Militarized medical discourse on homosexuality and hegemonic masculinity in Turkey

Abstract

This thesis aims to analyze the militarized medical inspections and the bureaucratic procedures underwent by gay men, who ask to be exempt from military service, in order to understand the relationship between the production of “homosexual” bodies that are feminized in the militarized medical discourse and that of “normal” bodies in military service. It posits the question of the exclusion of gay men from military service in a broader context and elaborates on the production of national male bodies as “sovereigns” in the current political and gender regime. This regime requires the production and exclusion of specific forms of femininity, which are assumed to be embodied in the “ineligible” bodies of women and gay men. In this way, a certain form of masculinity is normalized and hegemonized, and the military remains one of the main institutions generating gender and sexual differences in Turkey. By conceptualizing “masculine/feminine” binary opposition and stereotype of the “homosexual” as analytical tools, the structural relationship between the dynamics of male homosocial bonding and technologies and procedures used in the medical inspections in the production of a particular femininity/homosexuality is scrutinized. Gay men are attached to the identity of “homosexual” and by “purifying” the army from homosexuals who can threaten the order, the military can preserve its appearance as a community composed of “real” men.