The Contemporary Debates on Conservative Family: The Case of the Istanbul Convention Esra Özdil Gümüş PhD Candidate, Boğaziçi University, Turkey, essraozdil@gmail.com ABSTRACT: In 2011, 11 May, Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence was signed in Istanbul and Turkey was the first country to sign the Convention which entered into force in 2014, August, by the initiatives of ruling government of Justice and Development Party. The Convention, which is the first binding document on violence against women and domestic violence in the international arena, redefines certain concepts such as woman, domestic violence, violence against woman and gender. This redefinition brought about certain legal amendments and the most prominent one was the No 6284 Law on Protection of Family and Prevention of Violence Against Women. While many feminist NGOs and groups, by drawing attention to the historical and traditional context of the violence, construe the convention as a step towards support and remedial the women’s rights, and supported the Convention, for some conservative groups the Convention became the potent symbol attacks to family institution through the intervening years. Hence, during the writing process of this article, on March 22, 2021, Turkish Republic declared unilateral cancellation by a presidential decree. Yet still, the debates go on. This paper intends to analyze the arguments of conservative groups on the Convention. KEYWORDS: Conservatism, feminism, family, the Istanbul Convention Introduction The world in the first quarter of the twenty-first century is tremendously different from what it was even a few decades ago. Societies, families, and individuals tackle the issue of change ‘caught between yesterday’s norms, today’s new realities and an uncertain future.’(Skolnick & Skolnick 2009, 11) “Among all the changes going on today, none are more important than those happening in our personal lives—in sexuality, emotional life, marriage and the family. There is a global revolution going on in how we think of ourselves and how we form ties and connections with others. It is a revolution advancing unevenly in different regions and cultures, with many resistances.”(Giddens 2006, 247) Says Giddens about the transformation of families and describe it as the “the most difficult and disturbing transformations of all” due to the unforeseen ratio of anxieties and disadvantages. In that sense, the debates on families are universal in variety of ways. Although there is a dramatic change of families in last several decades, there is no consensus on what the changes refer to. Furthermore, not only different disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, history, archaeology, economics, genetics and so on touch on the familial issues, religious and ethical authorities also lay claims which turns family studies into an interdisciplinary, disputed, and contested area. Accordingly, the question of how to define a family becomes a stormy political issue. In line with the rest of the world, the conservative family and women in Turkey have been symbolizing changing meanings for different groups depending on changing political contexts since the establishment of the Republic. These meanings have been attributed by second or third parties on behalf of the women themselves. However different from earlier decades, during the last few decades, women have been experiencing a transformation together with the rest of the society. This transformation engaged the women with the concepts of individuality, identity, objectification, secularism, and normalization which RESEARCH RESEARCH ASSOCIATION for ASSOCIATION for INTERDISCIPLINARY INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES STUDIES R A I S JUNE 2021 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5113829