Policy change on combating violence against women in Turkey: The case of the Istanbul Convention

Violence against women is a common public problem all over the world. The Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, or the Istanbul Convention, as it is known to the public, is an international human rights convention that has been prepared to directly combat violence against women and imposes binding obligations on the states parties. Turkey played a leading role in the preparation of the Convention during the AK Party government and became the first country to sign the Convention at the meeting held in Istanbul in 2011. However, exactly ten years after the signing of the Istanbul Convention, the Convention was unilaterally terminated by the AK Party government. The aim of this thesis is to analyze the dynamics underlying the policy change that became apparent with the AK Party government's signing and annulment of the Istanbul Convention. The thesis, which adopts a qualitative approach, is based on a case study. The theoretical basis of the study is the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), which provides a theoretical approach to public policy change. ACF is an approach that explains policy making processes through the mutual struggle of coalitions of policy actors who share common ideas and views. From this point of view, the dynamics of policy making and the causal factors of change in the center of the Istanbul Convention case are analyzed through ACF. The thesis reveals that the political decisions to sign and terminate the Istanbul Convention are influenced by the contextual conditions characterized by the political system rather than the internal dynamics of the combating violence against women policy subsystem.