The potential for dialogical transversal politics and coalitional solidarities in the contemporary women's movement in Turkey

Abstract

This study focuses on the fragmentations based on exclusionary identity politics within the women's movement in Turkey. Through in-depth interviews I conducted with women activists and academics in Turkey in 2014–2015, I explore activist women's positions on identity issues, such as gender, religion and ethnicity, as well as their views of each other. I argue that seeing identities as unalterable deepens the fragmentation within the movement, creates a false sense of homogeneity within groups and exacerbates activists' tendency to stay in their small groups. In order to move away from the limitations of identity politics, I offer adopting dialogical transversal politics in understanding differences among women, whereby activists can find a realm aside from the exclusionary structures of universalism and identity politics, and suggest coalition building as a realm where transversal politics can cultivate and in which a degree of solidarity within the women's movement in Turkey can develop.