SB06-8: IR and Islam: Politics of Gender, Collective Identity, Neo-Patrimonialism, and Desecuritization

Session

SB06-8: IR and Islam: Politics of Gender, Collective Identity, Neo-Patrimonialism, and Desecuritization Time: Saturday, 21/Sep/2013: 11:15am - 1:00pm Chair: Gorkem Altinors, University of Nottingham Discussant: Istar Gozaydin, Dogus University, Istanbul

Presentations

From Threat Perception to the Model Collaboration: Desecuritisation of the Relationship Between Turkey and Other Islamic Countries Fikret Birdişli1, Ahmet Karadag2 1Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University, Turkey; 2Inonu University, Turkey Gender Ideology of Turkey’s AKP: ‘the Good and Bad Daughters’ in Perspective Gül Ceylan Tok Kocaeli University, Turkey The Patriarch's Guidance to Europe? - The 'Post-Political' Rise of Islamic Collective Identity in Turkey & Gradual Manifestation of Modern Neo-Patrimonialism at the Governance Level Can Zeyrek University of Marburg, Germany

From Threat Perception to the Model Collaboration: Desecuritisation of the Relationship between Turkey and other Islamic Countries

Dr. Fikret Birdişli (Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University, Turkey)

Ottoman Empire has been a kind of “Security Community” by taking of the most of Islamic Countries under its sovereignty for a long time. So It can be said that Ottoman Empire has achieved Karl W. Deutch’s economic orientated “Security Community” model in the context of political scene. But mutual socio economic and politic relationship between Turkey and other Islamic Countries has been at the minimal level after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Founders of Republic was percept the cultural and traditional legacy of the Ottoman Empire as a threat to the ideal of Westernization. Other Islamic countries also not welcome the new policies of Republic of Turkey because they perceived Turkey is turning his face from Islamic traditions. Disconnection between Middle Eastern countries and Turkey causes to two main problems. First, rising of the radicalism and second, regional insecurity. But as a parallel of conjectural changing in Middle East in the last decade, the relationship getting better between Turkey and other Islamic Countries. So this paper focused on question of “How to effect this development rising of the radicalism and the regional security”. This research depends on constructivist approach and used Securisation, Regional Security Complex Theory and Security Community Theory” of Karl W. Deutch.

Gender Ideology of Turkey’s AKP: ‘the Good and Bad Daughters’ in Perspective

Dr. Gül Ceylan Tok (Kocaeli University, Turkey)

Turkey’s AKP which is conventionally portrayed as the most successful example of ‘moderate’ political Islam has demonstrated significant difference from earlier Islamist parties by electing significant number of women to the parliament since 2002 elections (13 in 2002, 29 in 2007 and 45 in 2011). This paper seeks to provide an in-depth analysis about the gender ideology of the AKP by dealing with the following questions: ‘How has the AKP approached to the gender equality?’, ‘What kinds of policies have been adopted by the AKP government in order to dis/empower women in education, employment and political participation?’ This paper demonstrates that the gender ideology of the AKP depicts motherhood as an ideal role for women, and since the education of women is in conformity with this ideology, the government has introduced measures to promote higher education of women. However it has not introduced any significant measure to encourage female labor participation and political participation as women working outside the house does not comply with its ideology. The paper illustrates the discursive formation in Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan’s statements about the ‘good daughters’ who accept the ideal role of motherhood and ‘bad daughters’ who resist this role and ask for gender equality. An interesting finding of this paper is that even the headscarved women can be depicted as ‘bad daughters’ in the AKP’s discourse when a group of headscarved women launched a campaign for the election of covered women to the parliament before 2011 national elections.

The Patriarch's Guidance to Europe? - The 'Post-Political' Rise of Islamic Collective Identity in Turkey & Gradual Manifestation of Modern Neo-Patrimonialism at the Governance Level

Dr. Can Zeyrek (University of Marburg, Germany)

Modern Neo-Patrimonialism and Post-Politics. These are theoretical approaches discussed to a lesser extent in the EU candidate country Turkey in comparison to the discourse in Western Europe. But there is also a lack of in-depth transformation studies on Turkey resorting pre-eminently to the above mentioned approaches and theories of transformation studies and autocracy research in the West. This paper relies upon theories of political transition and autocracy research with a specific focus on the ‘post-political’ rise or Zeitgeist of Islam and its impact on the regime in times of (power) change at the Bosphorus. Now, Post-Politics describes a ‘consensual’ form of democracy with an anti-political vision, refusing the acknowledgement of the antagonistic dimension constitutive of ‘the political’. Its aim is the establishment of a world ‘beyond left and right’ and ‘beyond antagonism’. In the specific case of Turkey, political Islam seems to serve the gradual curtailment of the antagonistic potential existing in society through government’s strong hand. As a consequence, neo-patrimonial elements are gradually creeping in and manifesting itself at the regime level. In this paper the impact of the features of ‘Post-Political’ Islam on the antagonism in the area of politics and society will be analyzed.