Work

Queer Terrorists, Terrorist Queers: The Sexual Politics of Turkey’s War on Terror

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: How do the so-called wars on terror impact queer lives and politics? This article addresses this question by exploring the racialized gender and sexual politics of Turkey’s own brand of war on terror and its ramifications for LGBTQI+ lives. Building on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with the disabled veterans of Turkey’s Kurdish war and public culture analysis, I reveal how the political construction of Kurdish militants as queer figures goes hand in hand with state terrorization of LGBTQI+ people in contemporary Turkey. I anchor my analysis in a novel counterinsurgency trope—“terrorists in skirts”—a trope popularized by the state-controlled media for psychological warfare purposes. I argue that the voyeuristic media fascination with cross-dressing militants is both symptomatic and constructive of an Islamist-nationalist authoritarian regime where terrorism and gender and sexual nonnormativity are violently conflated in state discourse and practice.

Source: Men and Masculinities

DOI: 10.1177/1097184x241276103

Author: Salih Can Aciksoz

Institution: University of California, Los Angeles

Language: English

Topic: Turkey's Politics and Society

Subfield: Political Science and International Relations

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Peace, justice, and strong institutions, Gender equality, Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,450