WPS without a National Action Plan: Local Feminist Practices of Women, Peace, and Security in Turkey

2025 marks 25 years since the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325) on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS). The WPS Agenda recognizes that women’s participation, protection, and prevention of violence are central to achieving sustainable peace. While often discussed as a formal policy framework adopted by states, the agenda is not simply a UN document but the result of decades of sustained advocacy by women’s and feminist movements around the world. It emerged through tireless grassroots activism, feminist networks, and campaigns demanding that peace and security frameworks reflect women’s lived experiences.

As such, the 25th anniversary of WPS is not only an opportunity to examine the formal adoption of National Action Plans or state policies, but also to look at how feminist movements themselves implement the principles of the agenda. In many contexts, local actors are the ones keeping the spirit of WPS alive on the ground – often without even knowing it by name. Turkey provides a compelling example of this dynamic. The country has yet to adopt a National Action Plan on WPS and many grassroots women’s movements are not aware of the agenda as a formal framework. Yet, their activism – from public protests to advocacy campaigns – embodies the core pillars of participation, protection, and prevention central to the WPS agenda.

WPS Beyond State Adoption

The WPS agenda is frequently framed in terms of state adoption: national action plans (NAPs), integration into international organizations, and implementation metrics. This state-centric lens can obscure the transformative potential of local feminist activism. As shown by feminist researchers, the WPS agenda has been made possible by the care labour of women and feminists. In Turkey, despite the absence of a NAP, women’s movements have consistently engaged in practices that align with WPS principles.

The lack of formal adoption reflects the political context in Turkey, where security concerns, nationalist narratives, and scepticism toward international gender equality frameworks limit state commitment to WPS. Yet local feminist actors navigate these constraints creatively, showing that the WPS agenda is not just a policy framework but also a living set of practices shaped by lived experience and local knowledge.

Grassroots Feminist Practices: Mothers’ Movements in Turkey

Several local initiatives in Turkey embody WPS principles, illustrating the creative ways feminist actors navigate constrained political environments. Among these, the Saturday Mothers, Peace Mothers, and Diyarbakır Mothers stand out as emblematic examples of women’s peace activism. Each of these movements engage in participatory, protective, and preventive practices, despite limited awareness of WPS terminology.

Saturday Mothers

Since the late 1980s, the Saturday Mothers have gathered weekly in Istanbul to demand accountability for individuals who disappeared during periods of political violence. They gather publicly in Istanbul’s Galatasaray Square, often sitting silently with photographs of missing loved ones. They organize rallies, engage with media, and petition governmental and international institutions. Their peaceful, persistent presence challenges militarized state narratives and keeps public attention on enforced disappearances. Activists have faced legal threats, police crackdowns, and societal indifference, yet continue weekly gatherings for decades. Though they may not know UNSCR 1325 by name, the movement’s work embodies the participation pillar (active civic engagement) and the protection pillar (advocating for vulnerable individuals and human rights) while their protests are grounded in principles of justice, human rights, and memory politics. By emphasizing the protection of individuals and advocating for state accountability, their activism directly aligns with WPS principles, particularly the protection pillar. These gatherings also create spaces for women to participate in public life and challenge militarized state narratives, reflecting the participatory dimension of the WPS agenda.

Peace Mothers

Emerging during the 1990s amid escalating conflict between the Turkish state and Kurdish armed groups, Peace Mothers have sought to prevent violence and promote reconciliation. Peace Mothers organize peace rallies, letter-writing campaigns to political leaders, and media advocacy to prevent violence. They highlight the human costs of armed conflict, particularly for children and families, and call for community-based conflict resolution initiatives. In public and in the media the movement’s activism has been framed politically, exposing them to state scrutiny, social stigmatization, and threats from opposed groups. Their work embodies the prevention pillar of WPS, showing that conflict prevention often requires grassroots activism, moral persuasion, and community engagement rather than formal state intervention. Additionally, their constant demand to be included in a prospective peace process aligns with the participation pillar.

Diyarbakır Mothers

Operating primarily in southeastern Turkey, the Diyarbakır Mothers campaign for the rights of children allegedly recruited by armed groups or affected by conflict-related displacement. Through public advocacy, direct engagement with families, and calls for state accountability, these women combine participation and protection practices. Their initiatives underscore the intersection of gender, conflict, and human rights, illustrating the nuanced ways local feminist actors address the multidimensional impacts of violence. The Diyarbakır Mothers practice both protection (advocating for children and families) and participation (mobilizing civic engagement), illustrating the adaptability of WPS principles at the grassroots level.

Beyond these mothers’ movements, countless smaller grassroots organizations across Turkey contribute to the WPS agenda in less visible but equally important ways. Women’s shelters, advocacy groups, and women’s human rights NGOs provide protection for survivors of gender-based violence, offer legal and psychosocial support, and engage in advocacy that prevents future harm. These initiatives demonstrate that local feminist activism can operationalize WPS principles in contexts where formal state adoption is absent or minimal.

Navigating Political and Social Constraints

Feminist activism in Turkey operates in a challenging political environment. The state emphasizes security and stability, often privileging militarized approaches over inclusive peace processes. Civic space is limited, with legal restrictions, surveillance, and harassment of human rights organizations and activists. Social backlash, stigmatization, and threats further constrain feminist organizing.

Despite these obstacles, grassroots movements adapt their strategies creatively by using public spaces symbolically, leveraging media attention, building networks of solidarity, and employing moral authority (e.g., maternal identities) to amplify their messages. These adaptive strategies highlight the resilience of feminist activism and its capacity to enact WPS principles even when the state is absent or obstructive.

Lessons from Turkey for the WPS Agenda

Turkey’s experience offers several lessons for the WPS agenda as we reflect on 25 years of implementation.

First, it challenges the assumption that progress is synonymous with state adoption. Local feminist actors can sustain, reinterpret, and advance WPS principles without relying on formal state mechanisms. Their work demonstrates that the agenda’s transformative potential lies not only in top-down adoption but also in bottom-up activism that centres lived experience and local knowledge.

Second, Turkey underscores the importance of recognizing diverse feminist practices and intersectional experiences. Local actors do not treat “women” as a homogeneous category; they attend to differences in ethnicity, social class, political affiliation, and geographic location. By addressing these intersecting identities, grassroots movements provide a model for inclusive, context-sensitive approaches to peace and security – a principle the WPS agenda increasingly recognizes but has struggled to implement consistently at the international level.

Third, Turkey exemplifies the persistence of backlash and the need for resilience. Feminist activism in Turkey continues in an environment shaped by political pressures, social conservatism, and militarized narratives. The increasingly authoritarian tendencies of the government and the securitization of gender do not only limit the space for feminist activism but also represent feminism as a foreign imposition and a threat to traditional Turkish values. Yet, despite these constraints, women’s movements maintain visibility, advocate for justice, and contribute to peacebuilding. Their resilience highlights the ongoing relevance of the WPS agenda. Even where states fail to implement NAPs, feminist principles can sustain and expand gender-sensitive approaches to peace.

Finally, Turkey illustrates the importance of reimagining the WPS agenda beyond formal metrics of success. Measuring progress only by NAP adoption or funding allocations risks overlooking critical local practices that advance participation, protection, and prevention in meaningful ways. Instead, recognizing grassroots activism as a core component of the WPS knowledge system emphasizes the agenda’s flexibility, adaptability, and potential for transformative impact.

Celebrating WPS Through Local Knowledge

The 25th anniversary of the WPS agenda offers an opportunity not only to celebrate global progress but also to recognize how its transformative potential is enacted locally, often outside formal state structures. Turkey’s experience illustrates this vividly. Although the country has not adopted a National Action Plan, grassroots feminist movements have long advanced the core principles of the WPS agenda through sustained activism, advocacy, and community engagement.

The Saturday Mothers, for instance, embody both the participation and protection pillars of WPS. By gathering publicly every week in Istanbul to demand accountability for the disappeared, they assert women’s presence in public and political spaces, challenging militarized state narratives. Their protests, silent vigils, and media advocacy seek to protect vulnerable communities and ensure that human rights violations are neither ignored nor forgotten. Even without explicitly referencing WPS, their activism directly aligns with its goals of including women’s voices in peace and security processes and safeguarding human rights in contexts of conflict.

Similarly, the Peace Mothers demonstrate how grassroots activism can advance the prevention pillar of WPS. Mobilizing maternal identities to address armed conflict in the 1990s, these women organized peace rallies, dialogue initiatives, and media campaigns calling for reconciliation and nonviolence. Their efforts aimed to prevent further violence at both community and state levels, reflecting the preventive dimension of WPS. By amplifying the human costs of conflict, particularly for children and families, they operationalize the agenda’s principles without relying on formal recognition or institutional support.

The Diyarbakır Mothers further illustrate the agenda’s protective and participatory dimensions. Campaigning for children allegedly recruited by armed groups, they organize sit-ins, meet with authorities, and conduct public awareness initiatives. Their activism protects vulnerable individuals while fostering civic engagement and collective advocacy.

It is also about acknowledging the power of local knowledge, grassroots activism, and the persistent work of feminist actors who keep the principles of peace, justice, and equality alive, even in challenging and contested environments. By centring these practices, we can reimagine the future of WPS as a framework that is inclusive, context-sensitive, and truly transformative – one that grows not just from the top down, but from the bottom up, shaped by those who live the realities of conflict and peace every day.