Sustaining Feminist Ethos: Queer and Feminist Journals under Anti-Gender Epistemic Claims in Turkey

In this talk, I approach anti-genderism not only as a repressive policy and a backlash, but as a pursuit of epistemic authority aimed at displacing and replacing critical gender studies in Turkish universities. Drawing on in-depth interviews with editors of four queer and feminist academic journals published in Turkey, I focus on how feminist and queer epistemic ecologies are sustained and expanded within and beyond academia, as well as on the challenges and vulnerabilities that shape these efforts.

Women’s and gender studies (WGS) in Turkey—rooted in the 1980s—has long been mutually reinforcing with feminist and queer movements. The political-academic ethos cultivated by WGS within universities constitutes a key dynamic behind its targeting by various anti-gender actors, mechanisms, and procedures. I begin by tracing the trajectory through which anti-genderism in Turkish universities has shifted from being framed as a repressive politics to claiming a “constructive” epistemology that nonetheless excludes queer and feminist knowledge. I then analyze how these journals sustain their feminist ethos and intellectual integrity through practices of scholarly community-building, as well as through financial, editorial, and epistemic strategies that strengthen feminist knowledge production and dissemination. Finally, I reflect on the prospects of gender studies in Turkish universities amid administrative, epistemic, and political landscapes reshaped by anti-genderism.