Neoliberal governmentality and the (de)politicisation of LGBT rights: The case of the European Union in Turkey
| DOI | 10.1177/0263395718770890 |
| Date | 01 May 2019 |
| Published date | 01 May 2019 |
| Author | Hanna L Muehlenhoff |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
770890POL0010.1177/0263395718770890PoliticsMuehlenhoff
research-article2018
Article
Politics
2019, Vol. 39(2) 202 –217
Neoliberal governmentality
© The Author(s) 2018
and the (de)politicisation of
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LGBT rights: The case of the
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395718770890
DOI: 10.1177/0263395718770890
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European Union in Turkey
Hanna L Muehlenhoff
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU), The Netherlands
Abstract
The European Union (EU) praises itself for being a promoter of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender (LGBT) rights in the world. It supports LGBT organisations abroad with the European
Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR). Yet, the EIDHR has come under scrutiny
by scholars arguing that it is based on neoliberal rationalities and depoliticises civil society. The
literature analyses the EU’s documents but does not study funding in practice. Moreover, it has a
narrow understanding of politicisation failing to include insights from feminist and queer literature.
To problematize the EU’s policy, we need to analyse it in the sites it intervenes in. It is unclear
whether and how the EIDHR depoliticises LGBT organisations and issues. Studying the case of
Turkey, I argue that the EU’s support of LGBT organisations had ambiguous effects which are not
necessarily the ones intended by the EU nor the ones expected by the governmentality literature.
The EU’s funding depoliticised the organisations in the sense that they looked less political and
more transparent. Yet, this helped making LGBT rights’ claims more legitimate within Turkey’s
political struggles. At the same time, EU funding created conflicts within the LGBT movement
about the question of Western external funding and neoliberal co-optation.
Keywords
European Union, governmentality, LGBT, politicisation, Turkey
Received: 23rd May 2017; Revised version received: 17th January 2018; Accepted: 29th January 2018
Introduction
The European Union (EU) sees itself as a promoter of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender (LGBT)1 rights in the world (Council of the European Union, 2013). Yet, the
EU has failed to include gender identity and sexual orientation in a consistent manner in
its external relations (Thiel, 2015). The EU’s LGBT policy originates in the Council’s
Employment Directive 2000/78 which guarantees the non-discrimination of sexual
minorities within the EU in the labour market (Bilić, 2016: 2; Council of the European
Corresponding author:
Hanna L Muehlenhoff, Department of Political Science and Public Administration (FSW/B&P), Vrije
Universiteit Amsterdam (VU), De Boelelaan 1081, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Email: h.l.m.muehlenhoff@vu.nl
Muehlenhoff
203
Union, 2000: 2). Therefore, the EU’s LGBT rights policy has been limited to the com-
mon market. Of all the EU’s external policies, enlargement has been the area in which
the EU has had the highest chances to push for LGBT rights because candidate countries
have to adopt the EU acquis. Yet, the EU has not been very successful in promoting
LGBT rights in its external relations (Mos, 2013; O’Dwyer, 2012; Slootmaeckers et al.,
2016). In 2013, the Foreign Affairs Council of the EU adopted the ‘Guidelines to pro-
mote and protect the enjoyment of all human rights by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgen-
der and intersex (LGBTI) persons’: ‘The EU aims to promote and protect all human
rights of LGBT persons on the basis of existing international legal standards in this area,
including those set by the United Nations and the Council of Europe’ (Council of the
European Union, 2013: 2). But the EU’s 2016 ‘Global Strategy’ does not include any
reference to LGBT rights although it mainstreams gender (European Union, 2016). The
guidelines of 2013 suggest that the main activity of LGBT rights promotion is support-
ing civil society organisations (CSOs) and human rights defenders (Council of the
European Union, 2013: 7–9) but how effective the EU is in supporting LGBT organisa-
tions is understudied. The Foucauldian literature criticises the EU’s funding of human
rights organisations for its transference of neoliberal rationalities that render human
rights as a technical issue and depoliticise them and the CSOs funded. This literature is
important for showing the neoliberal configuration of EU foreign policies and question-
ing their Eurocentric discourse (Işleyen, 2015a, 2015b; Kurki, 2011; Tagma et al., 2013;
Muehlenhoff, 2017). However, while some authors (Malmvig, 2014; Tazzioli and
Walters, 2016; Wittendorp, 2016) study governmentality beyond EU documents, none of
them investigate the depoliticisation claim in the ‘field’. It is unclear whether, and how,
EU funding depoliticises LGBT organisations and how this affects the situation of LGBT
rights in non-EU countries.
I try to answer these questions for the case of Turkey. First, I challenge the depoliti-
cisation claim by asking whether depoliticisation is always undesirable and by broaden-
ing the understanding of the political in the governmentality literature. I do so by
incorporating insights from feminist and queer international relations (IR) theory long
neglected in this literature. Second, using these theoretical considerations, I study the
EU support for LGBT rights organisations in Turkey. I analyse projects that were funded
by the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR). I focus on the
EIDHR because it directly transfers grants to organisations without channelling it
through governmental agencies – in contrast to other EU funds – and for this reason has
been the most important funding source for LGBT organisations in Turkey (Interview C
with LGBT Organisation, 2013, Ankara; Interview E with EU Delegation in Turkey,
2013, Ankara). Although the literature has identified neoliberal governmentality in vari-
ous EU and international policies (Işleyen, 2015b; Jaeger, 2007, 2010), it has directly
criticised the EIDHR for its neoliberal governmentality in its calls, funding require-
ments, and procedures (Kurki, 2011; Tagma et al., 2013). The EU increased the EIDHR
budget for the time period between 2014 and 2020 from €1,104,000,000 to €1,333,000,000
(European Commission, 2016; EU Delegation to Turkey, 2016). I studied EIDHR-
funded projects taking place between 2002 and 2013 and conducted interviews with
people working at LGBT CSOs in 2013. I chose this period because the crack-down of
the Gezi protests is regarded as a significant turning point in the political climate in
Turkey with more repressive politics gaining ground. It is thus crucial to study the effects
of EU funding for LGBT organisations in Turkey around that time to understand how the
EU’s policy influenced the LGBT movement and its struggles to create continuities even
during increasing authoritarianism. Third, I summarise and discuss my findings. I argue
204
Politics 39(2)
that in the case of Turkey, the EU’s funding of LGBT rights organisations had ambigu-
ous effects which are not necessarily the ones intended by the EU, nor the ones expected
by the governmentality literature.
The case of Turkey is especially interesting because here the political discourse
strongly politicises human rights and civil society. My article also advances the literature
on Turkey–EU relations and civil society in Turkey (Alpan and Diez, 2014; Ketola, 2013;
Muehlenhoff, 2015; Zihnioğlu, 2013). Markus Ketola’s (2013) and Özge Zihnioğlu’s
(2013) research on EU civil society funding in Turkey shows the incompatibility of the
EU’s civil society concept with civil society as it exists in Turkey. Yet, they do not show
the effects of these incompatibilities. The EU and the CSOs are not completely independ-
ent from one another. They are both struggling over what democracy and civil society
mean. CSOs are confronted with the EU’s discourse and its funding requirements while
the EU is confronted with the CSOs’ reactions. The EU’s promotion of LGBT rights is not
a linear process (see Bilić, 2016: 6).
The analysis also has implications that go beyond the case of Turkey. First, it is rele-
vant for the study of EU policies in other countries with authoritarian political systems,
high distrust in civil society (e.g. see Tagma et al., 2013), and weak social welfare states.
Second, the analysis problematises the reductionist critique of the neoliberal nature of the
EU’s intervention in non-EU countries, providing relevant insights for research on other
‘neoliberal’ external policies. It does so by challenging and contextualising the claim that
the EU’s neoliberal policies are depoliticising and that this is always undesirable. I go
beyond the analysis of EU documents and direct attention to the sites of intervention,
their political struggles, and the actors involved – LGBT CSOs, and activists. This article
also enriches the governmentality literature with a feminist and queer view on depolitici-
sation. The analysis thus offers a complex and ambiguous picture of the EU’s support of
LGBT rights organisations, its neoliberal nature, and its depoliticising effects.
Queering the theory of depoliticisation and neoliberal
governmentality
The literature studying EU civil society support through governmentality points to the
neoliberal rationalities of funding instruments and assumes their depoliticising effects
(Işleyen, 2015b; Kurki, 2011; Merlingen, 2007; Tagma et al., 2013). Similarly, the critical
IR literature...
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