The Rising Feminist Movement in Turkey During the Pandemic as an Example of Epistemic Struggle

This study focuses on gender policies of Turkey, an EU candidate country, during the coronavirus pandemic. and examines the feminist movement as an epistemic struggle against the epistemic injustice created by male-dominated knowledge production. This struggle can be considered as an epistemic struggle to the extent that it includes a critique of the conservative patriarchy’s hierarchical perspective that prioritizes men over women and criticizes the “normals” constructed by the male-dominated perspective that relegate women to a secondary position. Following the literature that suggests that a gender perspective is needed to explain the success of conservative populism worldwide, this study argues that disasters such as pandemics are socially constructed by conservative populists in a way that increases their power and hegemony over society. This study will examine the forms and discourses of the feminist movement against the rising anti-gender policies in Turkey during the pandemic.