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.

摘要

1982 年的土耳其宪法建立了一个旨在确保国家效率和稳定的法律体系，而不是充分尊重法治。在过去的十年中，后者正在经历民主衰败。目前占主导地位的伊斯兰民粹主义正在重新解释宪政民主的基本概念，以巩固对立法过程和社会的家长式多数主义愿景。这种观点破坏了性别平等原则，证实了对 LGBTQIA+ 权利的否认，并越来越倾向于根据伊斯兰的性别互补概念对该原则的解释。对于一个在 20 世纪初就开始了妇女解放和赋权进程的国家来说，妇女享有平等的这种限制是相当惊人的，与土耳其共和国的建立同时代。此外，这种转变引发了人们对“男女机会均等”议会委员会的活动的怀疑，该委员会于 2009 年成立，其职责是确保在整个立法过程中尊重性别平等。它是否有效地促进了立法中的性别平等，还是仅仅是一种声誉工具？为了回答这个问题，在介绍了当前土耳其政权的非自由特征之后，委员会的活动将根据欧洲和土耳其的立法质量标准进行评估。最后，结论性评论将土耳其案例与其他非自由主义威权主义关于性别平等的论述进行了比较，