A significant part of the world is closely following one of the main intrigues in Turkey — the decision on the status of the Hagia Sophia complex, whether to preserve it as a museum or to convert it into a mosque, as it was for half a millennium until 1934. However, despite the symbolic importance of this issue, the Turkish authorities are currently discussing questions that have an equally significant ideological or moral value.
One of these questions is the possibility of withdrawing from the so-called Istanbul Convention signed in 2011, which, as its name suggests, was signed in Istanbul, including by Turkey. Yesterday, the deputy chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party, Numan Kurtulmuş, directly called on Turkey to withdraw from the convention, calling its initial accession a mistake. «I clearly say that the Istanbul Convention is something wrong,» Kurtulmuş said, adding that Turkey’s signing of the convention was a «big mistake.» He called two of its provisions, related to gender and sexual orientation, unacceptable for Turkey, explaining that «LGBT and fringe elements» are using this convention for their own purposes.
In turn, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a meeting with regional heads of administration that the issue of Turkey’s possible withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention is currently being studied. Previously, in 2019, Erdogan already stated that «the Istanbul Convention is not a law for us,» which caused a strong reaction from its supporters.
So what is it all about? At first glance, the full name of this document signed in Istanbul — the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence — suggests noble goals. Who would argue against the need to combat violence against women in general and domestic violence in particular? These problems are also relevant in Turkey, and Kurtulmuş himself, who called for Turkey’s withdrawal from this convention, emphasized that efforts to combat these phenomena will continue anyway.
However, a careful examination of this document reveals that a number of its provisions go far beyond the fight against violence and domestic violence against women. Taken together, these provisions form a comprehensive ideology directed against the understanding of family values and gender relations rooted in both Islamic and Christian cultures. Supporters of truly conservative Christian forces in Europe have long fought against the Istanbul Convention, just as representatives of Muslim forces in Turkey speak of its hostility to the values of the Turkish people.
In particular, this convention contains statements that «violence against women is a manifestation of historically unequal power relations between women and men, which has led to the domination and discrimination of women by men,» which is a clearly feminist view. Based on these premises, the participating countries commit themselves to «take all necessary measures to bring about changes in the social and cultural patterns of behaviour of women and men with a view to eliminating prejudicial attitudes, customs, traditions and any other practices based on the idea of the inferiority of women or on stereotyped notions of the roles of women and men».
In other words, this convention prescribes that deeply ingrained cultural beliefs about masculinity and femininity, and the roles that men and women play in the family and society, be combated by replacing them with completely opposite beliefs. Moreover, these beliefs do not only affect the relationship between men and women. The convention prescribes «taking the necessary steps to include educational materials on issues such as equality between women and men, non-stereotypical gender roles,» the latter understood to include same-sex and transgender relationships — the so-called LGBT.
We recently wrote again that in a secular democratic state, to which both the Turkish authorities and society adhere, there is no question of the state interfering in private life and persecuting people for it. In this case, however, much more is prescribed — on the contrary, the state is obliged to intervene in people’s private lives and deliberately change their attitudes towards gender and family relations through «educational programs». Recognizing a convention with such beliefs, not only by a Muslim country, but also under the leadership of a party with a reputation for being «Islamist,» was not only a «big mistake,» as Kurtulmuş says, it was madness and subversion.
And if there is such an opportunity, it is time to correct it in order to take the trump card out of the hands of the forces that advocate aggressive feminist and sodomite propaganda and the harassment of supporters of traditional gender views. A similar move by the Turkish establishment in the modern world would be no less challenging than the decision to convert Hagia Sophia into a mosque. Moreover, the forces that perceive the former as a challenge are much more influential today than those that perceive the latter as such.
Against this background, another discussion — the possibility of banning Western social networks and platforms such as Twitter and Netflix in Turkey — evokes mixed feelings. On the one hand, ideas similar to the values of the Istanbul Convention are being introduced through them. On the other hand, it is important to distinguish between obvious enemies and those who may not be among them, lest the latter become the former. After all, not everyone who has become accustomed to using modern networks and platforms today is a supporter of the hostile values that are being introduced through them. Many use them simply because they see no alternative to the quality to which modern consumers are accustomed. Providing such an alternative would be an appropriate response to this challenge, for which there is a growing demand today in the conditions of ideological censorship on social networks.
In essence, Turkish society and authorities today are facing the necessity of what political scientists define as a conservative revolution, elements of which can be both a withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention and the restoration of Hagia Sophia to its role as the main symbol of Muslim Turkey as an active mosque. But it is precisely for this reason, considering the complexity of this task and the strength of the resistance on this path, that it is extremely important to assess all the forces and risks, to show decisiveness in principle and flexibility with creativity in technical matters. It should be understood that the magnitude of the tasks, resistance and risks in this field for the current Turkish leadership is no less than what it is currently facing on the geopolitical front. The future of not only this leadership, but even the future of Turkey depends on how it deals with both.
(In the photo — Erdogan and the supporters of the preservation of the Istanbul Convention holding the numbers of its article 6284).