The design maneuvering speed (VA) is the speed at which the airplane will stall before exceeding its design limit-load factor in turbulent conditions or when the flight controls are suddenly and fully deflected in flight.

Citation needed.

FAR 23.335(c) does state that Va cannot exceed clean stall speed times square root of the limit maneuvering load factor (ie, max g-force). However, "in turbulent conditions" is not part of this definition.

There is a separate FAR, 23.341(c), that sets a limit between Va and designed gust loads, but it's a far more complicated equation. In the popular retelling of the definition Va, the FARs consider any kind of gust that might take the wing from 1g to 3.8g, whereas in actuality, FAR 23.333(c) specifies the kind of gust that must be designed for (basically, 50fps gusts up or down in the vertical direction).

There are other FARs in the same area that set a limit on Va based on full-scale deflection of vertical and horizontal control surfaces.

Each of these limits sets an upper bound on the allowed value of Va. They may in fact all have different values, in which case Va will be the lowest value that satisfies all the requirements. IIUC, in most single-engine props, 23.335(c) is that governing limit.

tl;dr: as far as I can tell, "Va means your wing stalls in turbulence" is an oversimplification of what the FARs really are, a sort of mashup of two distinct requirements.