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Erosion of Reproductive Rights in Turkey Ayse Dayi

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Erosion of Reproductive Rights in Turkey Ayse Dayi a. dayi / abortion in the middle east and north africa, 57-68 Neoliberal Health Restructuring, Neoconservatism and the Limits of Law: Erosion of Reproductive Rights in Turkey ayse dayi Abstract Through focusing on the neoliberal “Health Transformation Programme” launched in 2003 in Turkey, I show how reproductive law can be modified by neoliberal mechanisms that are implemented with neoconservative policies and pressures. The paper builds on original data collected in 2014 and 2015 through focus groups and interviews with health practitioners in family health centers and women receiving reproductive care in Izmir, Diyarbakir, Van, and Gaziantep. The data analysis informed by writings on the debt economy by Maurizio Lazzarato and Bifo Berardi and transnational feminist theory demonstrate that neoliberal mechanisms of “dismantling the public” interact with pronatalist policies and pressures to erode women’s reproductive rights in Turkey. This has resulted in (1) indebtedness of women through out-of-pocket payments for contraception and abortion, (2) indebtedness of providers through performance measures, (3) reduction in the quality of reproductive care, and (4) reduction in access to reproductive care itself (contraception, counseling, and abortion). There is a need to pay attention to neoliberal mechanisms and the legal framings of reproductive rights to fully understand the limitations of law and counter the neoliberal and conservative assaults on women’s sexual and reproductive rights. Ayse Dayi, PhD, is an Academy in Exile Fellow at the Margherita Von Brentano Center, Freie University, Berlin, Germany. Please address correspondence to the author. Email: [email protected]. Competing interests: None declared. Copyright © 2019 Dayi. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. DECEMBER 2019 VOLUME 21 NUMBER 2 Health and Human Rights Journal 57 a. dayi / abortion in the middle east and north africa, 57-68 Introduction tions provided in public hospitals are among the results of these policies and implementations. Turkey is one of the two countries in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, along with Tunisia, that allows abortion on demand. Abortion History of reproductive rights in Turkey was decriminalized in 1983 within the framework Under the Ottoman Empire, abortion, called of state demographic policies rather than as a wom- iskat-ı cenin (miscarriage of a fetus), was regulated en’s right. At the turn of the 21st century, neoliberal by religious law and was allowed up to 120 days of reforms, the restructuring of the public health sec- pregnancy on demand and in cases of a threat to tor, and the pronatalist and conservative ideology the pregnant woman’s life. With Ottoman mod- promoted by the Justice and Development Party ernization, a rising interest in population statistics, (AKP) have made abortion access difficult for many and concern over the declining Muslim population, women, although the law has not changed. abortion began moving from the religious to the In this paper, focusing on the neoliberal legal jurisdiction, marking the beginning of bio- restructuring of health care in Turkey through politics.2 the Health Transformation Programme launched The Turkish Republic, established in 1923, by AKP in 2003, I explore how the combination adopted the 1889 Italian Criminal Code, with its of neoconservative discourses and neoliberal initial Catholic and later eugenic influences. Initially mechanisms have modified reproductive law and defined under “crimes against individuals” (1926), curbed women’s exercise of rights. I introduce the abortion moved to “crimes against racial integrity concept of debt economy and examine how it has and health” and against “general public morality affected the governance of sexual and reproductive 3 health in the public sector by focusing on various and family order” in 1936. During the 1930s–1950s, devices, such as the semi-privatization of services, the country prohibited abortion, contraception, performance measures, the bureaucratization and sterilization, and the provision of information on quantification of care, and the transformation of contraceptive methods, and it also explored the op- health professionals’ working conditions and status. tion of rewarding of women with six or more children Whereas most scholars who write on neoliberalism with medals. These actions reflect a continuation of and gender in Turkey use Foucauldian approaches the Ottoman Empire’s pronatalist policy, applied and highlight discourses rather than economic with nationalist and eugenic aims, this time to in- mechanisms, I utilize a political-economic lense. I crease a population that had been depleted through contribute to the feminist literature on globaliza- wars. In the aftermath of the 1960 coup and the new tion and gender by offering a political-economic Constitution, a range of developments—including analysis of neoliberal health restructuring and re- the international shift in population policies where- productive rights. 1 by growth was viewed as a hindrance to economic Drawing on original fieldwork in Turkey, I development; the formation of Turkey’s State De- conclude by showing that the combination of neo- velopment Agency; the socialization of health care; liberal reforms and neoconservatism has brought the family planning work of public health specialists about drastic reductions in contraceptive and such as Nusret Fisek; and an appeal to the Ministry of abortion services in the public sector, with expect- Justice in 1958 by the Ministry of Health, university edly worse results for young single, poor, and rural professors, criminal medicine experts, and the Turk- women. The indebtedness of women through out- ish Gynecological Association to remove the ban on of-pocket payments for contraceptive and abortion birth control methods—led to the passing of the Law care; increased workload of health care workers; on Population Planning in 1965. With this law, birth exclusion of family planning counseling, contra- control and therapeutic abortions were legalized, ception, and initially, voluntary abortion services and contraception was regulated under a “family from performance measures; and decrease in abor- planning” perspective, with new clinics formed to 58 DECEMBER 2019 VOLUME 21 NUMBER 2 Health and Human Rights Journal a. dayi / abortion in the middle east and north africa, 57-68 provide free contraceptive care and counseling to reposition women in familial roles, overturning women. Abortion and birth control thus moved to decades of gains by feminist movements in Turkey the medical domain, supervised by the state. toward the recognition of women as individuals When the global abortion debate reached Tur- and citizens in their own right.5 During the March key in the 1970s, the Turkish Medical Association, celebrations in 2008, then-prime minister Erdogan Turkish Family Planning Association, and Turkish announced the government’s plan to introduce Gynecological Association started advocating for financial incentives for births, which from 2009 on- the legalization of abortion on demand. After the ward quickly turned into a formulation of a “three introduction of multiple bills (in 1971, 1972, and children per family” (that is, per woman) policy. The 1979) to legalize abortion, and the results of public initial sign of this shift of policy—from an antina- health research showing the widespread provision talist stance upheld since the 1960s to a pro-natalist and use of abortion by doctors and women, and its one—can be seen in 2003, when the government link to maternal deaths in cases of unsafe abortions, attempted to redraft the Law on the Rights of the in 1983 abortion on demand was legalized through Disabled to restrict therapeutic abortions (done a revision of the 1965 Law on Population Planning. after 10 weeks), even in the cases of fetal disability.6 The revised law states: Due to objections by women’s organizations, med- ical associations, and media, the proposed article Population policy is defined as individuals having was removed from the draft. Yet Erdogan made a as many children as they wish to, when they want to. The state takes the necessary steps to provide statement in May 2012, during the closing session education and implementation of population of the International Parliamentarians’ Conference planning. Population planning is enabled by the on the Implementation of the ICPD Programme of methods preventing pregnancy. The termination Action in Istanbul, saying that abortion was mass of pregnancy and sterilization are done under the murder (referencing the killing of 34 Kurdish citi- supervision of the state. Pregnancy terminations zens in Uludere for which his government had been and sterilizations beyond those provided for under this law may not be performed. critiqued). He also condemned Caesarean sections, declaring both abortion and Caesarean sections to Even though the bill proposed a 12-week cut-off for be “secret plots designed to stall Turkey’s economic abortion, objections by the Health and Social Work growth and a conspiracy to wipe the Turkish nation 7 Commission led to it being passed with a 10-week from the world stage.” cut-off instead, after which point abortion can be Erdogan’s remarks on
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