Imperceptible multitude: Transformation of feminist subjectivities and political practices in contemporary Turkey

This dissertation examines the transformations in feminist politics and the forms of subjectivities in the post-2000s period in Turkey. It raises the question of what explains the termination of independent feminist organizations in Turkey, despite the apparent increase in the number of women+ participating in feminist night marches and the remarkable diffusion of feminist ideas to everyday life. It is based on a mixed-method study with a combination of qualitative and quantitative research with women+ taking part in the feminist night march in Istanbul. The qualitative part of the research includes in-depth interviews, participant observation, and content analysis of the founding journals in feminist history, while the quantitative part of the research includes an extensive survey of participants in the Feminist Night March in İstanbul. The dissertation argues that the feminist movement expands beyond the confines of a narrow activist circle and emerges as a broad, pluralistic, decentralized grassroots movement. This brings with it a change in class and spatial composition of the movement. While the class composition of the movement changed from the middle and upper-middle class to the lower classes and towards precarious and cognitive labor, the movement tended to expand spatially from city centers to peripheries and from middle-aged to younger generations. It argues that while the movement manifests itself in the form of street protests, marches, and social media campaigns at some critical moments, it is predominantly evolving towards a prefigurative politics that prioritizes everyday life in the form of rhizomatic networks.