Digital Feminist Activism in Turkey: Has Long-Awaited Fourth Wave Feminism Arrived?

Abstract

Throughout different waves of feminisms, women have called attention to sexist political and social norms across countries. Starting from the first wave feminist demands of suffrage to third wave’s intersectional feminist politics, women activists have struggled to achieve gender equality in different contexts. With an emphasis on intersected identities, fourth wave feminism, also called digital feminism, endeavours to implement third wave’s concepts in the digital space, via blogs, websites, social media platforms. In Turkey, in the second decade of the 2000s, women have started to extensively use social media to combat patriarchy, particularly violence against women and femicide, and to increase communication and solidarity among women in line with the political opportunity structures in the country. Through digital platforms, women stimulate political change by exposing gendered discourses. However, due to government’s increased control on digital spaces, activists’ capacity to alter the social gendered structure has been limited. Nevertheless, digital spaces still have a great potential to work as counterpublics for marginalised groups, such as women.

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