My Wife, My Choice: Reproductive Policymaking and Social Control in Turkey

Abstract

Looking at the trajectory of Turkish reproductive politics since the 1960s in three distinct periods, this study examines the mismatch between liberal legal reforms, and the lack of change in the gendered reproductive and sexual discourses within a context. By using interpretive policy analysis and discourse analysis, I follow the reproductive policymaking narratives in Turkey to examine to understand how reproductive reforms can create mechanisms of social control over women – and how women and families circumvent these mechanisms in pragmatic ways in return. I make use of newspaper archives going back to the 1950s and Parliament debate transcripts to understand what different reproductive technologies meant for the policymakers and the public, why certain technologies were legalized while others were not, what kinds of social norms the policymakers and the public expected these technologies to work within, and how the abortion debate changed in Turkey during the 2000s to re-politicize the issue after its “resolution” by the military government of early 1980s. I trace the evolution of reproductive policies along with the discursive creation of its constituents, and the discursive creation of the discriminatory gendered and economic rationalities they depend on.