Securitization of gender as a modus operandi of populism: anti-gender discourses on the Istanbul Convention in the context of AKP’s illiberal transformation

Abstract

This article examines how the discursive politics of securitization of gender operates in AKP’s recent framing of the Istanbul Convention (IC) and its decision to annul it. It demonstrates that AKP’s securitization of gender is structured as a populist discourse in the context of the party’s illiberal transformation marked by the intensification of populist antagonisms. At the national level, it is operationalized to protect the ‘pure’ nation from the ‘destructive’ effects of ‘gender ideology,’ while at the transnational level, it relies on the civilizational dichotomies framing the Judeo-Christian West as ‘alien’ to the nation. As a result, the article stresses the centrality of anti-genderism in the construction of political frontiers, antagonisms, and threat perceptions in AKP’s illiberal populist regime.