Browsing by Author "Gencoglu, Funda"

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Dissident Women's Organizations as A Counter-Hegemonic Actor in Turkey
(TURKISH STUDIES, 2024) Gunduz, Melisa; Gencoglu, Funda
Could the Turkish women's movement, which has a strong reaction mechanism, be a constituent actor of counter-hegemony? The main reasons behind this question are the women's movement's deep-rooted history and its openness to combine theory with practice/action. When looked from the Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau's perspective of radical democracy theory, the women's movement appears to have a considerable potential of deciphering the existing hegemony and articulating the social demands which exclude and are excluded by the present-day hegemony in Turkey. This article tries to understand how women's movement in Turkey conceptualizes the existing power relations that constitute the neoliberal religio-conservative hegemony and how it responds to it.
Heroes, villains and celebritisation of politics: hegemony, populism and anti-intellectualism in Turkey
(2021) Gencoglu, Funda; 0000-0001-8211-8624
This article analyses the rising tides of celebrity politics in Turkey by contextualising it within the changing dynamics of Turkish politics during the last decade. More specifically, it tries to understand the fault lines of celebritisation of politics with reference to the installation and re-installation of the neoliberal conservative hegemony. Celebrity politics in Turkey has acquired a unique character within a political environment where the tides of social opposition are very high and as a trend of de-democratisation has been hanging over the country. This is what makes the content and nature of celebrity politics in Turkey different from the general tendency in the world, as the most widespread form of celebrity politics is the advocacy of policy matters such as philanthropy and raising awareness on sensitive and noble human causes. In Turkey, the existing neoliberal conservative hegemony, since its first installation, has been able to find new and/or different ways of consolidating, revising, shifting, and re-installing itself, and it has done this by finding new ways of creating the collective identities of us versus them. It is the argument of this study that celebrity politics has been one of the latest resorts in that task.
On the construction of identities: An autoethnography from Turkey
(2019) Gencoglu, Funda; 0000-0001-8211-8624; AAR-7704-2020
In this article I analyze, on the basis of my personal experience, the discontents of contemporary Turkish politics; more specifically, neoliberal conservative hegemony, and its three manifestations: stability of instability; a religio-conservative gender regime; and anti-intellectualism. I illustrate how these manifestations are intertwined in the process of identity construction: how an individual's identity as a citizen, as a woman, as an academic is being constantly constructed/de-constructed/reconstructed in a manner integral to the social and political context. The contribution of this article is threefold: it shows how personal experiences are a legitimate source of knowledge; it enables an understanding of how political identities are in a constant state of making; it challenges dominant conceptions of politics and the political through challenging binaries such as individual/social, personal/political, and emotional/rational.
The student movement in Turkey: a case study of the relationship between (re)politicization and democratization
(2019) Gencoglu, Funda; Bugra Yarkin, Derya; 0000-0001-8211-8624; AAR-7704-2020
One particularly striking aspect of the global waves of social movements is the increasing politicization of youth, including students. Taking this as its starting point, this article discusses what the politicization of youth could mean for democracy and democratization in Turkey. This is important because, especially since 2011, Turkish politics has been dominated by debates concerning authoritarianization. Focusing on the largest student organization in Turkey, the Student Collectives (SC), this article shows that the relationship between politicization and democratization is more complicated than at first sight. Some aspects of the student movement in Turkey suggest it is an important moment of democratization in Turkey while other aspects arouse scepticism. Three crucial indicators of a movement's democratic potential are whether it attends to deciphering the existing constellation of power relations, reflects on the possibility of installing a counter-hegemony and gives importance to collective identities. However, the SC's potential democratic contribution is weakened by its conceptualization of democratic struggle in terms of antagonism rather than agonism through 'moralizing' politics. Moreover, its reluctance to engage with institutions of representative democracy further complicates the matter. The main contribution of this study is its discussion of various forms of politicization and their possible effects on democratization; and to give some clues to the activists of different social movements that can be helpful in their self-reflection.