ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the changing political landscape in Turkey has led to the formation of the Capital City Women's Platform(CCWP), based on documents published by the CCWP, semi-structured interviews with twenty four active members of the CCWP conducted intermittently between 2005 and 2009, and follow-up interviews with four members among the leading figures between 2012 and 2015. The CCWP, established in the 1990s and defending right-based discourse, is an exemplary post-Islamist civil society organization. The chapter explores the development of civil society and advocacy organizations in Turkey and also describes the development of the CCWP as a gender-focused Islamic association. It then assess the capacity of the CCWP to avoid being absorbed into the mainstream Islamic camp which has increasingly lost the critical orientation towards authoritarian political power whereby harsh opposition between the government and the opposition can easily turn into binary opposition between one and others.
