In this episode, we will pick up where we left off with Tankut Atuk and discuss sexualized and racialized deservingness of LGBTI refugees in Turkey.  In the second episode, we discussed different ways in which Global North oriented categorizations of vulnerability have migrated to Turkey. We saw that they migrated in the form of project-based funding, and they are enacted through local NGOs. We also explained how these categories violently make space for their existence within local realities by transforming subjectivities of LGBTI refugees.

Now we will shift our focus to the concept of deservingness, and it is relations to vulnerability. Drawing upon my fieldwork, I will argue that being deserving of refugee status and rights is proved or performed via a continuous parody of vulnerability. I am calling it a parody, because, vulnerability here does not reflect the complexity of social and political exclusion LGBTI refugees face. Instead, vulnerability reflects only one or two essentialized feature of these exclusions -- i.e. the ones that speak to the sensibilities of UNHCR or countries in the Global North. Thus, this approach to vulnerability creates hierarchies within certain forms of social and political exclusions while ignoring others. It also means that being deserving of refugee status and rights depends on refugees’ ability to perform a Global North oriented parody of vulnerability.

For a written discussion of a similar topic, please have a look at my article "Who is 'Queerer' and Deserves Resettlement?: Queer Asylum Seekers and Their Deservingness of Refugee Status in Turkey". 

In this episode, I am hosting Sercan Çınar. We will talk about the construction of socialist masculinities in the 1970s at the height of socialist-Marxist political mobilization in Turkey. Sercan asks a very powerful question: how could socialist-Marxist men justify and reproduce gender inequalities and power relations as natural while, at the same time, remaining extremely critical of the naturalization of, for example, property relations? 

Sercan will argue that the practices of social mobilization during 70s, especially in response to political violence that marked the decade played an important role in constructing socialist masculinities. Sercan conducted oral history interviews and archival research concerning the decade and, with the help of his findings, he will provide examples of how responses to political violence on the street were utilized to justify and reproduce the dichotomy of man/woman and masculinity/femininity.

Sercan will also elaborate on two important factors in the construction of socialist masculinities as a distinct category from hegemonic masculinities.

He will first reveal the effects of feminist women sharing political space with socialist men in regards to socialist masculinities.

Secondly, he will detail the effects of Global Cold War Politics on the construction of socialist masculinities in Turkey. One of the most striking examples Sercan provides is the border crossing essentialized images and discourses of “Soviet immoral sexualities” which aimed to create moral panic in localities and hoped to fuel anti-communist sentiments. Finally, Sercan will talk about how the socialist-Marxist scene in Turkey simply played into these discourses by pursuing a conservative politics of sexuality.

Sercan Çınar is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Gender Studies at CEU. He received his BSc in Political Science from Middle East Technical University. He holds an MA in European Women’s and Gender History from CEU. His MA thesis is on socialist masculinities in Turkey in the 1970s, and he is currently working on his Ph.D. dissertation about Turkish migrant left-feminism in Western Europe during the late Cold War. His research interests include gender and women’s history, the history of masculinities in Turkey and the transnational history of communism and anarchism.

In this episode, I am hosting Didem Şalgam, a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Gender Studies, CEU. We will talk about neoliberal and neoconservative politics of intimacy in Turkey. Didem will make a compelling case for the need to challenge Global North-dominated narratives around the sexuality of heterosexual cisgender women in general and Muslim women in particular. First, she will discuss how neoliberal politics of individualization and self-management clashes with Turkey’s neoconservative politics of re-inventing traditions through strict control over women’s bodies and their sexualities. She will argue that the tendency and demand for the individualization among young, educated middle-class adults in Turkey subvert the dominant norms of intimacy, gender, and sexual morality.

Didem will also argue that sexting has become a practice among young urban university students to resist the neoliberal and neoconservative politics of intimacy that has been fiercely promoted by the current government for more than fifteen years. Sexting here refers to exchanging sexually explicit written text or visual and audio recordings. Didem will demonstrate that sexting can become a medium through which restrictions around sexuality can be negotiated. Didem will also complicate the understanding of sexuality as mere penetrative acts. And finally, Didem will share many obstacles and preconceptions she has faced as a woman researching sexuality in Turkey. Her own experience is very telling of conservative norms surrounding sexuality in Turkey.

The “New Turkey” Didem refers to is a dominant narrative of the current ruling party of Turkey, Justice and Development Party (AKP). AKP has been promoting the idea that they have initialized a “progressive break” from the secular republican era. This break has been enacted through many cultural, social and material changes in the society and in the state structure. These changes include slow but steady erosion of independence of state apparatuses, shift from a parliamentary system to a presidential system, cultural wars over important symbols of the Republican Era, the attacks on Istiklal Street and Gezi Park, the transfer of capital to a Muslim elite and to those who are in direct alliance with the government and so on. 

In this episode, I am hosting Tankut Atuk again. We will talk about one of the worst kept secrets of non-governmental organizations working with refugees; the fact that project-based funding of NGOs reduces refugees to mere numbers and categories while ignoring their subjectivity and agency. There were many instances in my own research in Turkey when I observed that the priority of NGOs was to report higher number of refugees to the funding organizations instead of focusing on the quality of services and protection for refugees. 

One of the most striking examples was the practice of collecting identification numbers of families as a whole. That is to say, even though only one member of the family was visiting NGOs, they were asked to provide ID numbers of other family members. This way, NGOs were seemingly serving more refugees than they actually did.

Tankut will further complicate this fact by talking about a project for LGBTI and women refugees at the NGO he worked for as a project manager. Sharing his experiences, Tankut will reveal how refugees are subjected to the violence of categories, or as Judith Butler would call it, normative violence. We will also discuss the material effects of those violent categories. Normative violence, here, refers to the Global North oriented liminal categorisations of refugees in Turkey that disarticulate citizenship rights and rearticulates them in very small bundles. Turkey differentially distributes these small bundles to the refugees according to different categories of “vulnerability” assigned to them. In other words, the language of the projects funded by organisations such as UNHCR or the EU violently reproduces itself in the localities and it produces new subjectivities of deserving and undeserving refugees.

 We will also problematize the concept of vulnerability that is established in the projects. These projects are funded by transnational organizations such as UNHCR, UNFPA, the EU or international bodies of states such as the USA, the UK or Germany. As countries in the Global North, the projects they fund create hierarchies of vulnerability for refugees which determine who deserve what form of services and rights. Vulnerability thus becomes a tool of managing refugee populations as opposed to granting equal protection to every refugee.

Tankut is a Ph.D. Student in Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota. His current work is on the conservative politics of HIV in Turkey, but his first MA thesis was on the gay men who served in the army.

I have conducted a multi-sited ethnography in four cities of Turkey; Ankara, Istanbul, Eskişehir, and Yalova. Ankara and Istanbul can be seen as capitals of NGOs as their headquarters are in these cities. On the other hand, Eskişehir and Yalova are heavily populated by refugees in general, LGBTI refugees in particular. I conducted participant observations and oral history style interviews with ninety-four informants. Forty-five of them was LGBTI refugees and forty-nine of them worked in transnational organizations such as UNHCR or local NGOs for refugees and LGBTI people.

For a written discussion of a similar topic, please have a look at my article "Who is 'Queerer' and Deserves Resettlement?: Queer Asylum Seekers and Their Deservingness of Refugee Status in Turkey". 

In this episode, I am hosting Tankut Atuk; a Ph.D. student at the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota. We will talk about the construction of masculinity in the Turkish Army while sharing the findings of our field researches, showing how far the military is willing to go in order to maintain hegemonic masculinity within the barracks. We will talk about unfortunate moments in very recent history when the Army asked gay men and trans women to provide photos and videos of themselves having sex with another man as so-called 'proof' of their sexuality and gender identity in order to be granted exemption from military service. Tankut makes an especially compelling case for effeminacy being the cornerstone in constructing the military as a masculine space. Effeminacy here roughly refers to bodies that are marked as male from birth performing behaviors that are socially accepted as feminine. He argues that it is not homosexuality per se that the Turkish military is against, but rather effeminacy since it destabilizes the military's fragile masculinity. 

For a written discussion of a similar topic, please have a look at Tankut's article "Comrades-in-[Each Other’s]-Arms: Homosociality, Masculinity and Effeminacy in the Turkish Army". 

The Lebanese Penal Code contains an ambiguous article that punishes “any penetration contrary to nature” for up to a year in prison. LGBT activists commonly refer to the article by its number; 534, and fight for its removal claiming it targets same-sex practices, gay men, and lesbian women. Since 2010, several judges have ruled that the article is too ambiguous to be applied to persons arrested for alleged engagement in homosexual practices. But on January 26th 2017, a judge in Beirut not only acquitted 9 persons charged with the article, but also dedicated several pages to redefining homosexual desire as part of “nature” in his ruling. While some activists and LGBT groups were quick to embrace the verdict and applaud the significant legal redefinition, others have argued that the ruling does not mean that the fight for legalizing homosexuality is complete, rather the contrary. The case raises several questions about homosexuality in Lebanon: does the law itself differentiate between a (homo)sexual act and a (homo)sexual orientation? What are the ruling’s implications for the process of on-ground arrests? In this episode, I speak with Ahmad Saleh about his on-ground experience with case work as a previous volunteer in an LGBT organization in Beirut. 

Sources: 

Lebanese Penal Code

BBC Pop Up, "Gay, trans, and illegal in Lebanon"

Song: OUM TARAGALTE - (Soul Of Morocco)

This podcast is the first podcast of a potential future series. It was created during the AudioFiles podcasting workshop at CEU. For more information, including how you can get involved see here.