Lesson 5.1: Grassroots resistance

2. Shrinking civic space

Anti-gender movements often attempt to delegitimise activists, defund equality work, and restrict the right to organise. When civic space narrows, resistance adapts.

Belarus

In Belarus, the 2020 mass protests saw unprecedented queer-feminist participation, including a visible queer column. Women led non-violent marches, using flowers and white clothing as symbols of peaceful defiance. Yet after the crackdown, arrests and surveillance forced activism underground. Many activists fled to build networks in exile; those who remained faced the closure of NGOs and criminalisation of public organising.

Turkey

In Turkey, following the 2016 coup attempt and the collapse of peace talks with the PKK, civic space contracted sharply. Pride marches were banned, NGOs were shuttered, and media smear campaigns normalised hostility toward LGBTQIA+ communities. Kurdish, feminist, and queer activists increasingly organised from exile. One participant explained:

being a dissident in Turkey… life shows you that leaving is the best possible way to go (p. 9).

These examples illustrate that shrinking civic space does not end resistance; it decentralises it, pushing communities to experiment with transnational organising, coded communication, and new digital infrastructures. (RESIST Transnational report, p. 9)

Switzerland

In these shrinking civic spaces, advocacy and coalition-building remain important, but they take different shapes. In Switzerland, liaising with politicians can still influence outcomes; in authoritarian settings such as Belarus or Turkey, such strategies may bring risk or imprisonment. Funding cuts deepen these divides: activists from repressive contexts often cannot attend European meetings where cross-border advocacy occurs, effectively silencing them in transnational debates.