Government-controlled women's organisations in Turkey are undermining genuine feminist organisations in the country, according to research I have undertaken over the past three years.
I have been studying how the Turkish leadership under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan strategically uses women’s organisations that it funds and controls – so-called ‘women-GONGOs’ – in order to mimic and undermine feminist groups. My qualitative research is based on interviews and meetings with more than 20 feminist women's organisations across Turkey and explores their experiences of the country’s changing civic space.
GONGOs (government-sponsored non-governmental organisations) are an increasingly common phenomenon, especially in authoritarian and hybrid regimes, blurring the lines between state-controlled entities and civil society. These regimes instrumentalise women’s rights for their own purposes, and women-GONGOs are one of the main mechanisms they use to secure internal and external legitimacy and control.
