The conservative right and women in Turkey: The changing political panorama from NSP to JDP

In this study, it is aimed to describe the woman policies of conservative parties in Turkey from NSP to JDP and evaluate the JDP's policies and applications on the issue. For this purpose, the historical and descriptive research methods were made use of in the study. The women policies of a wide variety of political parties from the NSP to JDP have been dealt with in this study, and it is expected that the study will contribute greatly to the social gender studies in terms of coverage and method. In this study, which has been prepared with these purposes and expectations, firstly conservative political thought, social gender and feminism issues have been dealt with. Then, the conservatism and the women policies of the conservative rightist parties in Turkey have been investigated. The results obtained in the study show that the National Vision parties from the NSP to WP have imprisoned women to certain traditional and historical roles like "being a mother" and "being a wife"; and deemed them as being worthy of a status coming after men in political, economic and social life. It has also been determined that in the WP era, women were partly cared for due to their devoted roles in politicization of Islam and in increasing the support of the voters for the party; and in VP and FP era, although women rights and the social status of women were cared for, no developments that exceeded the former National Vision parties were observed in this field. However, it has also been determined that due to the political legitimacy concerns, JDP headed for the EU membership and the party's adopting a liberal understanding, a serious acceleration was given to the country in terms of human rights of women, women-men equality and increasing the visibility of women in public areas. However, in the third ruling period, in which the concern for proof of the political maturity ended, it is seen that there is a transition from conservative democracy to mere conservatism on women's policy.