Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-c75p9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-11T20:50:13.121Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Falling from grace: Gender norms and gender strategies in Eastern Turkey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2015

Nerina Weiss
Nerina Weiss*
Affiliation:
Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, Norway, Nerina.Weiss@sai.uio.no
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

This article calls for a critical scholarly engagement with women's participation in the Kurdish movement. Since the 1980s, women have appropriated the political sphere in different gender roles, and their activism is mostly seen as a way of empowerment and emancipation. Albeit legitimate, such a claim often fails to account for the social and political control mechanisms inherent in the new political gender roles. This article presents the life stories of four Kurdish women. Although politically active, these women do not necessarily define themselves through their political activity. Thus they do not present their life story according to the party line, but dwell on the different social and political expectations, state violence and the contradicting role models with whom they have to deal on a daily basis. Therefore, the status associated with their roles, especially those of the “new” and emancipated woman, does not necessarily represent their own experiences and subjectivities. Women who openly criticize the social and political constraints by transgressing the boundaries of accepted conduct face social as well as political sanctions.

Keywords

Kurdish movementwomen activistsgender rolesfeminist critiqueTurkey

Information

Type
Dossier on Gender, Ethnicity, and the Nation-State
Information
New Perspectives on Turkey , Volume 42 , Spring 2010 , pp. 55 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © New Perspectives on Turkey 2010

References

Abu-Lughod, Lila. Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Acik, Neda. “Nationaler Kampf, Frauenmythos und Famrltenmobitisierung: Eine Analyse zeitgenossischer kurdischer Frauenzeitschriften aus der Türkei.” In Gender in Kurdistan und der Diaspora, edited by Hajo, Siamend, Borck, Carsten, Savelsberg, Eva and Dogan, Sukriye, 149–82. Münster: Unrast, 2004.Google Scholar
Arat, Yeşim. “Gender and Citizenship. Considerations of the Turkish Experience.” In Women and Power in the Middle Eost, edited by Joseph, Suad and Slyomovics, Susan, 159–65. Philadelphia: University of Pannsylvania Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Aretxaga, Begoña. Shattering Silence: Women, Nationalism, and Political Subjectivity in Northern Ireland. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Aslan, Özlem. “Politics of Motherhood and the Experience of the Mothers of Peace in Turkey.” MA Thesis, Boğaziçi University, 2007.Google Scholar
Bartky, Sandra L. “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power.” In Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance, edited by Diamond, Irene and Quinby, Lee, 61–86. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Beauvoir, Simone de, and Parshley, H.M.. The Second Sex. London: Vintage, 1997.Google Scholar
Berktay, Fatmagül. Kadın Olmak, Yalamak, Yazmak. İstanbul: Pencere, 1991.Google Scholar
Bordo, Susan. “Reading the Slender Body.” In Body/Politics. Women and the Discourse of Science, edited by Jacobus, M., Keller, E. Fox and Shuttleworth, S., 83–112. London: Routledge, 1990.Google Scholar
Bordo, Susan. “Review: Postmodern Subjects, Postmodern Bodies.” Feminist Studies 18, no. 1 (1992): 159–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter. On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. New York: Routledge, 1993.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. “Further Reflections on Conversations of Our Time.” Diacritics 27, no. 1 (1997): 13–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (1988): 519–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Çağlayan, Handan. Analar, Yoldaşlar, Tanrıçalar. İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2007.Google Scholar
Çağlayan, Handan. “Voices from the Periphery of the Periphery: Kurdish Women's Political Participation in Turkey.” Paper presented at the IAFFE 17th Annual Conference on Feminist Economics, Torino, Italy, 2008.Google Scholar
Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. “Afterword: The Subject and Power.” In Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, edited by Dreyfus, Hubert and Rabinow, Paul, 208–26. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin Books, 1977.Google Scholar
Hassanpour, Amir. “The (Re) Production of Patriarchy in the Kurdish Language.” In Women of a Non-State Nation; The Kurds, edited by Mojab, Shahrzad, 227–63. Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers, 2001.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, Michael. “Within and Without; The Category of “Female” in the Ethnography of Modern Greece.” In Gender and Power in Rural Greece, edited by Dubisch, Jill, 215–37. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Hêdî [Hosainpoor, Jafar]. “Daydife Mirdim: Zaraweyjinanî Mukriyan.” Unpublished, Krefeld, 1997.Google Scholar
Joseph, Suad. “Women and Politics in the Middle East.” MERIP Middle East Report, 1986, 3–7.Google Scholar
Kandiyoti, Deniz. “Contemporary Feminist Scholarship and Middle East Studies.” In Gendering the Middle East, edited by Kandiyoti, Deniz, 1–28. London: Taurus, 1996.Google Scholar
Kandiyoti, Deniz. “Emancipated but Unliberated? Reflections on the Turkish Case.” Feminist Studies 13, no. 2 (1987): 317–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kutschera, Chris. “A Silent Scream: Interview with Leyla Zana, First Kurdish Woman Member of the Turkish Parliament.” The Middle East Magazine, 1993.Google Scholar
Leukefeld, Karin. “Solange Noch Ein Weg Ist…”: Die Kurden Zwischen Vetfolgung Und Widerstand. Göttingen: Die Werkstatt, 1996.Google Scholar
Mahmood, Saba. ‘Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival.” Cultural Anthropology 16, no. 2 (2001): 202–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mojab, Shahrzad. “Vengeance and Violence: Kurdish Women Recount the War.” Canadian Woman Studies 19, no. 4 (2000): 89–94.Google Scholar
Najmabadi, Afsaneh. ‘The Erotic Vatan [Homeland] as Beloved and Mother: To Love, to Possess and to Protect.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 39, no. 3 (1997): 442–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Najmabadi, Afsaneh. “Veiled Discourse-Unveiled Bodies.” Feminist Studies 19, no. 3 (1993): 487–518.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olujic, Maria B. “Embodiment of Terror: Gendered Violence in Peacetime and Wartime in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 12, no. 1 (1998): 31–50.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ortner, Sherry B.Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power and the Acting Subject. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Öcalan, Abdullah. “Diriliş Başarıldı Sıra Kurtuluşta.” Seçme Röportajlar Vol. 2, http://www.scribd.com/doc/2005i88o/ABDULLAH-OCALAN-SECME-ROPORTAJLAR-C%C4%BoLT-3.Google Scholar
Peteet, Julie. ‘Icons and Militants: Mothering in the Danger Zone.” Signs 23, no. 1 (1997): 103–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seifert, Ruth. “The Second Front: The Logic of Sexual Violence in Wars.” Womens Studies International Forum 19, no. 1-2 (1996): 35–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solheim, Jorun. Den âpne kroppen: Om kjønnssymbolikk i moderne kultur. Oslo: Pax, 1998.Google Scholar
Şîrwan, M. A. [pseudonym]. “Qamûsî Şêx Reza.” Unpublished, London, 1998.Google Scholar
Temelkuran, Ece. Oğlum Kızım Devletim: Evlerden Sokaklara Tutuklu Anneleri. İstanbul: Metis, 1997.Google Scholar
Weiss, Nerina. “Hierarchies of Suffering; Dealing with Pain in the Kurdish Nationalist Discourse.”Google Scholar
Wolf, Judith. “Aspekte des Geschlechterverhaltnisses in der Guerilla der PKK/KADEK unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Ehrbegriffs.” In Gender in Kurdistan und der Diaspora, edited by Hajo, Siamend, Borck, Carsten, Savelsberg, Eva and Dogan, Sukriye, 183–213. Münster: Unrast, 2004.Google Scholar
Yalçın-Heckmann, Lale, and Gelder, Pauline van. “Das Bild der Kurdinnen im Wandel des politischen Diskurses in der Türkei der 1990er Jahre-einige kritische Bemerkungen.” In Kurdische Frauen und das Bild der kurdischen Frau, edited by Savelsberg, Eva, Hajo, Siamend and Borck, Carsten, 77–104. Münster: LIT Verlag, 2000.Google Scholar
Yuval-Davis, Nira. Gender and Nation. London: Sage, 1997.Google Scholar
Yuval-Davis, Nira, and Anthias, Floya. Woman, Nation, State. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Žarkov, Dubravka. The Body of War: Media, Ethnicity, and Gender In the Break-up of Yugoslavia. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.Google Scholar