers (Rotkirch, Temkina, and Zdravomyslova Reference Rotkirch, Temkina and Zdravomyslova2007, 353). However, almost all interviewees were highly critical of the maternity capital benefit for reinforcing biologically framed gender roles. The benefit does not encourage a more equitable gendered division of labor at home, but rather implies a heterosexual family with a man as the breadwinner and a woman who is well educated but has to leave the job market to care for children, even if only temporarily.
Moreover, this discourse accompanied by these measures also has an impact on Russian and Turkish women's praxis regarding working outside the home. More than half of the interviewees expressed concern about whether these measures lead such women to question the validity of working outside the home. In Turkey, particularly for the lower class and more traditional families, working outside the home and interacting with strangers can be considered inappropriate for “good” women and may largely depend on the consent of the husband and/or father. In this setting, women tend to do piecework at home or work in family workshops and/or workshops in their neighborhoods at low wages and low status without social coverage (Toksöz Reference Toksöz, Dedeoğlu and Yavuz2012, 58). In a similar vein, the interviewees in Russia drew attention to the same phenomenon of women being indirectly forced to leave the workforce. As Chandler (Reference Chandler2013) and Nechemias (Reference Nechemias2016) remark, there is no pressure on women to become full-time homemakers, but the increasing recognition and social benefits available to the women who make this choice create a positive image of the housewife. An interviewee from St. Petersburg stated, “if [a job] doesn't [bring either] power [or] money, [they] don't want to work.”
Domestic Violence
The lack of understanding of domestic violence as a violation of women's rights constitutes one of the strongest beams of the neo-traditional/neo-conservative gender climates. The emphasis on “traditional family” leads to the denial of domestic violence in Russia at the discursive level and prevents any positive action from being taken, while in Turkey, combating domestic violence is in effect equated with protecting the family union. In Russia, the attempts to criminalize domestic violence were pushed back under the influence of Putin's personal beliefs and of the opposition of pro-family groups defending Orthodox values (Johnson Reference Johnson2017). No legal framework specifically identifies the forms of domestic violence, the function of law enforcement bodies, the accountability of perpetrators, or the rights of victims (ANNA 2010, 10–11). As a feminist activist from Moscow put it, as many as 40 draft laws recognizing domestic violence in federal legislation have been rejected by the Duma. Several NGO experts complained that the government declares that the existing laws, especially the Penal Code, are sufficient to criminalize and punish domestic violence, but there are no provisions that explicitly define and punish all forms of domestic violence in the Penal Code. Law enforcement officers generally perceive domestic violence as a private conflict between spouses, and not as a violation of human rights (UNDP 2010, 54).
In addition, after the amendments to the Penal Code in 2003, most cases of domestic violence are defined as private prosecutions in which the victims are deprived of state protection and must act in a prosecutorial capacity themselves (ANNA 2010, 10–11). An expert from the National Center for the Prevention of Violence (ANNA) in Moscow mentioned that the lack of legal regulation removes the accountability of perpetrators, enables them to repeat their violence, and leaves the victims without protection.
In 2016, battery committed by family members was criminalized for a short period, although amendments to the Criminal Code were annulled because of pro-family concerns (about interference in family matters, protecting the status of the husband, and so on) in January 2017 (Johnson Reference Johnson2017). The Russian state, with the support of the Russian Orthodox Church, has since moved further away from combating domestic violence, which is presented as an international imposition.Footnote 24 In 2017, domestic violence was decriminalized by the Duma on the basis of advocacy for the traditional Russian family, which is presented as based on hierarchical relations between the sexes.Footnote 25 The amendment treats “moderate” violence within families as an administrative rather than a criminal offence, punishable by a fine rather than a jail sentence.Footnote 26 In passing this amendment, the Russian government used the concept of the “traditional family” as legitimate grounds for decriminalizing domestic violence.
In Turkey, unlike in Russia, “domestic violence against women as a form of violation of individual rights and of discrimination against women” is recognized at the discursive level.Footnote 27 A comprehensive law, programs, and action plan to combat domestic violence have been prepared thanks to the legal harmonization process with the EU and the efforts of women's rights movements. Turkey was the first country to ratify the Istanbul Convention with no reservations in 2011 (Acar and Altunok Reference Acar and Altunok2013, 18). In 2012, the Law on the Protection of the Family and Prevention of Violence against Women was enacted. Despite significant legal improvements and campaigns for the prevention of violence against women, however, the steady increase of femicide has not been stopped.Footnote 28 Almost all interviewees placed the blame for this contradiction on the protectionist approach that the Turkish state embraces. This approach mainly aims to eliminate the adverse effects of violence on the family union and to protect women as the nation's sacred mothers and devoted wives, not as individuals deserving of equal human rights. In contrast to the Istanbul Convention, as the interviewees from Purple Roof in Istanbul and the Foundation for Women's Solidarity in Ankara stated, public employees assume the role of mediators and stand between victim and perpetrator in the shelters run by the state, an arrangement that does not promote perpetrator accountability. The state discourse emphasizing biological differences and family union trivializes the legal framework and decreases its deterrent effect.
This protectionist approach is fortified by bringing religious instructions to the fore in the regulation of family affairs. To this end, Family Guidance and Counseling Bureaus (Aile İrşat ve Rehberlik Büroları) were established under the Directorate of Religious Affairs in 2003 and have worked in close cooperation with the Ministry of Family and Social Policies. However, some interviewees criticized this increasing involvement because the directorate has adopted a patriarchal interpretation of religion and approached domestic violence with a protectionist and family-oriented view. Serious improvement in the prevalence of violence against women is unlikely when the problem is combated using only a protectionist approach.
Unlike Russia's legal framework, which decriminalizes and privatizes domestic violence, Turkey has achieved significant legal advances in combating domestic violence. However, the state discourse emphasizing biological differences and family union trivializes the legal framework and decreases its deterrent effect. When it comes to women's obedience in the family union, a similar dynamic that normalizes it on the basis of the traditional family structure and a masculinist interpretation of religious dictates becomes evident in both Russia and Turkey.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Understanding how gender is brought into the operation of authoritarianism through the concept of gender climate helps us grasp the damage to gender equality caused by the encounter between the legitimacy concerns of rising authoritarian leaders and the underlying gender order. This encounter fosters neo-traditional and neo-conservative gender climates, in which the underlying gender order is presented as morally righteous, pure, and representative of the real and true beliefs of the people. It can be argued that the new legitimacy and visibility of biological differences between the sexes is the distinguishing feature of neo-traditional/neo-conservative gender climates. Supplementing these differences with masculinist references to religion and traditional values allows political authorities to create an abstract homogenous unity, thus limiting the space for the expression of variations and normalizing many forms of gender-related discrimination. As they do so, the vision of the traditional family is imposed on the people, as though it were embraced by all segments of Russian and Turkish societies and as though it conformed perfectly to their social realities. The notion of “good” femininity is revived on the grounds of motherhood, and motherhood is portrayed as the biologically prescribed (and thus indisputable) civic and natural (read as religious in the Turkish case) duty of women. The heterosexual family with children is assumed to be the natural and proper form, with the result that alternative familial forms, such as cohabitation, same-sex relations, divorced families, and so on are marginalized. Almost all incentives touching upon women's situation in the family, the labor market, and society are reformulated around a family-oriented approach in such a way as to reinforce biological differences and use them to naturalize discriminatory attitudes and practices against women.
In neo-traditional/neo-conservative gender climates, a family-oriented approach is favored over gender equality and the discursive use of women's bodies and sexualities is wielded as a significant tool to consolidate the representative claims of both regimes. However, there are certain differences derived from differing political dynamics and cultural diversities. Putin seeks to unite the Russian people around a civil national identity, while a religiously imbued Turkish national identity has become hegemonic under the rule of Erdoğan. Nationalism coincides with tradition and religious values in both cases, but the emphasis on religion as the primary reference point of national identity allows for increasing control of and restrictions on women via body politics in Turkey. From a comparative perspective, it is possible to say that the gender climate in Turkey encourages community pressure and moral control over women's sexuality (including sexual intercourse out of wedlock, cohabitation, single motherhood, and divorce) and bodily autonomy by imposing certain dress codes and codes of behavior (with the proscribed behavior including laughing or kissing in public spaces, the visibility of pregnant women and smoking). In contrast, as Nechemias (Reference Nechemias2016) remarks, the degree of religiosity shows little relationship to gender attitudes in Russia; women's sexuality is much more liberated, and moral toleration of premarital sex, cohabitation, and revealing clothing is higher in Russia. However, the Orthodox Church contributes to a gender climate in which alternative forms of femininity are less heard, and gender equality loses its importance. Even so, both cases show that the masculinist interpretation of tradition and religion, in tandem with authoritarian practices, not only extends state authority into intimacy through the provision of incentives or disincentives but also unleashes traditional forces to control women's sexuality and bodily autonomy.
