Essay “A Decade of Dichotomy: Understanding Turkey’s Changing Stance on the Istanbul Convention for Combating Violence against Women”

Turkey, the first country to sign the Istanbul Convention, an international human rights treaty on violence against women, also became the first to withdraw from it. This study investigates the dynamics underlying these contradictory policies adopted during the Justice and Development Party (AKP) era. Employing the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), the study reveals that the paradoxical policy change regarding the Convention was predominantly driven by factors external to the policy subsystem, including a shift towards a more centralised, conservative, and top-down approach to policy-making, along with a departure from the Europeanization axis. This analysis contributes to understanding how the macro-political context surrounding policy subsystems can lead to radical changes on the same policy issue.