LGBT Activism in the Context of Neoliberalism and Neo-Conservatism in Turkey

The Justice and Development Party (JDP) government owes its success to its post-crisis austerity program and the restructuring of local and global economies. The JDP has campaigned on a platform of achieving economic stability and human rights since their election in 2002. However, their neoliberal economic policies and neoconservative discourse regarding human rights and citizenship could not prevent skyrocketing rates of trans murders and worker deaths because of a stark decrease in job security. And women’s roles have been increasingly circumscribed. Many scholars question how the JDP has been able to stay in power given its neoconservative and neoliberal policies.

The LGBT movement in Turkey experienced increasing visibility because the JDP loosened laws against association as a result of EU negotiations. However, the government’s neoconservative rhetoric and neoliberal economic policies have left the claims for workers’ rights, social services, education, and the environment unanswered. While we see an increasing discourse of individual rights and liberties with a reference to economic liberalism, the pressing issue of social rights is ignored. It is important to ascertain the challenges for LGBT activism in a context where the discourses of individual rights and liberties and the number of LGBT associations increase while the government continues to ignore LGBT demands, and remains indifferent to issues regarding social rights. This paper examines the ways in which social and economical neoliberalism are co-constitutive of strategies and development of LGBT activism in Turkey and what this neoliberal structuring may imply for the concepts of LGBT rights and freedoms.