İstanbul'daki feminist avukatlar: Hukuksal olanla hukuksal olmayan arasındaki sınırlar üzerine yeniden düşünmek

This thesis scrutinizes the inclusion, approaches, and roles of feminist lawyers in İstanbul to the legal field through law-making and litigation processes. Although feminist lawyers are trained in law, which claims itself to be neutral and equally distant to all citizens, they do not only exist as legal experts and lawyers in the legal field, but also as activists. This study demonstrates that feminist lawyers maintain their struggle without abandoning any of the three (legal expertise, lawyering, activism) and their existence harbors unique potentials and conundrums, without adhering to binary oppositions between lawyering and activism, and the legal and non-legal. Based on the interviews with feminist lawyers and observations in the meetings with women's organizations, first, I historicize how law is constituted as a field of struggle by women. By doing so, I explain how law became a modifiable and highly-contested field of struggle, as well as women's different focuses and modes of solidarity. Following that, I trace how feminist lawyers' legal expertise, lawyering experiences, and activism intermingle throughout their relations with state institutions, authorities, and developments in the transnational arena. Lastly, I elaborate how they maintain their activism and lawyering in the court rooms, along with their experiences and strategies.