Turkish Political Parties as Gendered Gatekeepers and the Implementation of Voluntary Quotas

Abstract

Despite the strong contagion effect in the Turkish party system for the adoption of candidate gender quotas and a commitment to promote women’s recruitment for a more gender-balanced parliament, the record of quota implementation by the leading quota parties has been mixed. The prevailing gaps between the numbers of female candidates and the actual numbers of women elected from the party lists, in a highly competitive electoral process, also reveals a precarious context for women’s nomination due to stagnant and sexist institutional settings and gendered recruitment dynamics. Ideological differences among the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) which implements a soft quota, the social democratic Republican People’s Party (CHP) which adopted a formalized party quota, and the left-wing Kurdish-nationalist People’s Democracy Party (HDP) which has recently adopted a parity objective, partially account for differences in quota implementation. The chapter also underlines inter-party differences in terms of the gendered formal and informal institutional dynamics during candidate selection, which places the HDP ahead of others in terms of nominating and electing more women. In contrast, the more fluid context of a nomination process controlled by male-dominated leadership and party selectors, absent or weakly endorsed quota rules and sanctions, and the conventional status of the women’s branches, continue to hamper effective implementation within the AKP and the CHP.