Authoritarian regimes have long shaped gender rights and circumscribed women to promote their own vision of society. This paper examines how the AKP government in power in Turkey since 2002 instrumentalized women’s rights both to consolidate its grip over power and promote a conservative agenda. Drawing on Kathleen Thelen’s (Thelen, 2011) work on institutional change, the paper argues that the AKP used three different strategies to manipulate laws and other institutions concerning women’s rights: 1) purposeful neglect, 2) the redirection of old laws to serve new ends, and 3) displacement through replacement of old institutions. In its early years in power, the AKP undertook liberal reforms such as the amendment of the Penal Code in 2004, in line with the demands of the women’s movement of the time and the liberal EU conditionality in order to consolidate its authority, enlarge its constituency and legitimize its rule. Yet, the party did not implement these reforms. Hence, the first strategy of the party was “drift through purposeful neglect in a context of change” (Thelen, 2011). By its fourth term in power, the AKP establishment made conservative amendments in law to promote conservative ends, although still claiming to appeal to liberal norms. For example, the constitutional court dismissed the requirement of Civil marriage prior to religious marriage arguing from a seemingly liberal perspective that pious people were treated unfairly by having to contract civil marriages first. In this case, rather than dismissal and drift, they moved on to the second strategy of conversion, that is, “reinterpretation of old rules to serve new ends”(Thelen, 2011). Finally, there was “displacement through replacement of one set of institutions” (Thelen, 2011). The AKP supported the formation of new pro-government women’s civil society organizations, such as KADEM that was organically linked and supported by the state that gradually began to marginalize established women’s NGOs. The paper uses both primary sources such as informal interviews with women activists, and secondary sources, including newspaper articles, journals and press bulletins of women’s associations. Thelen, Kathleen, “Beyond Comparative Statics: Historical Institutional Approaches to Stability and Change in the Political Economy of Labor”, in Glenn Morgan et. al. eds., The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Institutional Analysis, NY, Oxford University Press, 2011.