With a different name, the rose is not a rose anymore: legislative quality and gender equality in the AKP's Turkey

Abstract

ABSTRACT The 1982 Turkish Constitution established a legal system aimed at ensuring state efficiency and stability more than the full respect of the rule of law. In the last decade, the latter is undergoing a democratic decay. The currently dominant Islamic Populism is reinterpreting fundamental concepts of constitutional democracy to entrench a paternalistic majoritarian vision of the law-making process and of the society. This perspective undermines the principle of gender equality, confirming the denial of LGBTQIA+ rights and increasingly favouring the principle's interpretation in line with the Islamic conception of gender complementarity. Such a limitation in women's enjoyment of equality is quite striking for a country that started the process of women's emancipation and empowerment at the beginning of the twentieth century, coevally with the establishment of the Turkish Republic. Furthermore, this drift raises doubts as to the activity of the parliamentary committee on ‘Equal opportunity for women and men’, established in 2009 with the duty of ensuring the respect for gender equality throughout the law-making process. Does it effectively enhance gender equality in the legislation or is it a mere reputational tool? To answer this question, after having introduced the illiberal features of the current Turkish regime, the activity of the Committee is assessed against the European and Turkish standards on the quality of legislation. Finally, concluding remarks compare the Turkish case with other illiberal authoritarianisms’ discourse on gender equality, underscoring to what extent the Turkish authoritarian drift entails an anti-gender evolution in line with the conservative ideological vision of several other populisms.