When Yale faculty member Evren Savcı was writing her dissertation on queer politics in her birth country of Turkey a decade ago, she found there was little published on the subject. So she decided to expand her research into a book.
In “Queer in Translation: Sexual Politics Under Neoliberal Islam” (Duke University Press), Savcı, an assistant professor in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, illuminates the struggles of queer individuals living under Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (known as AKP), a moderate-Islamist political regime which rose to power in 2002. It’s based in part on her ethnographic research on queer activists from 2008 through the 2013 Gezi Park uprising, when thousands of Turkish citizens — among them LGBT rights activists — gathered to protest government plans to convert one of Istanbul’s last city parks into a shopping mall and were met with police violence.
The book also explores the ways Western LGBT political terminology has traveled to and been interpreted in the Muslim-majority nation and offers new ways to think about queer political movements beyond binary interpretations, such as traditional-versus-modern, global-versus-local, or East-versus-West. Among other topics, Savcı investigates the murder of a Kurdish gay man whose father is accused of committing the crime to protect his family’s honor, and portrays the lives of trans sex workers who are increasingly harassed by police in public spaces.
Savcı, a scholar of transnational sexualities who is also affiliated with the Yale MacMillan Center’s Council on Middle East Studies, recently spoke with YaleNews about the book and the fight for LGBT rights in Turkey. The interview is edited and condensed.
When you started your research in Turkey back in 2008, many democratic transformations were taking place. What changed?
Evren Savcı: At the time, the AKP was engaged in democratic openings as part of Turkey’s European Union accession bid. These included the banning of capital punishment, which was a pre-condition of the accession process, changes in misogynistic language in laws, the removal of references to morality and honor from the law, and the introduction of marital rape as a crime. The first state-run Kurdish television station was created and the government was talking about starting diplomatic relationships with Armenia, a country with which there are historic tensions. There was talk about a headscarf opening; headscarves had previously been outlawed in public offices and universities. These changes were mostly welcomed.
But by 2010, as I was getting ready to finish my dissertation, the tone of the country was changing. There were hunger strikes in Kurdish prisons that the government was denouncing. This was at the time of the Arab Spring. The world was talking about Turkey as a model for the Arab world, but it was clear that the government was beginning to repress dissent.
Increasingly there were more demands for submission to the government. Labor unions, feminists, and queer subjects were all critical of the government, and it looked like all the changes were just a very calculated part of the accession process. When that didn’t deliver [accession negotiations have been stalled since 2016], the government didn’t have as much investment in these democratic openings.
Evren Savcı
By the time of the Gezi Park protest, journalists were being jailed and many forms of dissent were punished. Were queer people increasingly marginalized?
Savcı: By this time, it started becoming clear that the country was being turned into a privatizing construction machine. A lot of public goods started being privatized and many of these privatization projects were going to direct relatives of people in charge or to close allies. Many of the urban development projects were not only harmful to the social fabric but caused environmental damage. The protestors were contesting the privatization and construction.
The uprising was a big challenge to AKP rule. This was a countrywide protest, and the police used plastic bullets, water cannons, and tear gas on the protestors. Severe police violence became the norm.
U.S. scholars of neoliberalism have written about how this economic system concentrates inequality in the lowest echelons of society. I argue that in Turkey, there has been a deployment of marginality to larger and larger masses of people. Anyone not aligned with the government is seen as a “terrorist” or enemy of the nation.
After the military coup attempt in 2016, President Erdoğan signed many decrees into law. Feminists and queer people were openly targeted by the government as “immoral” subjects. I argue in my book that queer politics is a good place to think about the mechanism of neoliberalism even without Islam because a neoliberal state is itself is a morality regime. There is a belief in individual responsibility and self-entrepreneurism; everyone is expected to ideally create their own job. There is a disappearance of social safety nets like healthcare, social security, and pensions. Any failure is understood as deeply individual, and dissent is viewed by the government as an attack on the national economy, where the economy itself is seen as an object of national security.
In Turkey, marginality was already experienced by Kurdish people, feminists, and queers. But increasingly, a lot more people were on the “wrong” side of Turkish morality: students in co-ed housing, whether straight or queer, students who were holding hands, women who were laughing in public, women who refuse motherhood — all were viewed by the government as immoral subjects.
You make a connection in your book between those who were advocating for the freedom to wear headscarves in universities and LGBT activists. What is the connection?
Savcı: As the AKP was doing these democratic openings, there was interest in lifting the headscarf ban. Secularists wondered if this meant an Islamization of the country. There were some who said that if the ban was lifted at universities it would mean headscarves would next be allowed at middle and elementary schools. One government minister responded to this debate by saying, “Look, we don’t have to give people everything they want. Homosexual people are asking for the right to get married, are we going to give it to them?”
Gay marriage was not even a debate at the time he said that, but this statement ended up introducing LGBT rights into the national imagination as a potential challenge for the government and pious Muslims. It became a kind of litmus test in the headscarf debate, where headscarf activists were being asked if they also supported LGBT rights. It was a test of their sincerity [about democratic reforms].
There are lots of secular Turkish citizens who do not support LGBT rights, and their access to public education is not curtailed as it is for women who wear headscarves. I wanted to look at the complexity of the discussions that were being had. There was ultimately a falling out between headscarf and LGBT activists, but I believe that there could have been more productive conversations between them if LGBT rights had not been used as a discursive device in the debate.
Do you have any hope that the freedoms queer activists hope to achieve can be realized under the current regime?
Savcı: Not under the current regime, no. But I do have hope. I think that the Turkish people have learned important lessons under painful circumstances, in part because of that arc of democratic openings that then came crashing down.
So many people have been targeted with violating morality standards, and I think it is a good thing that so many more of us — not just Kurdish people or LGBT people or feminists or others who express dissent — are more and more marginalized. This regime will be over some day. I hope that people remember then that marginalization doesn’t have boundaries. It doesn’t stop with this group or that group. If we have a system where some people are pushed out of acceptable existence, anyone can be pushed out.
There have been productive openings for not thinking about Islam in a monolithic way, not thinking about gender and sexual non-normativity in a monolithic way. That genie is out of the bottle. The question is how to create a social, peaceful coexistence in which people know how to talk to each other and don’t see an enemy when they look at a fellow citizen.
The New Democrats have declared a federal byelection victory in their Winnipeg stronghold riding of Elmwood—Transcona.
The NDP candidate Leila Dance told supporters in a tearful speech that even though the final results weren’t in, she expected she would see them in Ottawa.
With several polls still to be counted, Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds conceded defeat and told his volunteers that they should be proud of what the Conservatives accomplished in the campaign.
Political watchers had a keen eye on the results to see if the Tories could sway traditionally NDP voters on issues related to labour and affordability.
Meanwhile in the byelection race in the Montreal riding of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun the NDP, Liberals and Bloc Québécois remained locked in an extremely tight three-way race as the results trickled in slowly.
The Liberal stronghold riding had a record 91 names on the ballot, and the results aren’t expected until the early hours of the morning.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
VANCOUVER – An incumbent BC United legislative member has reversed her decision not to seek re-election and has announced she’ll run as an Independent in the riding of West Vancouver-Capilano in the upcoming British Columbia election.
Karin Kirkpatrick has been a vocal critic of BC United Leader Kevin Falcon’s decision last month to suspend the party’s campaign and throw support behind the B.C. Conservatives under John Rustad.
Kirkpatrick announced her retirement this year, but said Monday that her decision to re-enter the race comes as a direct result of Falcon’s actions, which would force middle-of-the-road voters to “swing to the left” to the NDP or to move further right to the Conservatives.
“I did hear from a lot of constituents and a lot of people who were emailing me from across B.C. … that they didn’t have anybody to vote for,” she said. “And so, I looked even at myself, and I looked at my riding, and I said, ‘Well, I no longer have anybody to vote for in my own riding.’ It was clearly an issue of this missing middle for the more moderate voter.”
She said voters who reached out “don’t want to vote for an NDP government but felt deeply uncomfortable” supporting the provincial Conservatives, citing Rustad’s tolerance of what she calls “extreme views and conspiracy theorists.”
Kirkpatrick joins four other incumbent Opposition MLAs running as Independents, including Peace River South’s Mike Bernier, Peace River North’s Dan Davies, Prince George-Cariboo’s Coralee Oakes and Tom Shypitka in Kootenay-Rockies.
“To be honest, we talk just about every day,” Kirkpatrick said about her fellow BC United incumbents now running as Independents. “We’re all feeling the same way. We all need to kind of hold each other up and make sure we’re doing the right thing.”
She added that a number of first-time candidates formerly on the BC United ticket are contacting the group of incumbents running for election, and the group is working together “as good moderates who respect each other and lift each other up.”
But Kirkpatrick said it’s also too early to talk about the future of BC United or the possibility of forming a new party.
“The first thing we need to do is to get these Independent MLAs elected into the legislature,” she said, noting a strong group could play a power-broker role if a minority government is elected. “Once we’re there then we’re all going to come together and we’re going to figure out, is there something left in BC United, BC Liberals that we can resurrect, or do we need to start a new party that’s in the centre?”
She said there’s a big gap left in the political spectrum in the province.
“So, we just have to do it in a mindful way, to make sure it’s representing the broadest base of people in B.C.”
Among the supporters at Kirkpatrick’s announcement Monday was former longtime MLA Ralph Sultan, who held West Vancouver-Capilano for almost two decades before retiring in 2020.
The Metro Vancouver riding has been a stronghold for the BC Liberals — the former BC United — since its formation in 1991, with more than half of the votes going to the centre-right party in every contest.
However, Kirkpatrick’s winning margin of 53.6 per cent to the NDP’s 30.1 per cent and the Green’s 15.4 per cent in the 2020 election shows a rising trend for left-leaning voters in the district.
Mike McDonald, chief strategy officer with Kirk and Co. Consulting, and a former campaign director for the BC Liberals and chief of staff under former Premier Christy Clark, said Independent candidates historically face an uphill battle and the biggest impact may be splitting votes in areas where the NDP could emerge victorious.
“It really comes down to, if the NDP are in a position to get 33 per cent of the vote, they might have a chance of winning,” McDonald said of the impact of an Independent vote-split with the Conservatives in certain ridings.
He said B.C. history shows it’s very hard for an Independent to win an election and has been done only a handful of times.
“So, the odds do not favour Independents winning the seats unless there is a very unique combination of circumstances, and more likely that they play a role as a spoiler, frankly.”
The B.C. Conservatives list West Vancouver School District Trustee Lynne Block as its candidate in West Vancouver-Capilano, while the BC NDP is represented by health care professional Sara Eftekhar.
Kirkpatrick said she is confident that her re-entry to the race will not result in a vote split that allows the NDP to win the seat because the party has always had a poor showing in the riding.
“So, even if there is competition between myself and the Conservative candidate, it is highly unlikely that anything would swing over to the NDP here. And I believe that I have the ability to actually attract those NDP voters to me, as well as the Conservatives and Liberals who are feeling just lost right now.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads to Egypt on Tuesday for his 10th trip to the Middle East since the war in Gaza began nearly a year ago, this one aimed partly at refining a proposal to present to Israel and Hamas for a cease-fire deal and release of hostages.
Unlike in recent mediating missions, America’s top diplomat this time is traveling without optimistic projections from the Biden administration of an expected breakthrough in the troubled negotiations.
Also unlike the earlier missions, Blinken has no public plans to go to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on this trip. The Israeli leader’s fiery public statements — like his declaration that Israel would accept only “total victory” when Blinken was in the region in June — and some other unbudgeable demands have complicated earlier diplomacy.
Blinken is going to Egypt for talks Wednesday with Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and others, in a trip billed as focused both on American-Egyptian relations and Gaza consultations with Egypt.
The tamped-down public approach follows months in which President Joe Biden and his officials publicly talked up an agreement to end the war in Gaza as being just within reach, hoping to build pressure on Netanyahu’s far-right government and Hamas to seal a deal.
The Biden administration now says it is working with fellow mediators Egypt and Qatar to come up with a revised final proposal to try to at least get Israel and Hamas into a six-week cease-fire that would free some of the hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Americans believe public attention on details of the talks now would only hurt that effort.
American, Qatari and Egyptian officials still are consulting “about what that proposal will contain, and …. we’re trying to see that it’s a proposal that can get the parties to an ultimate agreement,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Monday.
The State Department pointed to Egypt’s important role in Gaza peace efforts in announcing last week that the Biden administration planned to give the country its full $1.3 billion in military aid, overriding congressional requirements that the U.S. hold back some of the funding if Egypt fails to show adequate progress on human rights. Blinken told Congress that Egypt has made progress on human rights, including in freeing political prisoners.
Blinken’s trip comes amid the risk of a full-on new front in the Middle East, with Israel threatening increasing military action against the Hezbollah militant organization in Lebanon. Biden envoy Amos Hochstein was in Israel on Monday to try to calm tensions after a stop in Lebanon.
Hezbollah has one of the strongest militaries in the Middle East, and like Hamas and smaller groups in Syria and Iraq it is allied with Iran.
Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged strikes across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas started the war in Gaza. Hezbollah says it will ease those strikes — which have uprooted tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the border — only when there’s a cease-fire in Gaza.
Hochstein told Netanyahu and other Israeli officials that intensifying the conflict with Hezbollah would not help get Israelis back in their homes, according to a U.S. official. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private talks, said Hochstein stressed to Netanyahu that he risked sparking a broad and protracted regional conflict if he moved forward with a full-scale war in Lebanon.
Hochstein also underscored to Israeli officials that the Biden administration remained committed to finding a diplomatic solution to the tensions on Israel’s northern border in conjunction with a Gaza deal or on its own, the official said.
Netanyahu told Hochstein that it would “not be possible to return our residents without a fundamental change in the security situation in the north.” The prime minister said Israel “appreciates and respects” U.S. support but “will do what is necessary to maintain its security and return the residents of the north to their homes safely.”
Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, meanwhile, warned in his meeting with Hochstein that “the only way left to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes will be via military action,” his office said.
In Gaza, the U.S. says Israel and Hamas have agreed to a deal in principle and that the biggest obstacles now include a disagreement on details of the hostage and prisoner swap and control over a buffer zone on the border between Gaza and Egypt. Netanyahu has demanded in recent weeks that the Israeli military be allowed to keep a presence in the Philadelphi corridor. Egypt and Hamas have rejected that demand.
The Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7 killed about 1,200 people. Militants also abducted 250 people and are still holding around 100 hostages. About a third of the remaining hostages are believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, said Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its count. The war has caused widespread destruction, displaced a majority of Gaza’s people and created a humanitarian crisis.
Netanyahu says he is working to bring home the hostages. His critics accuse him of slow-rolling a deal because it could bring down his hardline coalition government, which includes members opposed to a truce with the Palestinians.
Asked earlier this month if Netanyahu was doing enough for a cease-fire deal, Biden said, simply, “no.” But he added that he still believed a deal was close.
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Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.
