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Gender Identities UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Eurimages and Turkish cinema: history, identity, culture Yılmazok, L. Publication date 2012 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Yılmazok, L. (2012). Eurimages and Turkish cinema: history, identity, culture. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:06 Oct 2021 Chapter 6 GENDER IDENTITIES George L. Mosse argues that the nation was constructed according to the peculiarly heterosexual ideal of manliness , which acted as a basic signifying principle in the self- definition of bourgeois society and its nationalist ideology. Accordingly, manliness reinforced the class division of labour – the prerequisite productive mode of bourgeois society – not only in the economy but also in social and sexual life, as well as symbolising the nation’s spiritual and material vitality (Mosse 1985, 23-24). The renowned statement of Simone de Beauvoir - “one is not born a woman, but rather, becomes one” (1979, 295) - can be seen as signifying the construction of gender identities by modernity’s ideology of manliness. Besides womanhood, lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender (LGBT) identities are also subjected to and sublimated by masculine heterosexual morality in capitalist society: “Nationalism and respectability assigned everyone his place in life, man and woman, normal and abnormal, native and foreigner; any confusion between these categories threatened chaos and loss of control” (Mosse 1985, 16). Those who have trespassed beyond the limits of male and female activity have been considered as ‘abnormal’ and as constituting a threat to society (24-25). Though nations and nationalism are by-products of capitalism, Turkey as a nation-state did not deploy this economic mode of production and its concomitant class structure in its early stage of establishment. The state was established and led by the military and bureaucratic elites, not the bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, the conservative Islamic morality provided a clear focal reference point in the seclusion of women and the utter exclusion of non-heterosexuality in Turkish society. The bourgeoisie that later developed parallel to the strengthening of capitalism in the 1950s - that which dominated the state apparatuses and imposed a cultural hegemony - confirmed Mosse’s determination: the heterosexual norm of manliness sublimated and replaced the earlier social structural normalcy and was reinforced by Turkish bourgeois morality. 187 The republican revolution granted a relative degree of ‘emancipation’ to women, but the acquisition of further rights necessitated a second wave of feminism, just like the relative recognition of, and initial social space given to, LGBT identities was made possible thanks to their own struggles – both against the popular ideology of manliness and its correlate morality. Therefore this chapter will focus on the two secluded and excluded identities in Turkish gender discourse, womanhood and LGBT identities. This chapter is not exclusory regarding men, for we are talking about women and/or LGBT identities and indeed of manliness and its ideology. Firstly the historical backdrop of women’s status and ‘emancipation’ in Turkey will be provided, with the Ottoman and republican periods separated so as to create a clearer picture of the status of womanhood in today’s Turkey. This section will be proceeded by an outlining of the representation of women in Turkish cinema generally and in Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films specifically. Thereafter the severe discrimination, oppression and exclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender identities (and the struggles of their adherents against this discrimination) will be outlined, and this will likewise be followed by an analysis of their representation in Turkish cinema. Women in the Ottoman Period The Ottoman state turned into a theocratic one in the 16 th century, after the transfer of the post of Caliphate to the Ottoman sultan, Selim I. Thereafter, religious doctrine became the key reference point in the exclusion of women from economic and social life right up until the last few decades of the empire. The Empire’s women were held under tight control by the decrees of the sultanate, stipulating injunctions on a myriad range of aspects of life, from their clothing styles to the days of the week on which they could leave the house. They were not provided with education and were obliged to live a secluded life that permitted contact with only close family members. A few examples of the sultanate’s decrees that targeted women in these times are given here: The one dated 1580 forbidding women to ride in the same boat with men; banning women’s entry into creamery shops [1573]; changing the model of “ferace” (formerly an outdoor mantle for ladies) of 1726; banning women from 188 going to picnic places [1752]; banning the wearing of ferace made of fine cloth, and the threat to seamstresses that if they repeated making “ferace” from such material that they would be hanged outside their workshops [1792]; allowing women to go out only on four days of the week (during the reign of Osman III [1754-1757]); banning women completely from going out (the reign of Mustafa IV [1807-1808]); banning women from going out even with their fathers or sons, or ride in a car or stay outdoors at the time of call to prayers [1862]; the ban on women going out in çar şaf (formerly an outdoor garment) and veil made of very thin material and the decision concerning the introduction of “ferace”. 84 (Özkaya 1981, 231) Women were secluded in a harem . From the 15 th century on, the concept was introduced in the imperial palace, wherein the space was divided into two - the harem (women’s section) and the selamlık (men’s section). Besides referring to the women’s section in the palace and residences, the word ‘harem’ also referred to the community of women who lived in that section. Şirin Tekeli informs us that the Ottomans adopted the harem system after the conquest of Byzantium, along with many other structures of the Byzantine state: “The Byzantine Empire was a class society basically made up of slaves who worked on the land and the ruling classes who mainly indulged in governing. The women who belonged to the ruling classes and who lived in cities were secluded in the “harem’” (1981, 294). In contact only with the male members of their families, women were principally left to deal with housework, the upbringing of children and embroidery in the harem. Though not officially, it was essentially a kind of social slavery, as Tekeli suggests in referring to what Friedrich Engels (2010) called the “domestic slavery” of women (295). When it came to the palace, a group of women was chosen because of the women’s ‘beauty’ and they were kept in the harem to serve as sex objects for the sultan; Leila Ahmed (1982) states that Turks, as the last Middle Eastern peoples to convert to Islam, were responsible for developing the institution of the harem. In addition, women members of the imperial harem learned about and were involved in dynastic politics (Peirce 1993). It is well known that (especially) the mothers of the sultans or şehzades (the sons of the sultans that are the candidates for sultanate) influenced the leading male 84 The original dates in the source book are in the Hegira calendar, which is the lunar year of Islam. I have converted them into the Gregorian calendar; there might be a year of disparity in conversion, depending upon the month of the decrees, which are not denoted in the source book. 189 political figures from time to time. The imperial harem was dissolved in the Second Constitutional Monarchy Period (1908-1919) by a parliamentary decision. While the sexes were segregated in the cities, as we have seen in the decrees of the sultans and in the practice of the harem, the women of the rural agricultural land led a less oppressed life due to the conditions of production therein. Working in agricultural fields in conjunction with men, women in the countryside were not forced to cover their faces and hide themselves. In a similar vein, while the turban (a type of Islamic headscarf) has been popular amongst conservative circles in the towns and cities of Turkey over recent years, it has largely not been used in the villages and the headscarf used by peasants today is almost the same as the one used by women in the Anatolian countryside centuries ago. The status of womanhood and the emancipation of women was not questioned or proposed until the Reorganization Period (1839-1876), when the issue of women was located at the centre of Westernization debates in newspapers and novels. The proponents of Westernization maintained that the ‘superiority’ of the West was not only due to technological advancement but also to the rationalist and positivist worldview that underlay this technology. Thus there was no place for superstition in the Western world, and concurrently Islamic conservatism was the reason for the backwardness of Turkish society and the oppressed status of women.
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