Women in the AKP Years, 2007–2021: Conservative Politics and Neoliberalism

The chapter contextualizes the representations of Muslim women between 2006 and 2021 during the dominance of neo-Orientalism in global affairs, neoliberal Islamism in Turkish politics and the increasing influence of scholars of Middle Eastern origin in studies of the Middle East and Islam. In the Turkish social and political context, this period includes the most dominant years of neoliberal Islam and those of increasing authoritarianism and conservatism on the part of the ruling Islamist party, the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, Justice and Development Party). The shift in political power transformed ethnographic representations of Islamist women from the others of society and victims of this othering to more powerful and creative actors. The discursive category of Muslim woman continued to exist within the category of Islamist woman, although its members are described as agents who are no longer marginal to the social, cultural and political dynamics of society. Their engagement with global consumption culture, their creative agency in the modest fashion sector, their desires and their altered status vis à vis the state, politics and civil society are the main subjects of ethnographic research. Therefore, these representations constitute discursive formations that challenge neo-Orientalism in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies.