Webinar “Assessing the Role of Women in Fighting Radicalization in Turkey” Dr. Gülriz Şen, Başak Yavçan — Online, 02/12/2021
Assessing the Role of Women in Fighting Radicalization in Turkey
Thursday, Decembre 2 2021
5pm – 6.30pm
Assessing the Role of Women in Fighting Radicalization in Turkey
Women’s diverse motivations and various roles in radicalization processes started to receive greater attention in tandem with growing female recruitment to ISIS. The new research moved away from depicting women as passive victims and conceptualized their agency for and against radicalization as sympathizers, recruiters, perpetrators, and preventers of violent extremism (VE). Meanwhile the novel terminology of VE itself and studies on countering and preventing violent extremism (CVE and PVE) called for greater inclusion of civil society actors in a shift from the heavy focus of counterterrorism studies on law enforcement forces.
Our talk builds on these two trends and aims firstly to assess women’s varying roles vis-à-vis religious radicalization in Turkey and secondly to discuss the (possible) roles of women’s NGOs and humanitarian NGOs in devising effective CVE and PVE strategies. Drawing on the major findings of our project report entitled “Assessing the Role of Women in Fighting Radicalization”, we will discuss women’s exposure to radicalization in Turkey by identifying the push, pull and enabling factors and reflect on the interplay of economic/structural, ideological and psychological factors that transform women into sympathizers, recruiters and perpetrators. Reflecting on the extensive field research conducted in eight provinces of Turkey, our talk will also probe women’s roles in fighting radicalization alongside an appraisal of the awareness and the perspectives of VE among women’s and humanitarian NGOs, the tools, instruments, and resources they possess to reach out women at risk, and the availability of gender-sensitive programs to inform and assist women’s roles in CVE and PVE.
In our concluding remarks, we will underline the necessity of empowerment of women and women’s NGOs to address the push, pull and enabling factors of radicalization, state’s inclusive engagement with civil society networks via a well-structured National CVE Plan, whilst avoiding women’s instrumentalization in fighting against violent extremism and ensuring a truly gender-sensitive approach.
Dr. Gülriz Şen is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Ankara, Turkey. She received her PhD and Bachelor’s degrees from Middle East Technical University, Department of International Relations and holds an MA on Conflict and Sustainable Peace Studies from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, where she pursued her studies as a Jean Monnet scholar. Her major academic interests comprise Middle East politics with a particular focus on international relations of the Persian Gulf and the Levant, and gender in global politics. Dr. Şen published Turkish translation of her award-winning PhD thesis from METU Press in 2016 on the theme of Iran’s post-revolutionary foreign policy vis-à-vis the United States. She also authored articles, book chapters and policy briefs on Iran-US, Iran-Turkey and Iran-GCC affairs. Her recent collaborative research focuses on gendered perspectives of radicalization and violent extremism. Dr. Şen teaches courses on Global Politics, International Relations of the Middle East, Politics and Society of Modern Iran, and Gender in International Relations.
Başak Yavçan is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Migration Governance at the Hugo Observatory, University of Liège. Yavçan is also an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at TOBB University of Economics and Technology in Turkey, where she heads an interdisciplinary program on Migration Studies. She holds a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh, Department of Political Science, has conducted research at Michigan University’s Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research, at New York University and at the Northwestern University’s Buffett Institute for Global Affairs (Keyman Modern Turkish Studies). Yavçan’s research focuses on inter-group relations and public opinion, in particular regarding refugee integration, impact of immigration attitudes on Euroscepticism, immigrant acculturation attitudes and the impact of media framing on the public opinion. Lately, she has been working on the integration of Syrian refugees in Turkey, with a particular focus on inter-group attitudes, institutional trust, Islamic radicalization, effectiveness of local and national policies and interventions on promoting cohesion. Yavçan has conducted field research in various countries as part of national and international grant schemes, using both quantitative and qualitative methods including surveys, experiments, focus groups, in-depth interviews and content analyses.
Political participation in its “extreme” Middle Eastern context
Despite the preponderance of research on violent extremism and prevention and control policies in general, the key concepts generated by this discipline are problematic because they are often normatively loaded and empirically imprecise. To provide a better understanding of the subject of violent extremism, both scientific and in public policies, we have chosen to engage in dialogue within this webinar, researchers, stakeholders and practitioners whom we call “from the inside”, who question the construction of radicalization and violent extremism within political relations in the MENA region.
Our objective is to constitute a new and original approach, from the bottom, to understand the different realities of violence, radicalization, violent extremism and terrorism, by comparing, confronting and criticizing the different public policies and the different approaches implemented to tackle the phenomenon of violent extremism in the studied states. Beyond radicalization and violent extremism, the question of civil, armed, military and political engagement and participation since the Arab revolts will be posed in an articulation between the local, the national and the global.
We seek to understand how the relations between political actors within states located in the MENA region are articulated with regional issues; how past and present political conflicts are played out between national actors and permanently redraw the map of political and community affiliations, both in discourse and in practice. Local, national and regional contexts will thus be studied as catalysts for political relations between (state and non-state) actors in the region.
Webinar format and research axes
On the basis of a meeting every three weeks, we will meet starting from April 2021 around a communication based on a country research work, complemented by the intervention of an activist, practitioner or stakeholder shedding light on the issues raised, and leaving plenty of room for collective discussion.
Several themes and areas of research will be addressed during the sessions:
Area 1. Commitment, governance and policies
- Militant careers, how does one become a political actor in this region of the world? What is political activism built on or what is the trajectory of political actors in the countries of the region?
- The relations between dominant political actors, the opposition and marginalization?
- Relationship between political institution, partisan institution and religious institution (duplication, alliances, conflicts…)?
- Modes of government, political discourse and practices…
Area 2. Law, fight against terrorism and penitentiary institution
- The impact of anti-terrorism laws on the treatment of violent extremism and on the organization of prisons: emergence, strengthening and extension of a specific legal framework reconfiguring the relations between justice, police, army and intelligence.
Area 3. media treatment of political and power relations
Area 4. Citizenship vs. sectarianism: public action, self-awareness, new ways of participation and political organization
The webinar will be held in the three languages, Arabic, English and French.
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Chargé de diffusion scientifique (30 novembre 2021). Webinar “Assessing the Role of Women in Fighting Radicalization in Turkey” Dr. Gülriz Şen, Başak Yavçan — Online, 02/12/2021. IISMM. Consulté le 10 février 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/q1zw