Papers by Erman Örsan Yetiş
International Social Science Journal, 2026
Across much of the Global South and increasingly in the Global North, authoritarian populist imag... more Across much of the Global South and increasingly in the Global North, authoritarian populist imagination blurs boundaries between legality and illegality, weaponising law to suppress dissent while tolerating violence by allied actors. This imagination establishes a symbolic boundary mechanism between punitive/eliminative violence for political dissidents and marginalised groups, and the impunity of violence for privileged groups aligned with incumbent political power. Non-democratic politics in Turkey demonstrate how the incumbent regime's shifting sense of power due to declining popular support translates into more explicitly coercive strategies and the masculinist entrenchment of authoritarian populist imagination. Criminal selectivity and lawfare are utilised for this purpose; however, their effectiveness is underpinned by cultural intimacies that reflect the cultural and political processes of negotiation and recognition between the top-down majoritarian-authoritarian-securitarian political agenda and its bottom-up receptions. Cultural intimacies rooted in masculinist entrenchment involve both the enactment of familial codes as a cultural template for the masculinist protection of the family, state and nation, and the performance of swashbuckling masculinity as a cultural script for righteous aggression against targeted groups. Both reframe the mechanism of criminal selectivity and lawfare, reinforcing the incumbent regime's authoritarian populist imagination by constantly presenting itself as an indispensable and invincible ruling actor.
The Journal of Men's Studies, 2026
This paper explores gendered violence through intricate dynamics of internalised oppression and d... more This paper explores gendered violence through intricate dynamics of internalised oppression and domination within contexts where anti-genderism has arisen and subsequently exacerbated it. Turkey exemplifies the operation of anti-genderism linked to a majoritarian-authoritarian-securitarian top-down political agenda. Growing discontent against increasing social violence linked to this agenda signals potential for men's involvement in feminist social justice endeavours against anti-gender politics. However, men may find it challenging to embrace a feminist perspective due to their contentious positionalities regarding power dynamics involving internalised oppression and domination. Drawing on continuum thinking about gendered power relations, the paper reveals complex barriers that prevent men from cultivating alternative, empowering political-ethical imaginations. For men to engage in feminist social justice struggles against anti-genderism, they initially require reckoning with these power dynamics.
Frontiers in Political Science, 2025
In Turkey, anti-genderism is significantly influenced by top-down political structures, which are... more In Turkey, anti-genderism is significantly influenced by top-down political structures, which are primarily embedded within an authoritarian populist imagination in two distinct yet interconnected ways. Firstly, anti-genderism serves to re-establish the paternalistic social politics characterised by mafia-like tactics. The incumbent regime effectively holds the practical gender needs of women hostage, particularly their need for protection from violence, which is predominantly framed within the context of family-centred policies. Second, it serves to flesh out a masculine understanding of power as a form of masculinist entrenchment, relaying a will-topower or an insistent desire to maintain power at all costs. Through masculinist entrenchment, the incumbent power normalises the arbitrary use of punitive violence against political dissidents and rivals, and it also attempts to reinforce its image of being potent and invincible amid ongoing economic, political, and social turmoil, adopting an aggressive stance. This paper offers a detailed analytical framework that examines gendered violence, anti-genderism, and authoritarian politics through a relational lens, drawing on various concepts and illustrating their relevance by discussing the case of Turkey. Resisting anti-genderism requires a more comprehensive understanding of gendered violence alongside a transformative political imagination that can potentially reverse the recent authoritarian populist imagination and build a social justice-oriented political framework. To partially achieve this, the paper concludes with a critical discussion through continuum thinking on ways to develop and disseminate such an alternative political imagination across society.
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2025
In Turkey, anti-genderism is notably influenced by top-down politics, which are largely integrate... more In Turkey, anti-genderism is notably influenced by top-down politics, which are largely integrated into social engineering within a majoritarian-authoritarian-securitarian political agenda. While grassroots support for this agenda remains limited, it is equally challenging to claim that sweeping resistance from below exists against such politics. Social justice activism based on gender issues can be a common ground for front-line workers, activists, and scholars to resist these politics. In this endeavour, a transformative feminist social justice approach is required that highlights the visibility and autonomy of women's and LGBTQ+ movements while also incorporating men's participation. This inclusion is crucial, as topdown anti-gender politics jeopardise these movements' capability to connect with broader society amidst state-sanctioned violence. Despite growing discontent towards the ruling power's political agenda, men may struggle to adopt a gender-sensitive perspective and engage in transformative feminist social justice efforts due to their contentious positionalities in the feminist movement. I identify this struggle as a manifestation of slow violence that hinders sociological and political imaginations for an empowering ethical-political stance required for a radical societal transformation. The article explores possibilities of collaborating with men for lasting social transformation toward gender equality and justice, and preventing gendered violence within a feminist framework using the capabilities approach. Benefiting from four studies on gendered violence in Turkey, the article presents novel and robust insights into men's engagement and proposes the capabilities approach through continuum thinking, emphasising the context of interlinked forms and layered effects of gendered violence alongside ongoing anti-gender politics rooted in masculinist entrenchment. This revealed the challenges male scholars, front-line workers, and activists face in addressing social injustices and violence, highlighting the need for critical reflexivity to overcome these issues. Finally, the article discusses the possible conditions for fostering an environment that can facilitate the cultivation of critical reflexivity for male scholars, front-line workers, activists, and men in general.
Beyond authoritarian populist imagination: recognising indistinctive boundaries for democratic resistance
Journal of Psychosocial Studies, 2025
This article reframes authoritarian populism as a form of political imagination rather than merel... more This article reframes authoritarian populism as a form of political imagination rather than merely a political strategy, with implications for democratic resistance. By reinforcing socio-political boundaries along lines of race, gender, class, and religion, authoritarian populism undermines trust and collective efficacy, entrenching a polarising worldview. Drawing on the concept of “negative capability”—the ability to tolerate uncertainty and discomfort—the article argues for embracing disorientation as a catalyst for creative resistance against authoritarian tendencies. Introducing the notion of “indistinctive boundaries,” the work explores a mediating space bridging the past, the present and the future, and between groups that blurs rigid divisions while preserving mutual recognition and relationality. Turkey serves as a case study, illustrating the interplay between majoritarian, authoritarian, and securitarian political agendas within authoritarian populist imagination. The psychosocial perspective offered in this work provides a framework for connecting resistance movements globally, fostering intersubjectivity and alternative political imaginations that transcend the confines of authoritarian populist imagination.
Frontiers in sociology, Jun 19, 2024
Human knowledge pertaining to human-animal interaction is constructed by the human author, albeit... more Human knowledge pertaining to human-animal interaction is constructed by the human author, albeit the presence of animal subjects. Such a human lens is pronounced when studying human-animal interactions across history, whose nonhuman animal subjects are not only absent, and therefore eliminating the possibility of conducting empirical studies in situ, but also their experiences are filtered by the interpretative lens of human authors of extant historical accounts as well as contemporary human analysts who interpret these accounts. This article draws upon such epistemological limitations of understanding nonhuman animal presence in historical accounts and offers human-animal intersubjectivity as an analytical concept, involving generative iterability and indistinctive boundaries that emphasise intersubjective openness and relationality, to trace and disclose the continuity of human-animal co-existence. The article's historical scope is the Late Ottoman period characterised by a sense of temporal and spatial disorientation and reorientation for humans as well as street dogs during its modernisation processes.
Politics and governance, Mar 13, 2024
This article covers a unique form of political mobilisation within the Turkey-originated diaspori... more This article covers a unique form of political mobilisation within the Turkey-originated diasporic community in Europe that formed after Turkey introduced external voting in 2012. Although existing literature has paid attention to the impact of homeland political parties on external voting rights and diaspora organisations' role in electoral campaigns, these organisations' impact on members' mobilisation capacities for certain homeland parties remains understudied. This article tackles this topic by first comparing Turkey-originated diaspora organisations in Germany and the UK. Secondly, it guides future empirical work on the impact of the diaspora organisations on remote partisans' political orientation by taking the dominant emigrant profile in a residence country dimension into the study of external voting. Focusing on eligible Turkish citizens, the findings of this article are based on participant observation and 60 in-depth interviews conducted with remote voters who participated in the mobilisation of Turkey-based political parties in Germany between 2018 and 2023 and in the UK between 2021 and 2023 through diaspora organisations.
Women's Studies International Forum, 2024
Anti-gender movements jeopardise the rights of minoritised groups including women and LGBTQ+ peop... more Anti-gender movements jeopardise the rights of minoritised groups including women and LGBTQ+ people. Examining the existing literature on anti-genderism and the context in Turkey, this paper relates neoliberal conservative social policies and anti-rights front to top-down masculinist entrenchment, mainly operationalising cultural intimacies. The paper examines the main beneficiaries of anti-genderism in Turkey, articulated into top-down masculinist entrenchment aligned with self-preservation, victimhood discourses and the performance of swashbuckling masculinity. Anti-gender politics mainly operate as part of a top-down social engineering project drawing on the logic of masculinist protection and their reception at the grassroots level is predicated on cultural intimacies forged through mutual recognition and reciprocal relationships, which also maintains hegemonic authoritarian political and neoliberal economic order. Although outright support for anti-genderism is still limited in society, the current majoritarian-authoritarian-securitarian political agenda might exacerbate this in future. Hence, we present a comprehensive analysis of how top-down anti-gender politics are negotiated through cultural intimacies in wider society.
Kesişimsel Feminizm: Teoriden Sahaya Uzanan Kesişimsellikler, 2025
Erkeklerle Yürütülen Toplumsal Cinsiyet Temelli Şiddeti Önlemeye Yönelik Çalışmalarda Kesişimsell... more Erkeklerle Yürütülen Toplumsal Cinsiyet Temelli Şiddeti Önlemeye Yönelik Çalışmalarda Kesişimsellik Yaklaşımının Sunduğu Analitik ve Pratik İmkanlar
Frontiers in sociology, Mar 28, 2024
Design, as a practice of developing solutions beyond products, and increasingly services and poli... more Design, as a practice of developing solutions beyond products, and increasingly services and policies, inevitably poses an impact on gender (in)equality which remains largely unrecognized by design practitioners. This paper advocates the urgent need for adopting gender lenses in design education for sustainable cultural transformation through proper recognition of the complexity of any societal and cultural issue, power relations and inequalities, and introduces an initial attempt through a graduate-level educational design project. Throughout the project, students critically reflected on existing orientations in designing to develop norm-critical gender lenses, contained the resultant disorientation emerging from the contrast between their critical approaches and local contexts, and explored novel directions as reorientation to address four different societal and cultural issues and develop 11 design outcomes aiming at gender equality, social justice-oriented empowerment, and cultural transformation. The authors analyzed the design processes and outcomes to reveal opportunities and challenges for developing and deploying norm-critical gender lenses in tackling complex, intersecting socio-cultural and political issues, under three themes: gender stereotypes, norms, expectations, and roles; intersectional power relations and inequalities embedded in the social structure; and social justiceoriented empowerment beyond the market-oriented individualistic neoliberal order. A shift in the perceptions of the role of designers, from creator/problemsolver to facilitator/participant, and design outcomes, from absolute solutions to intermediaries of sociological and political imaginations, is found crucial in this endeavor, which requires safe spaces for future designers to reflect on existing orientations, contain disorientation with negative capability, and explore novel ways through reorientation.
Frontiers in Sociology, Mar 28, 2024
Design, as a practice of developing solutions beyond products, and increasingly services and poli... more Design, as a practice of developing solutions beyond products, and increasingly services and policies, inevitably poses an impact on gender (in)equality which remains largely unrecognized by design practitioners. This paper advocates the urgent need for adopting gender lenses in design education for sustainable cultural transformation through proper recognition of the complexity of any societal and cultural issue, power relations and inequalities, and introduces an initial attempt through a graduate-level educational design project. Throughout the project, students critically reflected on existing orientations in designing to develop norm-critical gender lenses, contained the resultant disorientation emerging from the contrast between their critical approaches and local contexts, and explored novel directions as reorientation to address four different societal and cultural issues and develop 11 design outcomes aiming at gender equality, social justice-oriented empowerment, and cultural transformation. The authors analyzed the design processes and outcomes to reveal opportunities and challenges for developing and deploying norm-critical gender lenses in tackling complex, intersecting socio-cultural and political issues, under three themes: gender stereotypes, norms, expectations, and roles; intersectional power relations and inequalities embedded in the social structure; and social justice-oriented empowerment beyond the market-oriented individualistic neoliberal order. A shift in the perceptions of the role of designers, from creator/problem-solver to facilitator/participant, and design outcomes, from absolute solutions to intermediaries of sociological and political imaginations, is found crucial in this endeavor, which requires safe spaces for future designers to reflect on existing orientations, contain disorientation with negative capability, and explore novel ways through reorientation.
Frontiers in Sociology, 2024
Design, as a practice of developing solutions beyond products, and increasingly services and poli... more Design, as a practice of developing solutions beyond products, and increasingly services and policies, inevitably poses an impact on gender (in)equality which remains largely unrecognized by design practitioners. This paper advocates the urgent need for adopting gender lenses in design education for sustainable cultural transformation through proper recognition of the complexity of any societal and cultural issue, power relations and inequalities, and introduces an initial attempt through a graduate-level educational design project. Throughout the project, students critically reflected on existing orientations in designing to develop norm-critical gender lenses, contained the resultant disorientation emerging from the contrast between their critical approaches and local contexts, and explored novel directions as reorientation to address four different societal and cultural issues and develop 11 design outcomes aiming at gender equality, social justice-oriented empowerment, and cultural transformation. The authors analyzed the design processes and outcomes to reveal opportunities and challenges for developing and deploying norm-critical gender lenses in tackling complex, intersecting socio-cultural and political issues, under three themes: gender stereotypes, norms, expectations, and roles; intersectional power relations and inequalities embedded in the social structure; and social justiceoriented empowerment beyond the market-oriented individualistic neoliberal order. A shift in the perceptions of the role of designers, from creator/problemsolver to facilitator/participant, and design outcomes, from absolute solutions to intermediaries of sociological and political imaginations, is found crucial in this endeavor, which requires safe spaces for future designers to reflect on existing orientations, contain disorientation with negative capability, and explore novel ways through reorientation.
Politics and Governance, 2024
This article covers a unique form of political mobilisation within the Turkey-originated diaspori... more This article covers a unique form of political mobilisation within the Turkey-originated diasporic community in Europe that formed after Turkey introduced external voting in 2012. Although existing literature has paid attention to the impact of homeland political parties on external voting rights and diaspora organisations' role in electoral campaigns, these organisations' impact on members' mobilisation capacities for certain homeland parties remains understudied. This article tackles this topic by first comparing Turkey-originated diaspora organisations in Germany and the UK. Secondly, it guides future empirical work on the impact of the diaspora organisations on remote partisans' political orientation by taking the dominant emigrant profile in a residence country dimension into the study of external voting. Focusing on eligible Turkish citizens, the findings of this article are based on participant observation and 60 in-depth interviews conducted with remote voters who participated in the mobilisation of Turkey-based political parties in Germany between 2018 and 2023 and in the UK between 2021 and 2023 through diaspora organisations.
Çankaya Belediyesi- Kadın Bülteni, 2023
Toplumsal cinsiyet karşıtı akım karşısında geliştirilebilecek esaslı bir politik mücadele için ka... more Toplumsal cinsiyet karşıtı akım karşısında geliştirilebilecek esaslı bir politik mücadele için kavramların doğru tanımlarına ve kullanımlarına ihtiyaç duymaktayız. Bunun için, her şeyden önce toplumsal cinsiyet karşıtı politikalar ile tabandan örgütlü hareketler arasında analitik bir ayrım yapmamız gerekir. Toplumsal cinsiyet karşıtı politikalarla bu politikaların oluşmasını ve yayılmasını sağlayan hareketler birbirleriyle doğrudan ilişkili olmakla birlikte, bu kavramların birbirlerinin yerine geçecek bir biçimde kullanılmaları çeşitli sakıncalar barındırmaktadır. Politika çeşitli ideolojileri ve bu ideolojilerin hayata geçirilmesinde kullanılan stratejileri içerirken, toplumsal hareketler daha çok bu ideolojilerin ve stratejilerinin toplumun farklı kesimlerden oluşan çeşitli aktörler tarafından nasıl algılandığı, yorumlandığı ve kullanıldığı ile ilgilidir. Bu aktörler bilfiil bu ideolojilerin ve stratejilerin üreticisi olabildikleri gibi, bunların farklı düzeylerde ve biçimlerde kullanıcıları da olabilirler. Bugün toplumsal cinsiyet karşıtı politika ve hareketlerin küresel ölçüde etkili olduklarını ve bu sebeple de küresel düzeyde bir mücadelenin gerekli olduğunu ileri sürsek de, bu politika ve hareketlerin yerelde değişen farklı dinamiklere bağlı olarak çeşitlendiğini ve ancak bu çeşitliğinin en doğru biçimde kavranmasıyla gerçekçi bir mücadelenin mümkün olabileceğini savunuyorum.
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
Slow violence is an analytical concept that reveals the unseen and unrecognised forms of violence... more Slow violence is an analytical concept that reveals the unseen and unrecognised forms of violence that accumulate over time and space, leading to devastating environmental and social consequences. This paper argues that slow violence involves discursive practices that render violence-producing mechanisms and processes invisible, concealed, and misrecognised and ensure the continuance of violent systems by hindering cognitive and emotional awareness of the links between different forms of violence and social harms, and thus, any potential resistance against them. These discursive practices are identified as fatalistic normalisation, daunted managerialism, and afflictive condemnation, all of which operate in tandem to veil the links between different forms of violence and social harm. The paper provides an operational framework of slow violence to help unveil these links and pave the way towards cognitive and emotional awareness for radical social transformation.
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2023
Slow violence is an analytical concept that reveals the unseen and unrecognised forms of violence... more Slow violence is an analytical concept that reveals the unseen and unrecognised forms of violence that accumulate over time and space, leading to devastating environmental and social consequences. This paper argues that slow violence involves discursive practices that render violence-producing mechanisms and processes invisible, concealed, and misrecognised and ensure the continuance of violent systems by hindering cognitive and emotional awareness of the links between different forms of violence and social harms, and thus, any potential resistance against them. These discursive practices are identified as fatalistic normalisation, daunted managerialism, and afflictive condemnation, all of which operate in tandem to veil the links between different forms of violence and social harm. The paper provides an operational framework of slow violence to help unveil these links and pave the way towards cognitive and emotional awareness for radical social transformation.
Türkiye'de erkeklerin şiddet hakkında algı, düşünce ve deneyimleri
Türkiye'de erkeklerin şiddet hakkında algı, düşünce ve deneyimleri
Ankara : Ankara Üniversitesi : Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü : Kadın Çalışmaları ve Toplumsal Cinsiyet Anabilim Dalı, 2019
fe dergi feminist ele, 2016
Bu makale kadına yönelik şiddet konusunda erkek deneyimini vurgulamaya çalışır. Şimdiye kadar yap... more Bu makale kadına yönelik şiddet konusunda erkek deneyimini vurgulamaya çalışır. Şimdiye kadar yapılan çalışmalarda, oldukça önemli olmasına rağmen, hikâyenin erkek tarafı pek fazla değinilmemiştir. Kadına yönelik şiddet politik anlamda hayati bir konu olarak kabul edilse de, daha fazla sorgulanması, üzerinde yoğun tartışmaların yürütülmesi gerekilen konudur. Bu gereklilik Türkiye'de çok daha fazla hissedilmektedir. Bunu takiben, bu makale eleştirel bir literatür incelemesi yoluyla yeni bir teorik bakış açısı sunma niyetindedir. Bu sebeple, kadına yönelik şiddet ve erkeklik çalışmaları literatürlerini verimli bir şekilde birbirine bağlayan yeni bir yaklaşım önermeyi amaçlar. Bu iki literatür alanının da, kadına yönelik şiddet ile diğer biçimleriyle şiddet arasındaki ilişkiyi kuran ve değişen toplumsal ve siyasi güç ilişkilerinin erkekler üzerindeki etkileri ile ilişkili olarak şiddeti kavrayan bir yaklaşımın eksikliği problemini paylaştığı görülmüştür.
Çevresel Ve Sosyal Adaletsizliği Yavaş Şiddet Kavramı Üzerinden Düşünmek
Uploads
Papers by Erman Örsan Yetiş