Turkey’s Strategic Partnership with China: A Feminist Recount

Using a feminist perspective, this chapter focuses on two factors that bring China and Turkey together: the transnationalization of domestic repression and patriarchal authoritarian policies and offers a multi-perspective analysis, which looks at the state of the strategic partnership between two countries not only in terms of economic and security relations but also its effects on different groups marginalized by these two regimes. By applying the insights from a theoretical perspective that questions the masculine constructions of power, the chapter argues that the strengthening connections between China and Turkey under presidents Xi and Erdoğan increase the capacity of both authoritarian regimes to constrain and marginalize its dissident and vulnerable groups as well as women. The chapter concludes that while the partnership between China and Turkey promotes state elites’ interests, it also facilitates human rights violations and anti-democratic practices.