Possibilities and Limits of a Feminist Intervention through Municipal Politics: The Experience of Vision Action Plan By Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality

As a metropolitan city, Istanbul is a city where millions of women live, by obligation and/or by will. Benefitting from the opportunities and facing the obstacles of living in a mediterranean metropole, women’s experiences change according to their social class, their ethnicity, and their official status. Acknowledging these intersectional inequalities and dispossessions, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality prepared the Vision Action Plan, which is a document that outlines the range of tools that Istanbul will need in its Vision for 2050. Multi-scale strategies across different challenge areas include “Social Welfare and Justice,” an important one that aims to empower all exploited social segments of the city, including women. Our research is focused on the analysis of this plan through an intersectional feminist perspective. Acknowledging the supportive and oppressive effects of municipal politics on the lives of women, we discuss the possibilities and limits of feminist intervention through municipal politics. Using the method of critical discourse analysis, we will ask how the creation of women-friendly public places can be in relation with the ideal of a feminist public space, through the lines of Vision Action Plan of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality.