ABSTRACT
This study aimed to address the view of women of the Free Cause Party, which has been present in Turkish political life since 2012 and is an opposition party that adopts Islamic and Kurdish identity. Although there are academic studies on the representation of women in the political sphere in the literature, there is no research examining the women’s policies of the Free Cause Party which has a thirteen-year political history. Therefore, ths study claimed to eliminate this deficiency in the literature to a significant extent. In this respect, the policies of the Free Cause Party were examined in depth with the discourse analysis to be made through the institutional documents of the Free Cause Party (party statute, program, election manifestos) and the statements of the party officials. In this study, in which the women’s policies of the Free Cause Party were evaluated, firstly the establishment process and ideology of the Party were examined and then the women’s policies of the Free Cause Party were analyzed through the institutional documents of the Party and discourses of the party officials. The main argument of this study is based on the proposition that the Free Cause Party as an opposition party integrated with Islam and Kurdish identity, approaches the issue of womwn from an Islamic center. Within the scope of the research, although there were negative perceptions in the public regarding the women’s policies of the Free Cause Party which is not based on gender equality which did not coincide with the institutional identity of the Party, it was concluded that the Free Cause Party was not actually against women’s participation in the political, economic, social and cultural fields, but was against the mixed system and did not follow a policy aimed at bringing women to the fore.