Turkey's Response to the Global Gender Regime

Most would agree that a global gender equality regime has been established (for example CEDAW), but it is less clear how those global gender equality norms ‘travel’ to different localities and interact with local politics, cultural and religious norms. After all, without an understanding of how global norms are interpreted, received, redefined, we are mostly in the dark about the effectiveness of the global gender equality regime.

In this paper, I first investigate the nature of the global gender regime. This is because it is important to know how this regime came into being, who promoted it, what the contested issues are and the existing compliance mechanisms. Then, I turn to Turkey and explore its interactions with this global regime, making sure to pay special attention to its historical, political, religious and cultural context.