İnan Özdemir Taştan received her Ph.D. in 2013 from Ankara University Institute of Social Sciences, writing her thesis on the rhetoric of radical left movements in Turkey in the 1970s. She worked as a research assistant at Ankara University Communication faculty between 2002 and 2017, where she offered courses on public relations, political communication, and research methods. In 2020-21 she was Barbro Klein Fellow at Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. Her research interests include political communication, social movements, and media studies. Her recent publications have focused mainly on women of 1968 movement in Turkey, feminist movement, the electoral speeches of political leaders and their perception of democracy, the increasing religionization of politics in Turkey, political debates on Syrian immigration, radical media, and resistance under AKP governments. She has published many papers and book chapters. Moreover, she is the co-author of the books Seçimlik Demokrasi (2018) (Electoral Democracy) and Siyasette Dinselleşme (2019) (Religionization of Politics). In edition she is the co-editor of the books Feminizm, Aktivizm, Gündelik Hayat (2024) (Feminism, Activism, Daily Life) and Sözün Dolaştığı Yer: Kadınlar, Siyaset ve Kolektif Bellek (2024) (Where Words Roam: Women, Politics, and Collective Memory). In the academic years 2021-23, İnan was a EUME Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien, affiliated with the Center for Comparative Research on Democracy at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. For the academic years 2023-25, she remains associated with EUME.
From Emotions to Political Demands: Women’s Movement, Mourning, and Struggle Against Gendered Necropolitics in Turkey
The main objective of this project is to explore the role of emotions in the rise of the women’s movement in Turkey. More specifically, it analyzes how feminist organizations mobilize emotions through mourning and justice-seeking as a political strategy to combat femicide and violence against women. For a long-time, Feminists have stated that all violence against women is structured and political. What I offer in this project is a novel analysis of the feminist movement in Turkey under the context of an epidemic of violence against women through the concepts of “masculinist restoration” and “necropolitics.” From this lens, I argue that women’s struggle against femicide has also become a war against the governments’ necropolitics, with the political mobilization of mourning and justice-seeking as focal points in this war.
