• 2 Grosfoguel, Ramón (2011), “Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political-Economy: T (...)

1This paper focuses on discourses that are critical of the AKP’s neoliberal regime, in power for the last fifteen years in “Turkey”. Considered as a “locus of enunciation”2, Turkey provides a geopolitical and body-political location for diverse subject positions to speak. In line with this, the paper aims to reflect on the conceptual settings and vocabulary that have been used by not only feminist intellectuals/activists but also other political groups critical of the AKP’s politics. Since I consider feminist views and critiques as part of the Turkish public locus of political enunciation, which is diverse and interactive in terms of the discursive positions that it consists of, instead of focusing only on the arguments of feminist intellectuals and activists, I analyse critical discourses of different oppositional groups including feminist ones in relational and historical terms. In short, I consider feminist counter-discourses as an interactive part of the public-opinion building process, which includes many different oppositional groups and hegemonic struggles among themselves and with dominant groups. I believe that analysing critical discourses in relational terms is important and necessary in order to develop better counter strategies that are opposed to the long-lasting hegemony of the AKP’s neoliberalism, which has presently come to a point of crisis. After carrying out a critical scrutiny of these counter-discourses against the AKP’s politics, the paper ends with a brief proposal for theoretical and political principles which might be useful for a better understanding of the hegemonic power of the AKP’s politics and for developing a counter-critical feminist point of view.

• 3 Fraser, Nancy (2009), “Feminism, Capitalism and the Cunning of History”; Fraser, Nancy (2013), Fort (...)

3This underlying argument of my thesis seems to parallel Fraser’s historical analysis of the interaction between feminism and neoliberalism in the West, or of the trajectory of second-wave feminism (together with other critical discourses in my case), in relation to the recent history of capitalist transformation from a Fordist, national and state-organised to a post-Fordist, transnational and neoliberal capitalism. These two forms of capitalism are considered to have been the hegemonic social formations of the OECD Welfare states and the ex-colonial developmental states of the post-war period. In short, the motivation behind this paper is very similar to Fraser’s3, who concerns helself about whether there had been a perverse, subterranean elective affinity between second-wave feminism, together with its New Left counterpart, and neoliberalism.

• 4 Fraser, Nancy (2009), “Feminism, Capitalism and the Cunning of History”; Harvey, David (1989), Cond (...)

5We all know that the world has been undergoing a great transformation over the last few decades4. In this period the belief in socialism – or at least the monolithic “top-down” state intervention-style socialism – has become redundant. Welfare-oriented models, which had previously dominated the political landscape of Europe, have also been increasingly dismantled. For Fraser, the political culture of the state-organised capitalist formations envisioned the ideal-typical citizen as being ethnic-majority male workers, who were the main breadwinners and family men. The economy was based around the ideal of the nuclear family, in which a traditional gendered division of labour was effective. This system considered a man’s wage as the “family wage” and was turning the men’s power over to them within the family as a principle. Under the leadership of New Right power groups, this model was replaced with political projects based on neoliberalism on a global scale. For Fraser, this also means a big shift from state-organised androcentric capitalism, to a capitalist formation based on flexible labour (including female employment) and neoliberal economy.

• 5 Cox, Laurence and Alf Gunvald Nilsen (2016), Reading Neoliberalism As a Social Movement from Above (...)
• 6 Hall, Stuart (2011), “The Neoliberal Revolution”, Cultural Studies,
• 7 Brown, Wendy (2003), ‘Neoliberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy’, Ch. 3 of her Edgework – Crit (...)
• 8 Tünay, M. (1993). “The Turkish New Right’s Attempt at Hegemony”,in The Political and Socioeconomic (...)
• 9 See particularly Yarar, 2009, op.cit

6Neoliberalism, as a “social movement from above”5, or as a process of hegemonic struggle6 and a mode of governmental rationality7 has begun to be effective in the 1980s in Turkey8. In the 1980s it emerged together with new social movements (including Kurdish, Islamist, Feminist, etc.) as a reaction to the crisis of the state-organised mixed economy and state-centred modernisation process, which have their roots in Turkish Kemalist ideology9. After going through a period of recession in the 1990s, it was revived under the leadership of the AKP, a newly established neo-conservative party in Turkey, with its victory in the 2002 national election. The AKP’s neoliberal political project was based on a political consensus among diverse socio-political groups like right and left wing liberals, Kurdish politicians and traditional conservatives – except Kemalist-modernist nationalists and ultra-nationalists. In this sense it can be seen as a new synthesis between liberal and traditional conservative principles in the party politics of the AKP. It emerged as an opposition against the old nation state formation based on Kemalist ideology, and by following recently expanded identity politics, since it backed political dynamics created by the Islamic movement that emerged in Turkey in the 1980s.

• 10 İnsel, Ahmet (2003), “The AKP and Normalizing Democracy in Turkey”, South Atlantic
• 11 Kahraman, Hasan Bület, (2007), AKP ve Türk Sağı, Agora Kitaplığı Yayınları, İstanbul.
• 12 Yıldırım, Kansu (2015), “AKP’s future: The fragmented Nom-du-père and the violence of power”, Heinr (...)

7Apart from its critique of the old state centred formation, what distinguishes the AKP’s neoliberal regime is its success in combining neoliberalism and Islam, from which a new type of conservatism, flavoured with neoliberalism, came into being. Appealing to traditional-popular Islamic identity and Islamist movements, the AKP used different strategies than its conservative predecessors. As İnsel states, previous conservative parties like the Welfare Party (“Refah Partisi” in Turkish) and the Virtue Party (“Fazilet Partisi” in Turkish) were against both Turkey’s European Union membership and the market economy, in favour of a more statist approach10. The AKP left their predecessors’ intense anti-secularist, anti-market and state founded rhetoric behind. Instead, it has taken civil society as the basis of its hegemonic attempt; it has emphasised a pragmatic service-based politics, economic growth, good governance and a better provision of social services at home; it also introduced reform packages for adopting the EU acquits in its first years11. For instance, during the AKP’s first rule many women’s NGO’s were established with its support. However the question remains of whether they can be considered as NGOs, because of their pro-AKP positions. It is also true that global funding organisations like the EU or BM pursue some programmes for the governments to support the expansion of civil organisations. Furthermore, at the beginning of its rule, the AKP’s leaders emphasised the need for policies to remedy gender inequality in Turkish society. The AKP was very well aware of not only women’s rights issues, but also ethnic issues mainly related to Turkey’s Kurdish population. So the AKP regime was very pragmatic in making use of concepts and views that had already been developed by New Left, feminist and Kurdish libertarian movement’s agendas. In the book called “the Silent Revolution” published with a preface by President, Erdoğan, he states: “With this revolution, we replace the statist approach where the state views its own citizens as a threat with an approach that considers difference as richness, is committed to the citizen and to serving the citizen.”12.

• 13 Diamon, Larry (2002). “Thinking About Hybrid Regimes”, Journal of Democracy, 13 (2), pp. 21 – 35; H (...)
• 14 Akkoyunlu, Feyzi Karabekir, (2014), The Rise and Fall of the Hybrid Regime: Guardianship And Democr (...)

8Throughout the above-mentioned process of global transformation, there is no alternative to what has always been the main motto of the New Right politicians, described as “a dynamic market economy”. In a similar manner, some liberal authors began to analyse the global expansion of liberal democracies like electoral democracy, with regular, competitive, multiparty elections in the period from the 1970s onwards13. In this so called period of third wave democratisation process, considering the AKP’s regime as a type of hybrid regime has been one approach that became quite common among liberal academic circles in Turkey14. During its first period, this liberal view of the AKP had also been effective among New Left and Kurdish intellectuals. The AKP’s attempts had increased the hopes for an EU membership, thus enlarging human rights and conducting a peace process within these circles as well, despite some reservations and critiques. It also created important surroundings, which enabled feminist and Islamic movements to interact, and led to the emergence of new political positions like “Islamic” feminist.

• 15 Grosfoguel, Ramón (1996) “The Epistemic Decolonial Turn”, Ibid.
• 16 Grosfoguel, Ramón (2011), “Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political-Economy: T (...)
• 17 Crenshaw, Kimberle, (1991) “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence (...)
• 18 Grosfoguel, Ramón (2011), op.cit

11By considering advanced democracies or developed countries as alternatives to Turkish politics, liberals and social democrats in particular both limit their views of necessary changes in juridico-political boundaries in the Turkish state. These approaches are limited by the idea of gaining power over the juridical-political boundaries of a state by achieving control over a single nation-state15 or by reregulating the state system by rebuilding its check and balance dynamics. As Grosfoguel16 states, the heterogeneous and multiple global structures put in place over a period of 450 years cannot be evaporated by such changes in only one nation state or state law due to the complex matrix of power relations which implies “intersectionality”17 or “multiple and heterogeneous global hierarchies (‘heterarchies’) of sexual, political, epistemic, economic, spiritual, linguistic and racial forms of domination and exploitation”18.

• 19 Jessop, Bob (2006), “The third way: neo-liberalism with a human face?”, New Labour und die Modernis (...)

12Let me reflect specifically on the views of the New Left intellectuals and feminists. These groups developed their own views in resonance with the above-mentioned critical discourses against the AKP. But for various reasons, these groups could similarly not develop a deeper understanding and critical analysis of the AKP’s neoliberalism politics, particularly in the period during which the AKP was going through a relatively more democratic phase. This was when there was a general tendency towards what Jessop calls neoliberalism with a humane face in Europe19.

• 20 Yarar, Betül (2014). Yeni Toplumsal Hareketler, Medya ve Yeni İletişim Teknolojileri. TUBİTAK SOBAG (...)

14In order to expand on the theoretical limits of second wave feminist and New Left positions, my strategy would be to analyse the New Social Movements paradigm as the epistemological backup of second wave feminist positions, as well as New Left arguments in Turkey and the World. In this respect, it seems important to point out the problems with the New Social Movements’ (NSM) theory, which proposes chiefly parallel arguments to the general perspective, or zeitgeist, of Turkish second wave feminist activists until the 2000s20.

• 21 Pichardo, N. A. (1997) “New Social Movements: A Critical Review”, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. (...)
• 22 See Yarar, 2014.

15The NSM paradigm, which has emerged as the critique of social democratic, socialist and Marxist views, all favouring state-centred projects, considered the emergence of the new social movements, including feminism, as the sign of resolution of liberal democratic welfare social consensus and as part of the expansion of new types of political collective actions focusing on quality of life and identity-related issues21. As we can see from this interpretation too, neither the NSM theory nor feminism - as its practical equivalences in the world of women’s activism - was born for attacking New Right power groups and their neoliberal projects. In fact they were born as a response to the crisis of social democratic/Welfare state and as a critique of Kemalist ideology and classical Marxist/Socialist theories of the time. In this respect, neither second wave feminisms (despite being very heterogeneous) nor other new social movements were able to see the generic context that they shared with the rise of the New Right and neoliberalism. In Turkey too, this has been a period of critical scrutiny, from a feminist perspective, of the modernisation process in the country’s history. For instance it was Tekeli who invented the term ‘the state feminism’ for those who struggled for women’s right issues in the early stage of the Republican era. All of these works have changed our own perception about the history of Turkey. However, the New Right and neoliberalism (i.e. Özalist poject in Turkey22) emerged in the same period, when state-organised versions of capitalist modernisation were under attack, and appropriated all of these critiques raised by new social movements (both in conservative and libertarian forms).

• 23 Downing, John (2008). “Social Movement Theories and Alternative Media: An Evaluation and Critique”, (...)
• 24 Pichardo, N. A. Op.cit
• 25 Göle, Nilüfer (1991- 2018), Modern Mahrem: Medeniyet ve Örtünme, İstambul Meetis Press; Göle, Nilüf (...)
• 26 For the critique of this literature see Downing and Pichardo.

16Despite their important contribution, while Marxists mainly focused on one type of social movement that is based on class, for the authors of the NSM School, only certain social movements held a place at the centre of their analysis – such as environmentalism, feminism, or gay and lesbian identity assertion. So, like Marxism, the NSM theory also marginalised different types of social movements, which did not fit the typology that it had developed. As Downing stated, authors from this school typically have zero to say about such a ‘‘Third World’’ phenomena23. Pichardo24 also addressed their obliviousness in analysing contemporary Right Wing social movements, including religiously oriented ones. In Turkey, one well-known researcher who has attempted to analyse and write on the Islamic Movement and the Islamic Women’s movement in Turkey, is Göle. Yet it seems that she has not attempted to review the New Social Movements theory (such as the one developed by Touraine) on the basis of her data and findings from the field25. Instead she applies this theoretical framework directly to the Turkish context withouth any critical scrutiny and thus repeats the same mistakes of the NSM paradigm26. Consequently, her works are shortsighted regarding the limits of the hegemonic impact of neoliberalism and conservatism on the religious social movements. Furthermore, by overlooking the Kurdish Social Movement, which is hightly relevant in her area of study – politics on/of modernity in Turkey – she has not expanded her own critical perspective. In fact such conservative movements upon which the New Right projects are based on, as is the case in Turkey, have also become influential for feminist movements. Lacking such lenses, which could have led them to recognise the existing political ties between these movements and neoliberal regimes, the theorists and researchers who fed on the NSM paradigm could not see neoliberalism’s capacity for adopting the critiques of these movements into their own neoliberal perspectives and views.

• 27 Cohen, J. and Arato, A. (1992) Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press).

17All of these problems of these oppositional groups’s counter critical approaches have also been consolidated by another perspective, again coming from the NSM theory. In order to problematise Marxist terminology – such as “revolution” – new social movements such as feminism seem to be abandoning, and becoming critical about, all types of macro political strategies aiming to make structural transformations. This tendency was strengthened by feminist authors who did not expand and provide a feminist view on common socio-economic problems and structures that did not have direct impact on women. In this sense they were characterised by their “self-limiting radicalism”27.

• 28 Walzer, M. “The Civil Society Argument” in C. Mouffe & others (ed.), Dimension of Radical Democracy (...)

18However, despite of the failures of the NSM and feminist theories, people in the Third World are having ongoing struggles with political and economic structures such as the state and the capital. As Walzer28 warns us, these movements should remember that victories in the political and economic domains are an absolute prerequisite for all victories. Democratic politics are based on the realisation that control over economic resources and political means is crucial to control the basic features that regulate people's life chances and decision making processes. There are open needs to develop intersectional approaches and/or postidentity politics including strategies that have to be oriented accordingly towards the modification of these structures.

• 29 In fact tension within the state among different power groups had been observed before the constitu (...)

21Particularly after this amendment29, the power balance within the state shifted. As the old Kemalist power groups were marginalised within the state, the struggle within and over the state apparatuses tended to increase between the AKP’s alliances, i.e. Erdoganists and Gülenists. This situation speeded up the process of centralisation of power within the AKP and the state. In line with this, the political coalition among liberals, New Lefts, Kurdish politicians/activists and Right Wing political groups, which the AKP had once constructed as being opposed to Kemalism and the old nation-state formation and in favour of neoliberal identity politics, begun to be dismantled. Hence keeping the old balance of power stable on the basis of anti-Kemalist neoliberal rationality began to be difficult. In fact, the first sign of this breakdown within the AKP’s political alliance or consensus came from the Kurdish movement. The pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) declared that they would boycott the vote, because there is no mention in the constitution that Kurds exist in Turkey and therefore it does not recognise their language, culture or any of their human rights. In 2013, the AKP made another attempt at regaining Kurds into its coalition before the national election by releasing a so-called democratic package. This speeded up the peace process on the 30^th of September 2013. However the government failed to implement any of the reforms that the Kurds were looking for, even in a judicial sense.

• 30 It was not only after the constitutional amendment, but in many other previous instances that the A (...)
• 31 Küçük, Bülent and Buket Türkmen (2017), “Müzakeresiz Kamusallık: Milli Cemaatin Yeniden İnşası Süre (...)
• 32 The Gülen community or movement is an Islamic transnational social and religious movement. Its lead (...)
• 33 Cindoglu, Dilek and Didem Unal (2017), “Gender and sexuality in the Authoritarian discursive Strate (...)

22At this stage, the AKP elites could have chosen between two ways: one was to expand democracy in Turkey by further amending the constitution in favour of human rights and political liberties, and to continue with the peace process. The other way was to change its course and increase authoritarianism. Conservative AKP elites (who were under the leadership of Erdogan) were neither willing to, nor capable of choosing the first option. As we all know, they have followed the second one and declared their shift from “conservative democrat” to the “one flag one nation” discourse30. The AKP’s advocacy for civic conservatism, Ottoman cosmopolitanism and economic liberalism, which seemed to lead to the rise of liberties for a period of time, has now come to an end and the marriage between the AKP’s neoliberalism and liberal democracy is over. The tendency towards authoritarianism, and even fascism, became stronger as Kurdish politicians wanted to push the neoliberal democracy project of the AKP to its radical ends31. This finally resulted in putting an end to the peace process that had been started a few years ago by the very same government. Another sign of the collapse of the AKP’s previous political coalition was the clash of power groups within the AKP and the state. As the AKP managed to eliminate and control Kemalist power groups within the military, central power that could be shared got bigger and led to an increase in tension between Gulen’s community/or movement32 and Erdogan’s group. As the struggle within the state became more visible, coalitional politics ended. Increasing social tension and dissatisfaction also led the AKP to search for a new alliance with the nationalist block. The leader of the AKP began to frame the nation’s self in contrast with Europe, to devise ways to legitimise repressive measures and, among many other things, to demonstrate its one-man rule as the sole way for securing national sovereignty. The new nationalist discourse mainly relied on a large inventory of conspiracy theories to the extent that conspiracy theories completely took over critical thinking in public debates. Another side of the same discourse was constituted by the authoritarian enemy images or demonic others both inside and outside the country. This requires a constant attempt of the central power to construct exclusive borderlines according to the definition of who ‘we’ are and then deny the political opposition a legitimate place in this imagined domain of the national self, which never fully includes the existing cultural/social diversities. As projected 'others' and accompanying conspiracies become essential to the neo-authoritarian politics of the AKP, its patriarchal views turn into important symbols for the constitution of these borderlines, between what is considered as “the national self-us” and “the national others-them”. The discursive utilisation of heterosexual bodies and sexualities emerged as the main tool to consolidate the authoritarian conservative gender regime, while the heterosexual family with children has been promoted as the basic unit to reinforce hegemonic moral values and norms. The AKP’s sudden turn towards authoritarianism has affected political discourses on women’s bodies and sexualities in contemporary Turkey. As Cindoglu and Ünal33 state, in the last decade, discourse on sexuality has proliferated in an unprecedented level in the political realm in Turkey. The contemporary anti-feminist political moment in Turkey operates along the interweaving of pro-Islamism, neoliberalism, authoritarianism and conservatism, which generates a complex patchwork of regulatory narratives on women’s sexualities. Under the impact of all these rising authoritarian voices and tendencies within the government, particularly severe attacks against women’s rights were made by Erdoğan and his followers in this second period.

• 34 Kandiyoti, Deniz (2011) “Locating the politics of gender: Patriarchy, neoliberal governance and vio (...)
• 35 Yarar, Betül (2012), “Kürtaj Yasağı Öldürür, Yaşam Hakkımızı İstiyoruz”, 9 June 2012, http://www (...)

24At the beginning, liberal intellectuals considered all these shifts in the AKP’s politics as the kind of manoeuvres needed to increase social tension among conflictual voting groups. In a similar manner, some feminists have tended to treat the various twists of changing policy and discourse of the AKP in the realms of gender, sexuality and the family as diversionary, and as agenda-changing tactical moves34. Only a few feminist others35 criticised these treatments for the risks incurred by removing gender and sexuality related issues from the realm of ‘real’ politics, thus facilitating ruling politicians’ dismissal as merely tactical.

• 36 See debates around the concept of neo-kemalism in most popular online dictionaries in Turkey (Uluda (...)
• 37 AKP Faşizmi Ülkemizi Hızla Uçuruma Sürüklüyor!! June 22nd, 2016 | By KESK Public Employees' Union H (...)
• 38 Tuğal, Cihan. 2016. “In Turkey, the Regime Slides from Soft to Hard Totalitarianism.” Open Democarc (...)
• 39 Köker, Levent (2016), “Otoriter Rejimin Neresindeyiz?” Yarına Bakış, April 27. https://www.yarinaba (...)
• 40 İnsel, Ahmet (2017), “Böyle bir gelişme, Türkiye'ye gerçek faşizmi getirebilir”, T24 online, http:/ (...)

25However particularly after the AKP’s strenuous attitude towards the Gezi riot in 2013, it seems that mainly liberals have circulated a new concept to define this regime: "Neo-Kemalism"36. For them, the AKP has recently begun to adopt the mode of the 1930s Turkish regime and, in turn, fell into a conflict with its own previously effective anti-Kemalist attitude. But unfortunately, this reinterpretation of the AKP’s politics by liberals was not very convincing, since they were unable to provide proper reasons as to why these “unexpected” and “sudden” changes had occurred. In the meantime, in opposition to the liberals, who were beginning to be condemned by radical rejectionist views of the AKP’s liberalism, the concept of "fascism" to define the AKP regime started to become popular in public critical utterances and statements37. Others added some adjectives to this concept and used the term neofascism. For instance, Tuğal38, Köker39 and İnsel40 pointed out an important aspect of this new type of authoritarian regime: mass mobilisation in favour of radical-right ideas and the increased incorporation of radical Islamist cadres to retain a mobilised base. All of these have given the regime a neo-fascist stamp or contributed to its being portrayed as a form of fascism.

• 41 İlkay Meriç, 2016, 27 Şubat, “Emekçi Kadınlar ve Faşizm” http://marksist.net/ilkay-meric/emekci-kad (...)
• 42 For such a critical attitude and discourse see Handan Koç, (2013), Muhafazakarlığa karşı Feminizm, (...)

26The concept of “fascism”, without any additional adjective such as “new” or “neo”, had been promoted by Marxist and socialist circles from the very beginning of the AKP’s rule. So for them, this recently emerging interpretation of the AKP's rule as a type or a new form of fascism was merely to repeat what they had already been stating from the very beginning of its rule. Taking their critical discourse one step further, Marxists and Marxist feminists argue that the AKP’s fasicm and its mysoginist politics are both the products of patriarchal capitalism”41. By treating the AKP’s neoliberal government as fascist, or as something very powerful and unbeatable, these leftists and feminists resonated, at least in some aspects, with the Thatcherite argument that “there is no alternative”, or Fukuyama’s view that liberal regimes are the last stage which humanity can achieve. Arguments of this later type about the neoliberal AKP often present it as some kind of natural law of society or omnipotent juggernaut. In this sense it is true that these later approaches have a negative understanding of what power is which led them to associate the concept of power to law, right to punish, to a group who is supposed to be holding power42. It should also be noted that the second wave feminists already had this tendency to conceive power as oppositional and negative, as one can see in classical theories of patriarchy. Drawing on the traditional model of power as repression, many feminist theories have assumed that the oppression of women can be explained by patriarchal social structures, which secure the power of men over women. This oversimplified conception of power relations implies that women are simply the passive, powerless victims of men who possess power through the patriarchal system in ultimate terms.

• 43 Yarar (2015), Op.cit
• 44 Kandiyoti (2011), Op.cit

29When we look at feminist discourses, overall they have similar tendencies towards dualist and reductionist modes of thinking. Based on classical theories of patriarchy, feminists mainly continue to target men, who are blamed as being the bearers of patriarchal values and the reason for female powerlessness and victimisation. For instance, as Kandiyoti (2011) states, in respect to the epidemic levels of violence against women in society, they routinely blamed an ill-defined notion of patriarchy, implicitly understood as a deeply ingrained pattern of culture43. As feminists, this reductionist view of a dominant system or patriarchy as “culture” has led us to focus on power relations as being mainly between men and women and taking place in the private and family spheres. Despite important attempts from radical and socialist feminists to politicise private issues like sexuality by pointing out their links with the patriarchal system or to the so called distinct system of capitalism, the marriage of distinct fields and/or systems has always been a very unhappy one. This also led us to create a set of vocabulary that resulted in re-strengthening the mainstream conception of politics as being reduced to the state/public and opposed to the family/private issues and spheres. Yet, this did not mean that as feminists we could overcome the problem of false opposition between the private and the public by reproducing this dichotomy within the context of feminist theories and pratices, and by siding with the private by stating that “private is political”. As Kandiyoti argues, in fact this resulted in the above-mentioned arguments on the politics of the AKP who tactically used gendered issues in order to make their real political aims invisible. This in turn invites us “to spell out with a greater degree of precision the various ways in which the politics of gender in Turkey is intrinsic rather than incidental to a characterization of its ruling ideology”44.

• 45 Akgöz, Görkem (2016). “Mutsuz Evlilikten Tehlikeli Flörte: Feminizm, Neoliberalizm ve

31Neoliberalism and its impacts on feminism has been one of the hot topics among feminists in the world, particularly after the recently circulated view that neoliberalism has managed to appropriate those critical discourses of New Social Movements concerning power relations. However, this discussion has rarely been influencial on feminists’ debates concerning the AKP’s hegemonic regime in Turkey45. These works, which explore the concept of neoliberalism and are suspicous about its negative impact on feminism, are very important to follow up on and develop. But beyond this, there does not seem to be enough debate on the theoretical aspect of neoliberalism and the neccesary theoretical framework that might be more influencial against neoliberal regimes in Turkey. This, I believe, requires further analysis and thought than the one that has been carried out so far by feminist scholars and activists in Turkey.

• 46 See Yücel, 2008; Özuğurlu, 2012 and 2013; Kadın Girişimciliği,mutfak cadıları (sayı 2, Nisan 2010), (...)

32There are two important theoretical positions in the feminist literature regarding this discussion and the critique of neoliberalism and its impact on feminism in the West. One is the critique by socialist feminists such as Walby, Eisenstein, and Fraser who blame postructuralist theories for the failure of the second wave feminist politics, by overlooking the economic and class dimensions of neoliberalism’s detoriarating impact on women and societies and for putting too much emphasis on the cultural aspect of neoliberal transformation46. This discussion has been opened up and developed mainly by Nancy Fraser’s historical analysis of the interaction between feminism and neoliberalism in the West (i.e. the trajectory of second wave feminism in relation to the recent history of capitalist transformations from a Fordist national state-organised to a post-Fordist, transnational and neoliberal capitalism). There is also a literature which critically scrutinises neoliberalism’s impact on feminism (rather than on how to conceptualise and analyse neoliberal power and rationality). It also has a strong connection with these previously developed theoretical discussions expanded by Fraser and others.

• 47 Butler, Judith (1989). “Foucault and the Paradox of Bodily Inscriptions,” in the Journal of Philoso (...)
• 48 Acar, Feride and Gülbanu Altunok (2013) “The ‘politics of intimate’ at the intersection of neo-libe (...)

33Beyond these socialist feminist theories of Fraser and others, on the other side of the theoretical pool, there are feminist authors who continue to use post-structuralist theories for restrenghtening the critical analysis of neoliberalism and its impact on feminist discourses and strategies. Following Foucault’s notion of bio-power, governmentality and his latest comments on neoliberal government, these authors focus on neoliberal strategies of governing gendered bodies through different modes of practices ranging from health to consumption47. This literature has also had a faint impact on feminist studies in Turkey48.

• 49 Oksala, Johanna (2013), “Feminism and Neoliberal Governmentality”, Foucault Studies, No. 16, pp. 32 (...)

34Like Oksala49, I contend that feminist thinkers, who put the blame for the current impasse on the rise of poststructuralist modes of thought in feminist theory and advocate for a return to socialist feminism, represents a dangerous nostalgia that would rob feminist theory of its remaining political relevance. It is true that there is an urgent need for developing feminist understandings of neoliberalism and its hegemony over all counter political movements, not only over feminist ones. However, contrary to the approach of the first group, I argue that such analysis should not rely upon the hope of reviving the socialist-feminist theorising, or as a reference to the glory days of second-wave feminists who joined their New Left and anti-imperialist counterparts in the 1960s and 70s, the years of explosive radicalism in the West. In other words, such a theoretical approach should not make a call for a return to socialist feminist sensitivities of the 1960s and 70s, which results in bypassing the period that was mainly determined by identity politics or by a culturalist turn. Instead it should search for new positions, strategies and theoretical backups that might lead us to go beyond essentialist, reductionist and Westphalianist-colonialist epistemological positions that these previously dominant critical discourses - including those in Turkey - were often damaged by, and go beyond the neoliberal hegemony over counter-political discourses and strategies.

• 50 Jessop, Bob; Kevin Bonnett, Simon Bromley, Tom Ling, (1988) Authoritarian Populism, Two Nations, an (...)
• 51 Laclau, Ernesto and Chantale Mouffe (1985), Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Demo (...)
• 52 Grosfoguel (2011), Op.cit

39In this conclusive part, obviously there is no space to develop an alternative theoretical approach. All I can do is mention possible matrixes of a more constitutive theoretical approach, which might be more efficient in overcoming the problems of these approaches to neoliberal and neo-authoritarian politics of the AKP. An alternative theoretical framework, for me, can only be constituted by pulling different theories together. In my understanding, apart from Fraser’s neomateralist approaches, one can also follow poststructuralist and intersectional views on post-identity politics. To me, the most productive arguments and theoretical contributions are coming from neo-Foucauldian theorists such as Lemke, Burchel and others-; some neo-Gramscians like Cox and Nile, Jessop50, Laclau and Mouffe51 some decolonialist theorists such as Grosfoguel52; and some poststructuralist and neomaterialist feminists such as Butler, Brown, Sawicki. But to develop a more coherent and explanatory theoretical framework can only be the task of another paper. To conclude very briefly, all these suggestions differ from Fraser’s arguments for a return to socialist or neomaterialist feminism. Instead, what I argue for is keeping on a post-sructuralist track while searching for a new path of post-identity politics in such times of anti-democratic, conservative and narcissistic turn to identities. This alternative position, which obviously needs to be developed further, can help us understand the present authoritarian turn and crises of neoliberal regimes, that have been expanding not only in Turkey but also in many other places.