Restoring the “Natural Order” – The Patriarchal Family, Fascism, and the Attacks on Gender in Turkey by Berfu Seker

“The project of restoring the world to a time before “gender” promises a return to a patriarchal dream-order that may never have existed but that occupies the place of “history” or “nature” – an order that only a strong state can restore.” (Butler, 2024) 

The Family Year as a Tool of Authoritarian Social Engineering

The AKP (the Justice and Development Party), which has been in power for 23 years in Turkey, has spent years attacking laws and conventions that safeguard women’s fundamental rights—while simultaneously attempting to weaken the strong influence of the feminist movement by establishing GONGOs producing a “conservative perspective”  (Şeker, 2021) on women’s rights. Nevertheless, the ruling party’s overt assault on women’s rights failed to generate the polarizing impact it had anticipated. Instead, it provoked criticism even among women within its conservative base. (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi, 2021) Also in February 2020, in a meeting with President Erdogan, AKP’s women MPs explained that efforts were being made to create a false perception about the Istanbul Convention in the public (BBC News Türkçe, 2020). Consequently, since 2020, LGBTIQ+ people have become the primary target of the government and the fundamentalist groups it supports, serving as scapegoats in a broader political strategy of repression of the public through an Islamist version of patriarchal hegemony and ideological consolidation.

2025 in Turkey has been declared as “the Year of the Family” by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan following the publication and implementation of the “Strengthening of the Family Vision Document and Action Plan” in May 2024. (Kaos GL, 2025) This action plan can be read as a strategic project to re-establish patriarchal power structures through strict heteronormative rules and a narrow and conservative conception of the family. Spearheaded by the Presidency and implemented across ministries—with vocal support from the Directorate of Religious Affairs—the plan aims to redesign society through a rigid gender binary, regulating bodily life and strengthening autocratic rule on the basis of “protecting the family.” (Kaos GL, 2025).

The action plan specifically targets LGBTIQ+ people’s very existence, women’s reproductive rights and unpaid labor, and young people’s autonomy over their lives. The action plan aims to serve as a social engineering project that regulates a gender regime based on essentialist and religious perceptions of attributed sex, to restore patriarchy (Kandiyoti, 2019) and re-design the society based on firm categories of gender dichotomy. It envisions a society molded not around individual rights, but around the imagined “rights of the family” as defined by state ideology—in turn, constructing future generations as loyal subjects to the regime the AKP has built.

Neoliberal Fascism and Gendered Control

In this framework, the action plan and the policies it proposes in the name of “protection of the family” exert control over women’s bodies and labor through population policies, on the basis of declining birth rates and rising ages of marriage and delayed childbearing. The action plan is based on the idea that the declining birth rate—below the replacement level of 2.1 (which is 1.51, as of 2023, as stated by the Ministry of Family)—and the aging population are threats against national security. This is attributed to increasing individualism and so-called ‘fıtrata aykırı’ (translation: Against the nature) trends that are seen as threatening the traditional family structure.”It aggressively reimposes traditional gender roles in a rigid and conservative manner, while systematically attacking LGBTIQ+ rights under the pretext of fighting ‘global degenderization projects’ (Kaos GL, 2025)  which it alleges “destroy the family structure”. Within this plan, LGBTIQ+ visibility and representation in media and digital platforms are met with intense censorship and surveillance mechanisms. As stated in the action plan, public institutions are also expected to promote a “family rights-oriented” approach in international arenas. This strategy is further reinforced by aligning with the international anti-gender fascist bloc, with the ultimate aim of fostering militarism and producing cheap labor.

The AKP’s gender policies, crystallizing around 2010 with Erdoğan’s open rejection of equality between men and women, are built upon the dual exploitation of women’s labor. According to feminist researcher Selin Çağatay, on one hand, women are pushed into flexible, precarious, and low-paid employment, ensuring their economic exploitation while reinforcing male dominance. On the other hand, they are made solely responsible for unpaid domestic and care work, which the party idealizes through pro-natalist, family-centered rhetoric. This gender regime traps women between paid and unpaid labor and reproduces their economic dependency. Branded as “Strengthening the Family,” this policy orientation reflects a global trend, especially visible in post-2008 austerity politics, wherein states increasingly rely on women’s underpaid and unpaid labor to sustain both economies and patriarchal social orders. (Gallo, 2015)

The AKP government’s pro-natalist population policies are rooted in the belief that population growth drives economic growth. A larger, younger workforce is seen as key to attracting foreign investment and strengthening Turkey’s global competitiveness. According to this view, Europe’s aging population hampers productivity, while Turkey’s youth and geographic proximity to Europe make it a more attractive option than Asia. Erdoğan frequently cites countries like India and China as examples of how large populations can translate into economic power. In response to concerns about whether families can afford to have more children, Erdoğan dismisses livelihood conditions as secondary, suggesting that economic success depends not on social welfare but on maintaining a large pool of cheap labor to draw foreign capital. (Kocamaner, 2018) 

In  2012, Erdoğan called abortion mass murder; claiming that abortions and cesarean sections are “secret plots designed to stall Turkey’s economic growth and a conspiracy to wipe the Turkish nation from the world stage.” (Population Matters, 2025) Since 2015, the AKP has defined the defence industry as a strategic sector and has allocated substantial resources to it. Military production has become a symbol of power both domestically and internationally. The AKP’s pronatalist policies, particularly after 2015, have gained a dual character: domestically, they serve as a demographic strategy aimed at increasing the Sunni-Muslim population against ethnically marginalized groups; internationally, they align with a foreign policy perspective in which Turkey positions itself as an interventionist power backed by a strong military. (Cromer, 2023) In a televised interview in July 2024, Minister of Family and Social Services Mahinur Özdemir Göktaş explicitly articulated the government’s demographic anxiety and the link between militarism and population trends: “If this trend continues, in 20 to 25 years, we won’t have enough young people to send to the military.

Criminalizing Queerness, Legalizing Hate

The AKP, while previously framing Kurds as “terrorists” and building pronatalist policies around this discourse, has increasingly, since 2020, begun to characterize LGBTQ+ individuals as a threat to the family and the nation.The AKP, now, uses the phantasms of ‘global degendering projects’ and ‘LGBTI propaganda’ which are defined as destructive forces that threaten families, the nation and the foundations of existence. Regardless of relevance to the topic, Erdoğan, in almost every public speech, constantly targets and dehumanizes LGBTIQ+ people by claiming that the “LGBTI agenda” is a global pandemic, a perversion, and a fascist and imperialist project. (Kaos GL 2024; BBC Türkçe 2023; CNNTürk 2024) President Erdoğan has declared these words in various public speeches. In one speech, he even used the metaphor of a battering ram to speak about LGBTIQ+s, implying that there is a war between the LGBTIQ+ community and the family institution. 

Framing the decline in birth rates, the rising age of marriage, and the delay in first births as a national crisis, it refuses to implement policies that would promote gender equality or reduce women’s disproportionate burden of care by investing in public care services or redistributing care work between genders. Instead, it puts forward measures designed to monitor and regulate women’s reproductive capacity while insisting that caregiving for children and the elderly is a role inherently assigned to women by their so-called “natural disposition.” As Noor’s Roots of Hate report rightly notes, this assault on gender and sexuality is not accidental. It is a deliberate strategy by fascist and fundamentalist forces to reinforce the patriarchal structures on which neoliberal capitalism depends. By regulating bodies, unpaid labor, and reproductive capacity, the regime sustains a political and economic order built on exploitation and hierarchy. (Wijesiriwardena, 2025) 

Within the context of this authoritarian backdrop, a new draft law reportedly prepared by the government has recently entered the public agenda. This proposal aims to reverse earlier reforms to the Turkish Civil Code and Penal Code by reintroducing punitive, discriminatory restrictions based on gender identity and sexual orientation. The bill requires individuals to be “completely infertile” before accessing gender-affirming procedures, effectively banning legal gender recognition. It criminalizes gender-affirming surgeries abroad, hormone use without court permission, and even symbolic same-sex ceremonies. Vaguely worded provisions ban “praising behaviors contrary to biological sex and public morality,” enabling the persecution of any queer expression.

Even though this draft has not officially reached Parliament, on April 24th, 2025, HÜDA-PA—a radical Islamist party allied with the ideological roots in Kurdish Hezbollah and a history of extreme conservatism—has submitted its bill seeking to criminalize all same-sex relationships. While it is unusual for the AKP – which holds the parliamentary majority – to consider or debate legislative proposals from other parties, the strategic function of this bill is clear: Islamist fundamentalists allied with the government are escalating the fascist agenda laid out by the ruling party.

As journalist and LGBTIQ+ rights activist Yıldız puts it, “HÜDA-PAR’s proposal is the death that will make us grateful for the malaria AKP offers.” (Tar, 2024) The regime follows a familiar pattern: shock society, instill fear, inflict catastrophe, and then offer a “lesser evil” law that was the intended outcome all along. 

Criminalizing Dissent, Rewriting Society

As we see the social order being forcibly restructured around the family institution, we are simultaneously witnessing the dissent being molded through baseless corruption charges, arbitrary imprisonments, and systematic judicial harassment. (BBC News, 2023) In this fascist era emboldened by fundamentalist tendencies, where the right to vote and to be elected is under unprecedented threat, women and LGBTIQ+ communities are waging a relentless struggle for their most basic right: the right to live. 

Despite years of escalating authoritarianism and state violence, feminists and queer activists have continued to resist—tirelessly and defiantly—in the streets, refusing to retreat. Today, their resistance is echoed by a new generation of university students who have nothing to lose, who have no hope, no future in this country. Hence, they declare in their banners, “This is not the Year of the Family; it is the Year of Resistance.” In the face of intensified repression, they carry forward the spirit of feminist and queer struggles, confronting the state’s moral panic with creativity, solidarity, and courage.

“We are not silent, we are not afraid, we do not obey!”

Following the annulment of the university diploma and subsequent imprisonment of Istanbul Metropolitan Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu—widely viewed as  the strongest rival of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the next elections—university students broke through police barricades and ignited a wave of resistance that would ultimately reshape even the reflexes of the main opposition party. The slogans of feminists and LGBTIQ+ activists, who had long endured police violence in public spaces without retreating, were now being chanted by thousands across the country. Chief among them was, “We are not silent, we are not afraid, we do not obey.” This spontaneous uprising resonated with—and was powerfully reinforced by—the long-standing organizing efforts of feminist and LGBTIQ+ movements, who had already been mobilizing across the country in defense of their existence and rights.

Women’s and LGBTIQ+ organizations are collectively mobilizing against legislative proposals that seek to criminalize their very existence. They are launching joint campaigns, building pressure by engaging with diverse stakeholders in society, and amplifying dissent from the margins to the mainstream. It is crucial to recognize that the authoritarian grip choking the political opposition is the very same force targeting women and LGBTIQ+ people—because both represent a future rooted in freedom, plurality, and justice. In this convergence of struggles lies the possibility of not just resistance, but transformation.

These intersecting struggles do more than resist fascism(s) and fundamentalism(s)—they hold the potential to transform society itself. When feminist, queer, and youth movements converge with broader democratic opposition, they not only challenge repressive laws and policies but also offer new imaginaries of freedom, justice, and collective life. In doing so, they can reshape not just society, but the opposition itself—pushing it to expand its vision, to center equality and bodily autonomy, and to stand more firmly against authoritarianism in all its forms.

List of resources

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