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

Abstract

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.

Theorising women and war in Kurdistan: A feminist and critical perspective

“…In Kurdish studies, some authors have argued for a special focus on Kurdish women's experiences during war and post-war situations, as women and men have played different roles and were/are differently victimised and targeted in war and conflict in Kurdistan (see for example Begikhani, forthcoming, 2003Begikhani, forthcoming, , 2015Hamelink, 2016;Minoo, 2013;King, 2013;Weiss, 2012Weiss, , 2010Mojab 2001). Also, because women are generally much less situated in positions of power, their relative powerlessness compared to men "leads to differences in their ability to cope with risks and manage their lives" (Hardi, 2011: 4).…”

“…Agency in relation to Kurdish women and war can then be understood as the acknowledgement of people's ability to actively engage with an everchanging social and political field in which several, often contradicting ideological discourses exist side by side (Weiss, 2010). In heroic victimhood discourse, the victim has agency even when dead, such as the martyr (Weiss, 2014).…”

“…The absence of a relative, either dead or alive, has often led to a redefinition of traditional gender roles, and cast also women into politics (Ramphele, 1997). Whereas only few Kurdish women have embraced the role of political widow or wifehood, the mothers of the disappeared, prisoners and dead, have gained an important political role (Aslan, 2007;Weiss, 2010; Davidovic in this issue).…”

Reading and feeling gender in perpetrator graffiti and photography in Turkey

“…This has contributed to conceptual changes in pro-HDP circles and to significant improvement of women's position in the region. Still, the concept of namus continues to structure social and political relations, while the new politicised gender roles carved out by the Kurdish movement have their own constraining effects (Weiss, 2010;Schäfers, 2018). For all of the women I talked to, Ekin Wan's photograph was a cold reminder of the way war inscribes itself on women's bodies and of the vulnerability of their own bodies.…”

Gendered Aspects of Conflict, Displacement and Peace Process in Turkey

“…The limited research on how women are affected by these processes has mostly documented the sexual violation of women prisoners (Kutschera, ; Keskin and Yurtsever, ) and sexual mutilation of female guerrilla fighters (Wolf cf. Weiss, ). The sudden mass displacement of Kurds to city centres has also led to increasing suicide rates among Kurdish women in some cases (Halis, ) and forced prostitution (Sümbül, ), which have been recognized as part of the gendered aspect of displacement.…”