Hande Eslen-Ziya
Biographic Data
| ID | 879954 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Hande Eslen-Ziya |
| GIVEN NAMES | Hande |
| FAMILY NAME | Eslen-Ziya |
| SIGNATURE | ESLEN-ZIYA H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Stavanger |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7113-6771 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 52 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 186 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 51 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Diversity in Norwegian teacher education: Migrant experiences and institutional pathways in accessing the teaching profession
Introduction This article investigates the tension between policy ambitions for diversity and the structural barriers as experienced and perceived by migrants in accessing teaching professions in Norway. Despite official discourse emphasising diversity and inclusion and an urgent need for qualified teachers, our analysis reveals a recurring contradiction that we conceptualise as the Open Demand / Closed Pathways Paradox . While policy frameworks …
Weaponised Humour: Delegitimisation of Academic Expertise via Persona-Based Parody
This article examines how humour can operate as online violence against academics through a persona-based parody of my public writing. I situate this case within three overlapping frameworks – humour as social infrastructure, epistemic injustice, and the digital hall of mirrors – to show how parody enacts delegitimisation while simultaneously shielding attackers under claims of “just joking”. Anchored in the Norwegian context, the analysis connec…
The little square of agonies: Avatar aesthetics, protest masculinity and incel ‘neo-reality’
This research investigates protest masculinity within the incel community, focussing on avatar pictures as a unique form of self-expression and community-building. Analysing self-portrayals from incel.is, the study unveils how these avatars, laden with distinct qualities, serve as tools for both individual and collective political expression. Departing from traditional views on protest masculinity, the study highlights these aesthetic expressions…
Populist anti-genderism: A relational comparison of populist politics in Turkey, Hungary, and Sweden
This article argues that gender is constitutive – not merely contextual – of right-wing populist politics in Turkey, Hungary, and Sweden. Despite contrasting political and cultural contexts, these movements meet in using anti-genderism as a key discursive repertoire. Familialism, heteronormativity, and anti-science discourse function as gendered mechanisms through which populist actors feminise, queer, or intellectualise their opponents, portrayi…
Prototype research as a qualitative method for studying academic life under illiberalism: The case of Turkey
Academics working in the fields of gender studies (gender, women and masculinity studies) navigate a unique set of professional challenges, including institutional discrimination, societal pushback, and political pressures related to their research. This article presents the results of twelve semi-structured interviews with gender studies scholars in Turkey, illustrating their struggles, coping strategies, and the solidarity (or lack thereof) wit…
Unravelling disengagement: Communal reactions, emotional echo chambers, and political masculinity in the incel anti-public sphere
This article analyzes the dynamics of online incel communities in the context of disengagement, highlighting the symbolic fracture created by the withdrawal of a key figure who went by the username ‘Komesarj’. Drawing on Davis's (2021) concept of the anti-public sphere and extending it through the framework of emotional echo chambers, we analyze qualitative data from X.com and the incel.is forum. Our findings show that Komesarj's disengagement de…
The Aesthetics of Global Protest: Visual Culture and Communication
Protestors across the world use aesthetics in order to communicate their ideas and ensure their voices are heard. This book looks at protest aesthetics, which we consider to be the visual and performative elements of protest, such as images, symbols, graffiti, art, as well as the choreography of protest actions in public spaces. Through the use of social media, protestors have been able to create an alternative space for people to engage with pol…
Taking Parenthood Seriously: How Parental Status Predicts the Career Trajectories of Women in Politics
There has been renewed interest in the role of parenthood in explaining women's career outcomes in politics. Yet the empirical understanding of how and in what circumstances the parental status of women in legislatures affects their political career is relatively under‐explored. Utilizing an original dataset covering the entire population of Turkish legislators, our study focuses on the tenure duration of those who served in parliament at least o…
Interconnected but Fragmented: The Digital Double Bind of Opportunity and Constraint in the Middle East
In an era when digital technologies permeate every surface of modern life, Digital Double Bind by Mohamed Zayani and Joe F. Khalil offers a compelling exploration of the Middle East's complex engagement with the digital turn. This groundbreaking work navigates the cultural politics of technology in a region where rapid modernization intersects with entrenched sociopolitical norms. Through the lens of Gregory Bateson's theory of the double bind, t…
The translation of moral panic into misogynist e-bile: The case of Turkish singer Gülşen
In this paper, we examine a recent incident involving Gülşen, a Turkish singer who was brutally attacked on Twitter (now X), and demonstrate how moral panics translate into misogynist e-bile and violent cyber-attacks, both of which reinforce a polarized political environment. We analysed tweets posted 24–August 30 2022 and show that e-bile was used distinctly more often by opponents of Gülşen who are characterized by religiously conservative norm…
Academic state of anomie in gender studies: Masked and expressed emotions within the academic environment in Turkey
Academics in Turkey face relentless demands for productivity and competition, exacerbated by neoliberal and anti-gender ideologies. These pressures erode well-being, fostering isolation and self-doubt. This study examines the lived experiences of Gender Studies scholars—our closest colleagues—who navigate both an oppressive political climate and rising anti-gender sentiments. Our findings reveal emotional and physical distress: exhaustion, stress…
Mapping Practitioners' Perspectives on the Interaction of Intimate Partner Violence and Digital Inequalities in Norway's Digital Transformation Context
Conceptualising TechViolence Nexus: Experiences of ambiguities at the intersection of digital coercive control and (socio)digital inequalities
This short communication is based on a qualitative study investigating the relationship between digital technologies and gender-based violence (GBV). The term, TechViolence Nexus , introduced in this article, offers an in-depth understanding of the cyclic interaction between digital coercive control and (socio)digital inequalities. It highlights the ambiguities created by technologies in victim-survivors’ lives, revealing the ways in which digita…
Revisiting Erdoğan’s century of Turkey: Unmasking populism’s political strategies through the Lens of the Canal Istanbul
This study delves into the nuanced dynamics of populism in Turkish politics, focusing on the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Over the past two decades, we contend that the AKP’s policy proposals and projects have transcended mere political promises, instead evolving into meticulously planned physical embodiments of the party’s political dominance. Through an in-depth an…
Turkish Gender Studies’ Scholars: Balancing Academic and Emotional Turbulence
Against the backdrop of global transformations in science policy and higher education, this study examines the profound shifts induced by anti-gender mobilizations and the precarious nature of academic labor. Focusing on the interplay of illiberal governance and neoliberal measures, particularly within Turkish academia, we investigate their impact on gender studies. Through fifteen in-depth interviews with Turkish academics specializing in gender…
Online disclosure, a mechanism for seeking informal justice
Recent scholarship considers digital platforms’ potential to serve as sites for feminist counter-spaces. ‘Speaking out’ or disclosing gender-based violence online allows survivors to give voice to their experiences and create a political arena for seeking informal forms of justice. What is significant in these instances is not a shift away from formal justice mechanisms but how the alternative ones take a survivor-focused approach to meet their n…
Turning Counterhegemony into Hegemony
This article attempts to show how government-supported women’s NGOs (GO-NGOs) in Turkey actively contribute to the construction of neoliberal, conservative, antigender discourses of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. Since the second decade of the 2000s, Turkey has undergone rapid de-democratization as a result of AKP’s election victories, which have brought with them a major backlash against gender equality policies. Moreover, a…
A political game: The dispute over the Canal Istanbul project
This study aims to understand how ideologies become embedded in political projects through strategies of legitimation aimed at justifying specific ideas, beliefs, and emotions.By using the political negotiation between the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Republican People's Party (CHP) concerning the Canal Istanbul Project as an illustrative example from Turkey to 'ideology in action', this article shows how various rhetorical combina…
Conceptualizing academic sustainability
Recently, academia has become an arena of political conflict that results in the corrosion of academic life in general.Restrictions of academic freedom and lack of research autonomy, in addition to standardized success criteria of neoliberal universities, have created an academic reality contributing to hierarchy, competition, anxiety, burn-out, and precariousness.Taking gender studies as a case, we aim to define and conceptualize academic sustai…
Digital vulnerabilities and online harassment of academics, consequences, and coping strategies: An exploratory analysis
Academic research is currently undergoing a wave of contestation, ranging from violent attacks and life-threatening situations to public undermining of their research and online threats and harassment. A variety of actors engage in hostile behaviors, including ordinary people as well as state institutions, and address scholars working in diverse disciplines and on diverse topics, such as climate change, vaccination, gender studies, colonialism an…
Disclosing gender-based violence online: Strengthening feminist collective agency or creating further vulnerabilities
The withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention (in March 2021) and the high prevalence of gender-based violence reflect the current patriarchal political atmosphere in Turkey. Such backlash occurred despite the strong feminist resistance and transnational support to combat anti-gender developments. In this political climate, online disclosures of gender-based violence have become critical in shaping public debates about violence against women in Tur…
Special Section: Contemporary Forms of Illiberal and Anti-feminist Mobilizations of Gender
Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society - Volume 30, Number 1, Spring 2023
Persuasive narrative during the Covid-19 pandemic: Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s posts on Facebook
This article explores the Facebook posts of Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg to highlight the key features of her crisis communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. It draws on data from Solberg’s Facebook posts from February 27, 2020 to February 9, 2021 (i.e., starting from the day when the first case of COVID-19 was recorded in Norway until the time of data collection for this study). Out of her 271 posts, 157 of them were about COVID-19 an…
Humour and sarcasm: Expressions of global warming on Twitter
The increasing popularity of Twitter as a medium for sharing and debating scientific information brings forth questions about the type of narratives emerging around environmental/climate change and global warming. This article maps the landscape of narratives of how Twitter is used to communicate about environmental issues in Turkey. It displays how these actors can play a crucial role in constructing and/or de-constructing such crisis. I show ho…
The Aesthetics of Global Protest
Protestors across the world use aesthetics in order to communicate their ideas and ensure their voices are heard. This book looks at protest aesthetics, which we consider to be the visual and performative elements of protest, such as images, symbols, graffiti, art, as well as the choreography of protest actions in public spaces. Through the use of social media, protestors have been able to create an alternative space for people to engage with pol…
The differential impact of Covid‐19 on the work conditions of women and men academics during the lockdown
That the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the work conditions of large segments of society is in no doubt. A growing body of journalistic accounts raised the possibility that the lockdown caused by the pandemic has affected women and men in different ways, due mostly to the traditionally gendered division of labour in society. We attempt to test this oft-cited argument by conducting an original survey with nearly 200 academics. Specifically, we exp…
Beyond the iconic protest images: The performance of ‘everyday life’ on social media during Gezi Park
Using the Gezi Park protests as a case study this article considers the performative component of protest movements including how and why protestors actively produce protest activity ‘on the ground’ and how this is expressed through visual images. It looks beyond iconic images which appear as emblematic of the protest and instead shifts our focus to consider the more ‘everyday’ or mundane activities which occur during a protest occupation, and ex…
The Impact of Conservative Discourses in Family Policies, Population Politics, and Gender Rights in Poland and Turkey
This article uses childcare as a case study to test the impact of ideas that embody a traditional understanding of gender relations in relation to childcare. Conservative ideas regard increasing female labor market participation as a cause of decreasing fertility on the functioning of a set of general policies to increase fertility rates. It looks into the Polish and Turkish contexts for empirical evidence. The Polish context shows a highly insti…
De-democratization under the New Turkey ? Challenges for women’s organizations
This article is an endeavour to explore the changing networking strategies of women’s non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Turkey over the last decade. We delineate the shifts and changes during what we call the de-democratization process where secular women’s organizations face significant constraints and difficulties while networking and lobbying the government. Under these constrained conditions, yet, secular women’s organizations make an …
The Discursive Governance of Population Politics: The Evolution of a Pro-birth Regime in Turkey
This article investigates the puzzle of the emergence of Turkish politicians’ discourse on population stagnation and growth despite healthy population growth and an above-replacement-level birth rate. We understand this emergence through considering how politicians link national identity and economic value to population increase. Empirically, our article traces the slogans that then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the governing party poli…
Social Media and Turkish Feminism: New resources for social activism
The recent democratic movements in the Middle East, especially in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, and Syria, put forward a new kind of political activism accelerated by social media. Whereas in these countries the social media created opportunities for the social movement referred to as the "Arab Spring," this paper looks at the neighboring country of Turkey and the role of social media in Turkish women's activism.Keywords:: women's activi…
Looking for truth in absurdity: Humour as community-building and dissidence against authoritarianism
What makes humour an honest and a direct communication tool for people? How do social networking and digital media transmit user-generated political and humorous content? Our research argues that the way in which humour is deployed through digital media during protest action allows protestors to assert humanity and sincerity against dehumanising political manipulation frameworks. Humorous content, to this extent, enables and is indicative of inde…
Perceptions of gendered‐challenges in academia: How women academics see gender hierarchies as barriers to achievement
Despite the egalitarian and collegial philosophy in its ideals, academic market is segregated and gendered where women receive fewer rewards than their male counterparts, are under‐represented, segregated and excluded from participation in the formal and informal academic structures in academia. The country contexts, the gendered academic organizational settings as well as everyday interactions all play a major role not only in women's participat…
New waves for old rights? Women’s mobilization and bodily rights in Turkey and Norway
This article focuses on the resurgence of women’s movements in Turkey and Norway against the backdrop of their historical trajectories and wider gender policies. Throughout the 2010s, both countries witnessed a similar set of conservative and neoliberal policies that intervened in women’s bodily rights. In both countries, women’s movements responded with mass mobilizations and influenced the political agenda. The proposed restrictions on abortion…
Academic women’s voices on gendered divisions of work and care: ‘Working till I drop . . . then dropping’
Our main goal in this article is to discuss the structural and persistent problems experienced by women academics, especially with respect to the gendered divisions of academic tasks and unequal divisions of care obligations in the domestic sphere. The analysis is based on reflexive thematic analysis of the open-ended questions of an online questionnaire on the academic work environment, work satisfaction, stress, academic duties and allocation o…
Toward postheroic leadership: A case study of Gezi's collaborating multiple leaders
This article explores how the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul, Turkey, exemplify the changing character of contemporary social movements, where teamwork and collaboration are supported and the ability to empower, support, and engage others is emphasized. We argue that the role of leadership in social movements in general and in the Turkish Gezi context specifically goes beyond the creation of traditional leaders. This new form of leadership is dri…
From offline to online violence: New challenges for the contemporary society
So far, the focus on violence has been it as a concept and its evolution within contemporary societies. For instance, several studies consider violence to be influenced by singular cultural issues and perceptions, with the primary point being the presence of an authoritative presence capable of acting violently. Others instead focus on the degrees and typologies of violence and question the role of modernity in the execution of acts of violence b…
Online disclosure, a mechanism for seeking informal justice
Recent scholarship considers digital platforms’ potential to serve as sites for feminist counter-spaces. ‘Speaking out’ or disclosing gender-based violence online allows survivors to give voice to their experiences and create a political arena for seeking informal forms of justice. What is significant in these instances is not a shift away from formal justice mechanisms but how the alternative ones take a survivor-focused approach to meet their n…
Conceptualizing academic sustainability
Recently, academia has become an arena of political conflict that results in the corrosion of academic life in general.Restrictions of academic freedom and lack of research autonomy, in addition to standardized success criteria of neoliberal universities, have created an academic reality contributing to hierarchy, competition, anxiety, burn-out, and precariousness.Taking gender studies as a case, we aim to define and conceptualize academic sustai…
Digital vulnerabilities and online harassment of academics, consequences, and coping strategies: An exploratory analysis
Academic research is currently undergoing a wave of contestation, ranging from violent attacks and life-threatening situations to public undermining of their research and online threats and harassment. A variety of actors engage in hostile behaviors, including ordinary people as well as state institutions, and address scholars working in diverse disciplines and on diverse topics, such as climate change, vaccination, gender studies, colonialism an…
Special Section: Contemporary Forms of Illiberal and Anti-feminist Mobilizations of Gender
Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society - Volume 30, Number 1, Spring 2023
Immigrants in Norway: Resilience, challenges and vulnerabilities in times of Covid-19
Immigrants have been found to be disproportionately impacted during the COVID-19 pandemic across the world. Our study, exploring the experiences of immigrants in Norway during the pandemic, is based on interviews and focus group discussions with 10 and 21 immigrants, respectively. Our analysis showed that participants perceived the circumstances induced by the pandemic to be difficult and voiced the challenges experienced. Their experiences encom…
Mapping Practitioners' Perspectives on the Interaction of Intimate Partner Violence and Digital Inequalities in Norway's Digital Transformation Context
Turkish Gender Studies’ Scholars: Balancing Academic and Emotional Turbulence
Against the backdrop of global transformations in science policy and higher education, this study examines the profound shifts induced by anti-gender mobilizations and the precarious nature of academic labor. Focusing on the interplay of illiberal governance and neoliberal measures, particularly within Turkish academia, we investigate their impact on gender studies. Through fifteen in-depth interviews with Turkish academics specializing in gender…
A political game: The dispute over the Canal Istanbul project
This study aims to understand how ideologies become embedded in political projects through strategies of legitimation aimed at justifying specific ideas, beliefs, and emotions.By using the political negotiation between the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Republican People's Party (CHP) concerning the Canal Istanbul Project as an illustrative example from Turkey to 'ideology in action', this article shows how various rhetorical combina…
Disclosing gender-based violence online: Strengthening feminist collective agency or creating further vulnerabilities
The withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention (in March 2021) and the high prevalence of gender-based violence reflect the current patriarchal political atmosphere in Turkey. Such backlash occurred despite the strong feminist resistance and transnational support to combat anti-gender developments. In this political climate, online disclosures of gender-based violence have become critical in shaping public debates about violence against women in Tur…
Men’s Rights Activism and Anti-Feminist Resistance in Turkey and Norway
This article, by addressing the growing anti-feminist activism and mobilization and its consequences for gender equality and women’s rights, sheds light on anti-feminist resistance in Turkey and Norway. Using the concept of counter movement, we study men’s rights mobilization in Turkey and Norway, two countries with different histories and realities of women’s rights and gender equality. We first compare how the respective men’s rights movements …
Understanding ‘New Turkey’ Through Women’s Eyes: Gender Politics in Turkish Daytime Talk Shows
Following the AKP’s second election victory in 2007, significant changes to the party programme and strategy evolved into the ‘New Turkey,’ a new, more abstractly defined discursive and operational space. This both redefined democratic practices and generated a backlash to gender equality and the status of women. As media is a powerful hegemonic tool, where political actors compete for influence, analysis of television daytime talk shows reflects…
Political Religion and Politicized Women in Turkey: Hegemonic Republicanism Revisited
Since its establishment in 1923, the Republic of Turkey has assumed a sacred character, owing primarily to the influence of republicanism, the country’s dominant political religion. Processes of modernization, inherent in republicanism, became the main instigators for the improvement of women’s rights in Turkey from the 1920s and 1930s onwards. However, thanks to the subsequent Europeanization process in Turkey, coinciding with the new millennium…
The Impact of Conservative Discourses in Family Policies, Population Politics, and Gender Rights in Poland and Turkey
This article uses childcare as a case study to test the impact of ideas that embody a traditional understanding of gender relations in relation to childcare. Conservative ideas regard increasing female labor market participation as a cause of decreasing fertility on the functioning of a set of general policies to increase fertility rates. It looks into the Polish and Turkish contexts for empirical evidence. The Polish context shows a highly insti…
Social Media and Turkish Feminism: New resources for social activism
The recent democratic movements in the Middle East, especially in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, and Syria, put forward a new kind of political activism accelerated by social media. Whereas in these countries the social media created opportunities for the social movement referred to as the "Arab Spring," this paper looks at the neighboring country of Turkey and the role of social media in Turkish women's activism.Keywords:: women's activi…
Toward postheroic leadership: A case study of Gezi's collaborating multiple leaders
This article explores how the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul, Turkey, exemplify the changing character of contemporary social movements, where teamwork and collaboration are supported and the ability to empower, support, and engage others is emphasized. We argue that the role of leadership in social movements in general and in the Turkish Gezi context specifically goes beyond the creation of traditional leaders. This new form of leadership is dri…
New waves for old rights? Women’s mobilization and bodily rights in Turkey and Norway
This article focuses on the resurgence of women’s movements in Turkey and Norway against the backdrop of their historical trajectories and wider gender policies. Throughout the 2010s, both countries witnessed a similar set of conservative and neoliberal policies that intervened in women’s bodily rights. In both countries, women’s movements responded with mass mobilizations and influenced the political agenda. The proposed restrictions on abortion…
Being a gay man in Turkey: Internalised sexual prejudice as a function of prevalent hegemonic masculinity perceptions
This paper examines expressions and experiences of internalised sexual stigma with respect to definitions of masculinity and identity conflicts through a thematic analysis of life-history narratives of 14 self-identified gay men living in Turkey. The analysis reveals that internalised sexual prejudice emerges when widely accepted hegemonic masculinity ideology is 'violated' by being gay. Participants' narratives indicate that their construction o…
The Discursive Governance of Population Politics: The Evolution of a Pro-birth Regime in Turkey
This article investigates the puzzle of the emergence of Turkish politicians’ discourse on population stagnation and growth despite healthy population growth and an above-replacement-level birth rate. We understand this emergence through considering how politicians link national identity and economic value to population increase. Empirically, our article traces the slogans that then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the governing party poli…
Politics and Gender Identity in Turkey: Centralised Islam for Socio-Economic Control
Understanding ‘New Turkey’ Through Women’s Eyes: Gender Politics in Turkish Daytime Talk Shows
Following the AKP’s second election victory in 2007, significant changes to the party programme and strategy evolved into the ‘New Turkey,’ a new, more abstractly defined discursive and operational space. This both redefined democratic practices and generated a backlash to gender equality and the status of women. As media is a powerful hegemonic tool, where political actors compete for influence, analysis of television daytime talk shows reflects…
The Aesthetics of Global Protest: Visual Culture and Communication
Protestors across the world use aesthetics in order to communicate their ideas and ensure their voices are heard. This book looks at protest aesthetics, which we consider to be the visual and performative elements of protest, such as images, symbols, graffiti, art, as well as the choreography of protest actions in public spaces. Through the use of social media, protestors have been able to create an alternative space for people to engage with pol…
Introduction: The Aesthetics of Global Protest : Visual Culture and Communication
Beyond the iconic protest images: The performance of ‘everyday life’ on social media during Gezi Park
Using the Gezi Park protests as a case study this article considers the performative component of protest movements including how and why protestors actively produce protest activity ‘on the ground’ and how this is expressed through visual images. It looks beyond iconic images which appear as emblematic of the protest and instead shifts our focus to consider the more ‘everyday’ or mundane activities which occur during a protest occupation, and ex…
Right-wing populism in New Turkey: Leading to all new grounds for troll science in gender theory
After years of progress in terms of gender and sexual rights, since 2012 Europe is facing a so-called gender backlash – opposition directed to issues related to reproductive policies and abortion, violence against women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) rights and gay marriages, gender mainstreaming and sex education at schools as well as antidiscrimination policies. In this article, firstly, by taking the anti-ge…
De-democratization under the New Turkey ? Challenges for women’s organizations
This article is an endeavour to explore the changing networking strategies of women’s non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Turkey over the last decade. We delineate the shifts and changes during what we call the de-democratization process where secular women’s organizations face significant constraints and difficulties while networking and lobbying the government. Under these constrained conditions, yet, secular women’s organizations make an …
The differential impact of Covid‐19 on the work conditions of women and men academics during the lockdown
That the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the work conditions of large segments of society is in no doubt. A growing body of journalistic accounts raised the possibility that the lockdown caused by the pandemic has affected women and men in different ways, due mostly to the traditionally gendered division of labour in society. We attempt to test this oft-cited argument by conducting an original survey with nearly 200 academics. Specifically, we exp…
Everyday gendered performances at home: Masculine domesticity
This article explores how men living in Istanbul talk about the sociality of house and care work – vacuuming the house, cooking, doing the laundry – in their everyday lives. It shows how these tasks are crucial for understanding contemporary Turkish men and how they are intertwined with notions of masculinity. This research is part of a larger study conducted between 2008 and 2010 across Turkey exploring the negotiation of masculine subjectivitie…
The symbol of social media in contemporary protest: Twitter and the Gezi Park movement
This article explores how Twitter has emerged as a signifier of contemporary protest. Using the concept of ‘social media imaginaries’, a derivative of the broader field of ‘media imaginaries’, our analysis seeks to offer new insights into activists’ relation to and conceptualisation of social media and how it shapes their digital media practices. Extending the concept of media imaginaries to include analysis of protestors’ use of aesthetics, it a…
Discursive Construction of Population Politics: Parliamentary Debates on Declining Fertility Rates in Turkey
In assessing how politicians generate population politics through parliamentary debates, I am interested in the discursive construction of such debates. Political debates are important contexts, influencing, and also being influenced by larger cultural processes drawing the boundaries of citizenship. This article carries out comparative and multi-method analyses of normative, religious and communicative dimensions of the population politics unfol…
Perceptions of gendered‐challenges in academia: How women academics see gender hierarchies as barriers to achievement
Despite the egalitarian and collegial philosophy in its ideals, academic market is segregated and gendered where women receive fewer rewards than their male counterparts, are under‐represented, segregated and excluded from participation in the formal and informal academic structures in academia. The country contexts, the gendered academic organizational settings as well as everyday interactions all play a major role not only in women's participat…
Persuasive narrative during the Covid-19 pandemic: Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s posts on Facebook
This article explores the Facebook posts of Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg to highlight the key features of her crisis communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. It draws on data from Solberg’s Facebook posts from February 27, 2020 to February 9, 2021 (i.e., starting from the day when the first case of COVID-19 was recorded in Norway until the time of data collection for this study). Out of her 271 posts, 157 of them were about COVID-19 an…
Humour and sarcasm: Expressions of global warming on Twitter
The increasing popularity of Twitter as a medium for sharing and debating scientific information brings forth questions about the type of narratives emerging around environmental/climate change and global warming. This article maps the landscape of narratives of how Twitter is used to communicate about environmental issues in Turkey. It displays how these actors can play a crucial role in constructing and/or de-constructing such crisis. I show ho…
From discontent to action: Quarantinehotel as Not Just a Hashtag
This article shows how Twitter users’ discontent with the quarantine hotel regulations in Norway turned into a digital protest. We discuss how the sharing and communication of messages through hashtags on Twitter facilitate the perception of the hashtag as a cultural object that activates a political agenda and perpetuates a digital social movement. This study used a novel approach to explore the significance of the echo chamber of emotions invol…
The search for alternative knowledge in the post-truth era: Anti-vaccine mobilization during the Covid-19 pandemic in Turkey
The search for alternative knowledge, conspiracy theories, distrust of expertise and anti-science movements are gaining momentum and post-truth populism is speeding up on the back of fake news. The crisis of truth refers to an era where evidence and objective facts get lost in sentiment, emotion, and personal beliefs. Relying on emotions, creationism, religious beliefs, and common sense over expertise deliberately creates counter-knowledge referr…
Establishing networked misogyny as a counter movement: The analysis of the online anti-Istanbul convention presence
We now live in an age of unhidden gender wars where direct violence occurs within online and offline spaces. These online spaces on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram become venues for attacks on gender and woman’s rights, as well as its intersection with race and ethnicity. Such online hate expressions and networked harassments channelled towards women provide clues for us, social scientists, to understand the underlying dynamics/nature of misogyny.…
Immigrants in Norway: Resilience, challenges and vulnerabilities in times of Covid-19
Immigrants have been found to be disproportionately impacted during the COVID-19 pandemic across the world. Our study, exploring the experiences of immigrants in Norway during the pandemic, is based on interviews and focus group discussions with 10 and 21 immigrants, respectively. Our analysis showed that participants perceived the circumstances induced by the pandemic to be difficult and voiced the challenges experienced. Their experiences encom…
Sociology (41 works) · Political science (38 works) · Politics (34 works) · Law (26 works) · Gender Politics and Representation (19 works) · Law (18 works) · Psychology (15 works) · Turkey's Politics and Society (14 works) · Gender Studies (13 works) · Gender, Feminism, and Media (13 works)