Özet:

Women’s movement to fight violence against women in Turkey embraced adaptive strategies over the past years. Forming a coalition of secularist and Islamist women’s rights groups, the movement chose to deemphasize “gender equality”- which used to shape women’s movements in Turkey in previous decades-and instead framed their demands with a discourse compatible with the government’s, highlighting “women’s role in the family.” Accordingly, the women’s coalition emphasized that violence against women hurts the family institution. In addition to this discursive adaptation and the use of coalition strategies, women also began seeking to work with state institutions and including them to their struggle, rather than protesting and confronting them, as previous movements often did. When we look at the trajectories of women’s movements in other Muslim societies, such as Malaysia and Egypt, we see that they held similar strategic maneuvers over the past two decades. This suggests that Muslim “sisters” react similarly to comparable political restrictions and opportunities, learn from each others’ experiences, and widen their repertoires of political strategies.

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