The Personal in the Collective: Rethinking the Secular Subject in Relation to the Military, Wifehood, and Islam in Turkey

Drawing on research with Turkish military wives between 2006-2009, this article aims to address the gendered dynamics of secular subject formation in Turkey beyond the powerful antagonism between political Islam and secularism. Although the distinction is constantly being complicated by the acts and...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inFeminist studies Vol. 42; no. 1; pp. 70 - 97
Main Author Dagtas, Mahiye Secil
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Feminist Studies, Inc 22.03.2016
Subjects
Civil rights
Family
Gender
Husbands
Ideology
Islam
Military life
Military personnel
Military policy
Muslim women
Muslims
Narratives
Nationalism
Political aspects
Politics
Religion
Scholars
Secularism
Secularization
Social aspects
Social policy
Subjectivity
Turkey
Turks
Wives
Women
Women, Muslim
Turkey
Online AccessGet full text
ISSN0046-3663
2153-3873
2153-3873
DOI10.1353/fem.2016.0022

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Summary:Drawing on research with Turkish military wives between 2006-2009, this article aims to address the gendered dynamics of secular subject formation in Turkey beyond the powerful antagonism between political Islam and secularism. Although the distinction is constantly being complicated by the acts and words of women who reside at the peripheries of official discourses even in their embracement of state ideologies, it continues to haunt contemporary debates and scholarship on Turkey and the Middle East. In this article, I focus on the narratives of women who are conjugally and emotionally attached to the Turkish military, an institution that has historically been seen as the founder and guardian of Turkish secularism against religious forces. I take these narratives as secular modes of representation and self-representation reflective of a range of ethical, social, and material dispositions. I argue that while the life-stories of these women reveal secularism’s institutional investments in the female body, they also convey a sense of agency and subjectivity enabled by such investments. As such, they highlight the need to apprehend the secular via its sensorial and affective dimensions and not only its political and institutional manifestations as well as the need to recognize the gendered nature of these dimensions.
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ISSN:0046-3663
2153-3873
2153-3873
DOI:10.1353/fem.2016.0022