Cover not available
Article published In:
Political discourse analysis of female political leaders in the Global South
Edited by Mark Nartey
[Journal of Language and Politics 23:1] 2024
► pp. 113–137

Constitutive representation of womanhood

An examination of legitimation strategies used by Turkish female deputies during the headscarf debate

ORCID logo | Bilkent University
ORCID logo | Bilkent University
This article analyzes the speeches of Turkish female parliamentarians during the headscarf debate. We examine how deputies with different political and ideological predilections discursively construct women’s rights and employ legitimation strategies to validate their policy position. The findings reveal that on the one hand, the female deputies use different legitimation strategies to justify arguments for or against the use of headscarves in the public sector. On the other hand, they embed the headscarf debate into the broader political goals they pursue in a polarized political setting. They deploy legitimation strategies around the headscarf debate to rationalize future policy on issues ranging from the expansion of human rights and democracy to the change of the type of political regime.
Keywords: substantive representation, discursive legitimation, female parliamentarians, headscarf issue, Turkey
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Legitimation as a discursive tool
  • 3.Research design
  • 4.Contextual background
    • The headscarf issue in Turkey
    • Political parties in Turkey
  • 5.Discursive legitimation and the lifting of the headscarf ban
    • CHP: The bulwark against patriarchy and repression
    • AKP: The headscarf as a banner of freedom
    • DTP/BDP: The headscarf as a primer for further democratization
    • MHP: A pragmatic defense of the headscarf
  • 6.Different uses of the headscarf as a resource for legitimation after the headscarf liberalization
    • AKP: Subjugating women’s voices under the AKP agenda
    • BDP/HDP: The headscarf issue and the chain of equivalence
    • CHP: Exposing the moral contradictions of the AKP’s headscarf policy
  • 7.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.22147.ugu
References (52)
References
Aljazeera, Turkey. 2013. “Türkiye’debaşörtüsüyasağı: Nasılbaşladı, nasılçözüldü?” on 30 December. [URL]
Arat, Yeşim. 1994. “Toward a democratic society”. Women’s Studies International Forum 17(2–3): 241–248. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1995. “Feminism and Islam: Considerations on the Journal Kadin veAile”, In Women in Modem Turkish Society, ed. Sirin Tekeli, London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
. 1998. “Türkiye’de Kadınların Değişen Siyasi Rolleri 1934–1980.” In 75 Yılda Kadınlar ve Erkekler, ed. Ayşe Berktay Hacımirzaoğlu, 249–266. İstanbul: TarihVakfı.Google Scholar
. 2021. “Democratic Backsliding and the Instrumentalization of Women’s Rights in Turkey,” Politics & Gender, 1–31.Google Scholar
Arik, Hülya. 2012. “Speaking of Women? Exploring Violence Against Women Through Political Discourses: A Study of Headscarf Debates in Turkey.” E-cadernosCES 161: 10–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ayata, Ayşe Güneş. 1998. “Laiklik, Güç ve Katılım Üçgeninde Türkiye’de Kadın ve Siyaset,” In 75 YıldaKadınlarveErkekler, ed. Ayşe Berktay Hacımirzaoğlu, 237–248. İstanbul: TarihVakfı.Google Scholar
Bektas, Eda and Issever-Ekinci, Esra. 2019. “Who Represents Women in Turkey? An Analysis of Gender Difference in Private Bill Sponsorship in the 2011–15 Turkish Parliament,” Politics & Gender, 15(4): 851–881. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bennett, Samuel. 2022. “Mythopoetic legitimation and the recontextualisation of Europe’s foundational myth,” Journal of Language & Politics, 21 (2), pp. 370–389. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
BIANET. 2004. “DTH GenelYaklaşımveİlkeleri” December 29. [URL]
Bulut, Alper T. 2020. “What Drives Women’s Substantive Representation in Muslim- Majority Countries? Lessons from Turkey”, Political Research Quarterly 1–14.Google Scholar
Burrell, Barbara C. 1994. A Woman’s Place is in the House: Campaigning for Congress in the Feminist Era, AnnHarbor: The University of Michigan Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Celis, Karen, Sarah Childs, Johanna Kantola, and Mona Lena Krook. 2014. “Constituting Women’s Interests through Representative Claims.” Politics & Gender 10 (2): 149–74. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Celis, Karen. 2009. “Substantive Representation of Women (and Improving it): What it is and should be About?” Comparative European Politics 71: 95–113. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chilton, Paul. 2004. Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cizre, Ümit. 2007. Secular and Islamic Politics in Turkey: The Making of the Justice and Development Party. Routledge.Google Scholar
Cramer Walsh, Katherine. 2002. “Female Legislators and the Women’s Rights Agenda.” In Women Transforming Congress, ed. Cindy Simon Rosenthal, 370–396. University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi Tüzüğü, 2018. March 10. [URL]. DOI logo
Cumhuriyet. 2014. “BDP, DBP oldu işte yeni başkanlar.” July 11. [URL]
Fairclough, Norman, and Isabela Fairclough. 2015. “Textual Analysis.” In The Routledge Handbook of Interpretive Political Science, ed. Mark Bevir, and R. A. W. Rhodes, 186–198. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 2003. Analysing Discourse Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Forchtner, Bernhard and Özvatan Özgür. 2022. “De/legitimisingEUrope through the Performance of Crises: The Far-Right Alternative for Germany on ‘climate hysteria’ and ‘corona hysteria’”, Journal of Language and Politics. 21(2): 208–232. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Güngör, Behçet. 2004. “’DemokratikToplumHareketi’ aynıçizgidekipartileri birleştirdi” YeniŞafak November 4. [URL]
Halkların Demokratik Partisi Tüzüğü. 2014. “Article 1”, June 22. [URL]
Hoşgör, Şebnem. 2018. “Cumhurİttifakı’ Protokolü’nün tam metni.” Milliyet, May 4. [URL]
Ileter, Emel, and Bulut, Alper Tolga. 2020. “Substantive Representation of Women in Turkish Politics: A Quantitative Analysis of Parliamentary Bills,” SİYASAL: Journal of Political Sciences, 29(1): 165–188.Google Scholar
Jónasdóttir, Anna G., and Kathleen B. Jones. 2009. The political interests of GenderRevisited: RedoingTheoryandresearchwith a feminist face. Manchester: Manchester UniversityPress.Google Scholar
Kathlene, Lyn. 2001. “Words that Matter: Women’s Voice and Institutional Bias in Public Policy Formation.” In Sue Carroll, editor, The Impact of Women in Public Office. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Kranert, Michael. 2018. “Political myth as a legitimation strategy: The case of the golden age myth in the discourses of the Third Way,” Journal of Language and Politics, 17(6): 882 – 906. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koyuncu, Berrin, and Aylin Özman. 2019. “Women’s rights organizations and Turkish state in the post-2011 era: ideological disengagement versus conservative alignment,” Turkish Studies, 20:5, 728–753. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Official Gazette. 2013. Amendment dated 4/10/2013 and numbered 2013/5443 of the 16.07.1982 dated 16.07.1982 numbered 17849. [URL]
Phillips, Anne. 1994. “Democracy and representation. Or, why should it matter who our representatives are?” In: Frauen und Politik: Schweizerisches Jahrbuch fur Politische Wissenschaft. Association suisse de science politique, Zurich, Switzerland, pp. 63–76.Google Scholar
Pitkin, Hannah. 1967. The Concept of Representation. Berkeley: University of California Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reingold, Beth, and Michele Swers. 2011. “An Endogenous Approach to Women’s Interests: When Interests Are Interesting in and of Themselves.” Politics & Gender, 7(3): 429–435. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reyes, Antonio. 2011. “Strategies of Legitimization in Political Discourse: From Words to Actions.” Discourse & Society 22, (6): 781–807. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Saward, Michael. 2006. Democracy and citizenship: expanding domains. In Oxford Handbook of Political Theory, ed. John S. Dryzek, Bonnie Honig, and Anne Phillips, 400–419. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
. 2010. The representative claim. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Serafis, Dimitris, Kitis, E. Dimitris, and Assimakopoulos, Stavros. 2022. “Sailing to Ithaka: The transmutation of Greek left-populism in discourses about the European Union.” Journal of Language & Politics, 21(2):344–369. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Squires, Judith. 2008. “The Constitutive Representation of Gender: Extra-Parliamentary Re-Presentations of Gender Relations.” Representation 44(2): 187–204. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Swers, Michele L. 1998. “Are women more likely to vote for women’s issue bills than their male colleagues?” Legislative Studies Quarterly, 23(3): 435–448. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2002. The Difference Women Make: The Policy Impact of Women in Congress. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tamerius, Karin. L. 1995. “Sex, Gender, and Leadership in the Representation of Women” In Gender Power Leadership and Governance, ed. By G. Duerst-Lahti and R. M. Kelly, USA: The University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Tank, Pınar. 2005. “Political Islam in Turkey: A State of Controlled Secularity”, Turkish Studies 6(1–3):12. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ucaray-Mangitli, Burcu, and Senem Yildirim. 2023. “Gender segregation in parliamentary committees of Turkey: Intermediary spaces of women’s political representation,” Women’s Studies International Forum, 971. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ugur-Cinar, Meral. 2024. Memory, Patriarchy and Economy in Turkey: Narratives of Political Power. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Ugur-Cinar, Meral and Ali Acikgoz. 2023. “Social Democracy at the Crossroads in Turkey: Global Questions, Local Answers,” European Legacy, 28:6, 615–638. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vaara, Eero. 2014. “Struggles over legitimacy in the Eurozone crisis: Discursive legitimation strategies and their ideological underpinnings,” Discourse & Society, 25(4):500–518. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Dijk, Teun. 1997. “What is Political Discourse Analysis?” In Political Linguistics, ed. Jan Blommaert and Chris Bulcean, 11–52. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Leeuwen, Theo. 2008. “The Discursive Construction of Legitimation”, Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Analysis, Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Williams, Melissa S. 1998. Voice, Trust, and Memory. The Failings of Liberal Representation. Princeton: Princeton University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 1997. “Deferring Group Representation.” In Ethnicity and Group Rights, Yearbook of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy, ed. Ian Shapiro and Will Kymlicka, 349–376. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar