Over the past two decades, constructivist International Relations (IR) scholars have produced substantial knowledge on the diffusion and adoption of global norms, emphasising the role of Western norm entrepreneurs in constructing and promoting new norms to passive, generally non-Western, norm takers. An emergent literature on norm dynamics unsettles this narrative of linear progress, highlighting the agency of diverse actors, including the agency of non-Western norm entrepreneurs, in normative change. This article contributes to this recent norm research by exploring the normative agency of local actors in the Turkish context, who have actively engaged in normative contestation over the meaning of gender equality. More specifically, the article reveals the crucial role of a pro-government, conservative women's organisation in subverting global gender equality norms and in promoting a local norm of ‘gender justice’ as an alternative. The article furthers research on norm contestation by analysing the discursive strategies and justifications local norm makers have adopted in the Turkish context upon encountering norms that challenged their normative beliefs and practices. Finally, the article critically engages with postsecular feminism, highlighting the agency of a religiously informed, conservative women's organisation as a non-Western norm entrepreneur.

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This research problematizes the contested nature of the global norm diffusion by focusing on intra-group rivalries and fragmentations shaping local responses (often reactionary and resistant) to global norms. Such an examination is important primarily to account for what leads to shifts in the local reception of norms over time. This study empirically explores local fragmentation, rivalry and change in response nexus in the example of the reception of the global gender equality norms in Turkey by the conservative normative bloc. It reveals that the conservative block is not a monolithic normative order and that there are two main competing receptions of the gender equality norm within the group in Turkey. With a firm emphasis on Turkey’s first initiating and later withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, the study elaborates how the institutionalized conservative response to gender equality has shifted from a compromising acceptance to a rejection over time.

Despite taking significant steps to comply with the Copenhagen criteria after receiving the candidate-country status in 1999, Turkey gradually moved away from European norms, values, and policy demands in various policy areas. This study explores (de)-Europeanization of Turkey's gender equality policy in terms of both legislative changes and the shifts observed in domestic actors' discourses over the past decade, focusing particularly on the debates surrounding the Istanbul Convention. It argues that the fading credibility of the EU conditionality coupled with domestic political dynamics led to the weakening of the EU as a reference point in domestic debates, where policies ensuring gender equality were reversed by pro-family conservative discourses and policies. The study points to domestic factors, including the country's authoritarian turn, and international factors such as the stalling EU-Turkey relations coupled with the backlash against gender equality in EU member states as the key dimensions of de-Europeanization of gender equality policy.

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