Authenticating Gender Policies through Sustained-Pressure: The Strategy Behind the Success of Turkish Feminists

The model of "boomerang effect" only partially explains the dynamics of the international and national activism of Turkish feminists. When their demands were not met by the state, feminists reached out to the United Nations and the European Union. However, rather than bypassing the Turkish state as it would be expected by the boomerang model, they kept pressuring the state. This political strategy, which I call sustained-pressure, helped feminists claim responsibility and success during and after the gender policy changes of the 2000s in Turkey. Establishing the indigenousness of the need for change eased ultra-nationalist opposition to external pressure.