Selective Justice: Authoritarian Governance and Gender Reform in Turkey

Tugçe Ellialti-Köse, University of Guelph

This paper examines how authoritarian states implement feminist legal reforms while simultaneously consolidating power and constraining feminist agendas. Focusing on Turkey under the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP), I analyze the 2005 reform of the sexual assault law to show how gender reform can function as a technology of authoritarian governance. Drawing on a multi-method “studying-up” approach—including courtroom observations, interviews with judges, prosecutors, lawyers, forensic experts, and women’s rights activists, as well as analysis of legislative and trial documents—this study traces the selective inclusion and exclusion of feminist proposals during the drafting and implementation of the law. While reforms criminalized marital rape, eliminated discriminatory distinctions based on marital status or virginity, and removed culturally loaded terminology, many feminist demands were ignored or modified. Key structural interventions and preventive measures were largely absent, and the law emphasized punitive and medico-legal responses, framing perpetrators as moral or psychological deviants. Findings reveal that state feminism under authoritarianism is reconfigured: the state positions itself as protector of women and children, absorbs feminist claims to consolidate moral and political authority, and expands punitive reach, all while depoliticizing structural critiques of gender inequality. Conditional enforcement of marital rape and other narrow judicial interpretations illustrate the tension between formal legal gains and substantive justice, highlighting limits to feminist influence within authoritarian governance. This analysis demonstrates that legal reform can simultaneously advance symbolic feminist victories and extend state control, illustrating the paradoxes of engaging with law in contexts of authoritarianism. The Turkish case underscores the need for feminist strategies that recognize co-optation risks and the limits of formal institutional gains while pursuing broader social, cultural, and political change.

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 Presented in Session 192. Violence, Gender, and Criminalization