ERIGAL, in collaboration with the Department of Political Science at UQAM and the Institute for Research in Feminist Studies (IREF), is pleased to invite you to a lecture by Dr. Canan Aslan Akman titled:
Gendered Populism and Mobilization Beyond Socio-Economic Inclusion: The Case of Turkiye with Reflections from Latin America
We look forward to seeing you:
- Tuesday, February 17, 2026
- 🕝 12:30 – 2:00 PM
- 📍 UQÀM Room R-3465 - 315, rue Sainte-Catherine Est
Please register here: Inscription
About the lecture:
The resilience and vigour of populist projects today continue to alert us to their powerful gendered appeals, along with their complex dynamics and consequences for ambivalent or regressive gender policies. Regardless of contextual variations and diverse ideological orientations, populist governments and political parties across Europe and the Global South have demonstrated the significance of discursive mobilizations on contentious gender issues, not only for women but for broader constituencies.
This presentation examines the gendered dynamics of populism as mobilization strategies embedded in leader-dominated discursive frames and the masculine reconstruction of political antagonisms under the Justice and Development Party in Turkiye. It contributes to the analysis of political populism through a gender lens, highlighting the gendered cornerstones of a populist party that came to power on a pro-liberal and reformist conservative agenda and has since transformed the political regime into an illiberal one.
The presentation addresses the following questions:
In what ways has the construction of the ‘New Turkiye’ agenda been shaped by polarizing gendered narratives and claims?
How do the simultaneously inclusionary and exclusionary dynamics of authoritarian populism sustain a new gender regime grounded on the family?
The Turkish case will also be discussed in perspective with Latin America’s late-twentieth-century radical and neo-populist cases, as well as more recent populist examples.
About the presenter:
Canan Aslan Akman earned her BA in Political Science from Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara and an M.Phil in Women’s Studies from Trinity College, Dublin. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from McGill University (2001). She teaches courses on gender and politics in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, as well as in the Gender and Women’s Studies graduate program at METU.
Previously, she was a visiting scholar in Women’s Studies at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Her research focuses on gender and political representation in Turkiye, women’s movements, state policies on equality reforms and gender-based violence, as well as the gender dynamics of democratization and de-democratization processes from a comparative perspective.