Abstract
This study explores the possibility of critical agency of queer subjects in Turkey in terms of challenging and subverting normative structural constraints. These constraints are attested through expansive use of the concept of habitus including class, gender, family, ethnicity and religion. Our field study in which in-depth interviews have been conducted detected two types of habitus in the life experiences of queer subjects: critical and conservative. While the former enables critical agency, the latter undermines this possibility. On this ground, it is argued that exhibiting critical habitus appears to be the precondition of performing critical agency. We conclude that having multiple minority identities, education, and involvement in organizations develop a critical habitus enhancing critical queer agency.
Introduction
Queer theory attributes an immanent critical agency to queerness as queer existence indicates a rejection of immersion into generic categories of identity in the normative-intelligible order (Turner, 2000) and queer practices involve performative subversion and affirmative transvaluation of categories of insult (Butler, 1997). To Butler, the affirmation and democratic contestation of the term queer implies and entails a coalitional struggle against racist, misogynist, and other exclusionary and oppressive normative-intelligible-discursive structures. From this perspective, queer politics is a force for ‘democratization’ (Butler, 1993: 227). It links ‘different levels of exclusions and oppressions’ (Kornak, 2015: 60). This article, by taking the normative-intelligible order as the structure which consists of factors such as social class, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexuality, explores assumed potential of critical agency and progressive orientation of queer subjects in the case of Turkey. More specifically, we investigate what facilitates and enhances the development of a critical consciousness and praxis in relation to an oppressive social structure which is characterized by an ethnocentric nationalism with religious elements – creating multiple minorities – class-based marginalization and imposition of conservative gender roles and identities. We have conducted in-depth interviews with 47 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) people in our field research to explore these questions: Can we identify queer experiences of critical agency against the limiting normative structures? Which normative structural constraints they question or subvert? Do they understand identities as interlaced and fluid? Are there any attempts to explore and establish new in-between subjectivities?
Sexual fluidity has been defined as ‘a capacity for flexibility’ (Diamond, 2016: 249) in terms of desire, sexual experiences, and responsiveness. Queerness, while involving sexual identity, indicates interlacing identities at the same time. Therefore, it is ‘a site of collective contestation’ (Butler, 1993: 228) on the constitution of identities in terms of opening them to undoing, remaking, realigning. As a critical category, it destabilizes identity-based differences, power relations, and normative orders. In this context, queer subjects face ‘multiplicated’ discrimination and violence at the intersection of multiple forms of power relations. As a result, the critical and subversive potential of queerness exposes intersectional character of relations of discrimination and domination. Crenshaw (1989) introduced the concept of intersectionality to expose the experience of discrimination and marginalization of ‘multiply-burdened’. The multi-dimensional character of the intersectional experience of subordination had remained mostly unspoken and unrecognized then. In our understanding, the concept connects critical exposure of overlapping social-structural power relations – systems of oppression – and lived experience out of which critical praxis could emanate. 1 These systems of oppression operate through racism, ethnocentrism, nationalism, classicism, sexism, and hetero-sexism. The relations of domination and subordination these power relations involve ‘confound and constrict the life possibilities of those who already live at the intersection of certain identity categories’ (Cooper, 2016: 392). Studies on intersectional discrimination and violence against queer subjects expose these experiences with an orientation toward a critical praxis for overcoming these constraints. As Bilic and Kajinic (2016) emphasized, queer movement ‘needs to be an agent of progressive social change “on the leading edge of those who are asking the tough questions about who’s left and why and what to do about”’ (p. 9). Our research aims to investigate the emergence of critical political consciousness and agency which are attributed to queer existence in the literature. We try to understand what facilitates and filters such a critical praxis. In this context, we respond to the research questions cited earlier by way of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. We argue that embodied practical life and cognitive–ideational orientations of queer subjects toward the normative-intelligible order are filtered through two forms of habitus: conservative and critical. The latter triggers critical-subversive subjectivity while the former empties off the critical-subversive potential of queer subjectivity.
Bourdieu argued that those who occupy the same class position develop similar dispositions which is conceptualized as ‘habitus’ (Bourdieu, 1987). In Bourdieu’s (1977) theorization of the ‘generation of practices’, habitus is defined ‘as the history turned into nature’ in the form of a ‘socially constituted system of cognitive and motivating structure’ (pp. 76–78). It gives ‘a regularity, unity and systematicity to the practices of a group or class’. As such, it produces ‘a commonsense world’ (Bourdieu, 1977: 80). Even ‘under the multiplicity and diversity’ of fields which are ‘governed by different logics’ habitus pulses as the organizing principle by constituting a ‘hidden unity’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 101). Therefore, habitus is a cognitive frame constituted by enduring attitudes, dispositions, and ways of knowing and acting. Bourdieu (1996) often emphasizes that
there exists a correspondence between social structures and mental structures, between the objective divisions of the social world – especially the division into dominant and dominated in different fields – and the principles of vision and division that agents apply to them. (p. 1)
Habitus operates through and in the social fields which are formed and distinguished by relatively autonomous distributions and configurations of forms of capital and corresponding power relations. In the field of education, for instance, middle classes – defined as such in terms of their economic capital – could be dominant because of their cultural capital and struggle hard to maintain their position. Habitus, in this context, is ‘acquired and carried forth as a guide to practice in future situations’ (Emirbayer and Johnson, 2008: 4) within the fields. As a ‘cognitive-perceptual matrix’ it filters and orders ‘the flux of everyday experience’ of the subject in the social fields (Lizardo, 2004: 392).
Bourdieu qualified the conception of fields with the condition of ‘highly differentiated societies’ in which ‘a number of relatively autonomous social microcosms’, like economic, artistic, educational, and religious, are ‘empirically’ identifiable (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 96–97). The fields are sites of struggle for the preservation or transformation of the distribution and configuration of the forms of capital which define the objective positions that the subjects occupy. These objective positions separate, distance, and order the subjects and frame their relations. The power struggle of ‘the forces’ in the social fields takes place through ‘the defense or criticism of representations of different forms of capital and their legitimacy’ (Bourdieu, 1996: 264–265). This struggle over the reproduction or transformation/subversion of the representations and legitimacy of different forms of capital in the fields is a struggle of ‘strategies’ which emanate from the habitus. Thus, habitus tends to enhance reproduction as it is genetically tied to the positions in the field which correspond to macro-social-structural (i.e. class-based) divisions. However, it could trigger transformative/subversive strategies and practices if there occurs an unfit between the mental and objective structures. This would amount to a break in the naturalization of relations of domination and subordination, possibly leading to an unforeseeable significant social change, ranging from emergence of social movements and new forms of social and political agency to revolutions. Our conception of conservative and critical forms of habitus depends on this Bourdieusian framework.
Then there is the question of sexual field. Green (2014) introduced the term with the underlying assumption of autonomization of sexual life in the modern/late-modern societies to the degree that desirability and partner choice and relations stem from an imminent logic of collective sexual life broadly shaped by the distribution of sexual capital in the field itself. In a Bourdieusian parlance, the representations and legitimacy of this form of capital, which is specific to the sexual field, create hierarchies by conferring ‘advantage on those who possess it’ and ‘invisibility, marginality, and in some cases stigma on those who do not’ (Green 2014: 28). Green (2014), against this background of an autonomized sexual life, uses the term ‘erotic habitus’ to define ‘individual-level, subconscious dispositions that shape and condition an actor’s pathway through intimate life’ (p. 34). However, these propositions on an autonomous sexual field with its intrinsic categories of sexual capital and erotic habitus bear an element of contingency. As Green (2014) argues, ‘economic and cultural capital of players can be as or more important than sexual capital’ and ‘sexual fields can be more or less isomorphic with system wide patterns of social stratification’ (p. 34). Moreover, ‘structures of desire may reflect and in turn consolidate socio-ontological schemas’ as ‘attributions of sexual attractiveness often map onto and incorporate race, class, gender, age, nationality and sexual orientation’ (Green, 2014: 38). We think that these qualifications make it difficult to sustain the assumption of autonomous sexual field as a ‘given’ one and compel the researcher to take into account the intersectional relations between a possible sexual field and the other social factors and fields like class, gender, ethnicity, religion, and education. In this sense, we concur with Ruppel’s criticism of the sexual field theory. As she argued, ‘sexual field theorists take Bourdieu’s relational imperative as a mandate to study concrete connections between individuals but they neglect his first mandate to study relations between social spaces’ (Ruppel, 2020: 12–13).
Findings of our field research on the queer experience in Turkey suggest that while a certain sexual field, in terms of an ongoing collective sexual life through the sites of social media applications, cafes, bars, and neighborhoods seems to be apparent, its level of autonomization is ambiguous. This relates both to the historical experience of modernization of Turkey and ongoing repression of queer life in Turkey. The ruling neo-conservative AKP government took a liberal stand in relation to the minorities in terms of recognizing their basic rights and visibility in its early years (between 2002 and 2010). However, after 2010 when the government secured its dominance over the state apparatus through constitutional changes, Turkish society faced with series of impositions of conservative norms and values on the women’s rights, youth education, alcohol consumption, and so on. 2 In this process, the ruling party’s radicalizing post-Islamist neo-conservatism specifically targeted the LGBTQ movement, their organizations and visibility. In the Gezi insurgency, which erupted in 2013 as a country-wide social protest of all those who commonly experienced this authoritarian repression, the LGBT-Blok played a significant role. 3 It was one of the platforms attracting unaffiliated individuals next to LGBT organizations who together gave an impressive resistance against police violence at the barricades and in the Gezi Park. Their unyielding presence through the insurgency and active struggle created a strong positive image and sympathy in the social opposition in Turkey. Yet, since then, they suffer from a politically engineered systematic repression and targeting in the process of autocratization in Turkey.
Queer lives in contemporary Turkey have been previously analyzed/theorized in ‘divergent fragments’ as it is framed in the dossier of Turkey’s queer times under the conditions of neoliberal authoritarianism (Özbay and Öktem, 2021: 128). Various research studies on struggles for identity (Kandiyoti, 2002), coming out and family dynamics (Özyeğin, 2015), sex work and urban life (Özbay, 2017), military service (Biricik, 2009; Başaran, 2014), transition period (Zengin, 2016), aging (Erol and Özbay, 2018), housing and health care (Yılmaz and Göçmen, 2016), activism (Savcı, 2016) and the role of nationalism (Altınay, 2008), and religion (Bereket and Adam, 2008) have been conducted. There are few studies examining intersection of class and gender through family performances (Uzun, 2019) or intersection of class and the performance of masculinity (Özbay, 2022; Ural and Beşpınar, 2017). This research, though, discusses the impact of intersecting forms of structures, systems of oppression upon queer subjectivities on one hand and their perceptions of and responses to these structures on the other hand with a focus on the potential of critical agency.
Our research on the potential of critical agency of queer subjects in Turkey suggests that their experience of sexual field is deeply influenced by other social dynamics and fields; class, gender, ethnicity, religion, and education, in particular. Moreover, we also tried to understand this intersectionality in reverse in terms of how the queer subjects perceive and relate to these other social fields. Therefore, the forms of habitus that we detected in this research appear more like ‘socio-ontological schemata’ than a field-specific individual level cognitive-practical matrix. We define conservative habitus as a frame of practical-cognitive dispositions which is complicit in relation to the normative-intelligible order tending to reproduce it unquestioningly. Critical habitus, however, triggers questioning and interrogation of this order and is supportive of the aims to subvert and transform it.
Structure of the Field Research
This article is based upon a qualitative fieldwork conducted in the summer of 2019 before the COVID outbreak. (Bora, 2021) We have conducted in-depth interviews with 47 LGBTQ people aged between 18 and 60 through snowball-sampling. Twenty-three of them are gay, seven of them lesbian, five of them bisexual, seven of them trans woman, four of them trans man, and one of them is pansexual. The profile of respondents consists of individuals. Organizations are applied in order to reach individuals. As the first LGBTQ organizations are in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, the fieldwork started in these cities. As many activists have migrated to Mersin, 4 the fieldwork continued in Mersin. Some of the respondents are contacted from Diyarbakır, Adana and Zonguldak whom are considered to be reflective of the experiences from the provincial areas. The respondents who are not activists and have no connection with associations are met in the streets they are working at. In addition, ethnographic observations have been conducted at cafes, bars, private gatherings, parties, and sports events. Interviews have been conducted at coffee shops, associations, in the homes of the respondents when it is preferred, and at a school garden. Four interviews have been conducted online. Two interviews lasted 1.5 hours, 10 about an hour, most of them half an hour.
Twenty-two of the respondents were organized, while the rest reacted negatively to LGBTQ associations. Regarding the political opinions, three groups can be identified; individuals that support AKP, 5 those supporting HDP, 6 and non-political ones. Our research questions are trifold. In the first group, there are questions about demographic and personal information based on their educational background, family dynamics, lifestyle, intimate relationships, and daily life activities. Second group of questions concern how they identify themselves, construct, interpret, and narrate their subjectivities. Third group questions are about how they perceive and interpret social class, social discrimination, the intersectional oppression they are experiencing. On the basis of their responses, we tried to interpret their habitus. 7
Semi-structured interviews are conducted and audio-recorded when accepted by the respondents. Only two people did not agree to the recording of the interview and the researchers took notes. Most of the respondents stated that they would prefer survey instead of in-depth interview. Most of them asked for close-ended multiple choice questions. They could not understand why face-to-face interview was chosen: either they did not know what was being asked or what the answer would be. With some of the respondents, we had a chance to build rapport and sustain long-term relationships. Some respondents sounded contradictory when the recorder was turned off. However, our positionality as cisgender and middle-class researchers have created difficulty in terms of developing trust. Some of the working-class respondents reacted in a negative way when they were asked about their social class and told that the study was class-biased. One of the sex worker respondents wanted to meet at the office of a feminist organization because she found us ‘too white’ to invite to her house. 8 Some of the respondents stated that they would only talk to someone who would understand them as they were feeling uneasy about talking to cisgender researchers.
After conducting interviews with 30 people, repetitions started to appear indicating certain patterns. Still, 47 interviews were conducted in total. Fieldwork has been unstable and discontinuous due to political circumstances and social oppression. The field has been experienced mostly through discreet private gatherings and meetings in LGBTQ organizations. Within these confines, it may not be possible to claim a generalizable sample on Turkey as most of the queer subjects live their sexuality secretly without being able to come out. Still, the sample of our field research is representative as it is inclusive of big cities and provinces, middle and working classes, and heterogeneity of the queerness.
Interviews were conducted in Turkish and translated. Proofreading of translations was done with the help of a native speaker. After thematization, content, and discourse analysis have been conducted in order to focus on how respondents interpret their experiences and identify themselves. Instead of assigning codes, symptomatic reading has been undertaken on the printed transcripts.
Findings
One basic finding of our study is that interviewees displayed two different habituses, the critical and the conservative. Factors that constitute the critical habitus are being educated, increasing cultural capital, entering the language as a result of cultural capital, transforming cultural capital into social capital, having a leftist family, being organized, socialization in left-wing milieus, belonging to a minority group in terms of ethnicity and religion, having more than one minority identity and suffering from intersectional oppression. On the other side, factors that constitute conservative habitus are lack of education, lack of cultural capital and the language, institutionalized nationalist and religionist framings, Sunni 9 -conservative reflexes, coming from religious-conservative family, socializing within conservative and nationalist milieus and rejecting Kurdish and/or Alevi 10 backgrounds. People with Alevi origins have been predominantly affiliated with left-wing movements and opposition in Turkey. Their belief system and culture have been systematically marginalized and minoritized by the dominant Sunnite-centered religious understanding which the state coopted and represented through the Presidency of Religious Affairs since its foundation in 1924. The struggle of Kurdish-led opposition in alliance with certain left-wing political parties created new political trajectories in contemporary Turkey seeking social and local autonomy for all peoples living in Turkey. In the general elections since 2015, they managed to pass 10% national threshold for representation in the Parliament.
Critical Habitus
Social Class
The performances of the respondents depend on a class background. While the working-class subjects lacking the capitals they need in order to challenge the normative-intelligible order try to fit in with gender binary by aiming to change their sex, 11 the middle-class ones who accumulated different forms of capitals subvert the given gender binary and the normative-intelligible order. They reject every type of classification and choose to be labeled as ‘the undermost’. Instead of being a part of the normative structure, they reject being identified as a result of holding cultural and educational capital. As Taylor (2014) asserts, queerness as engaging in subversive parodic practices can only be accessible to middle classes who own the economic, cultural, and symbolic capital needed. A working-class respondent with a conservative habitus chooses to take pride in establishing his own Paris. In contrast, a transsexual sex worker interviewee coming from a middle-class family states, ‘I choose the smell of shit even though I can easily move up the social ladder through sex work by picking my customers from Bilkent’. 12
If middle-class subjects are activist in particular, and if they are not living through a conservative habitus, they know what queer theory is. For instance, a crossdresser studying English literature at Bosphorus University 13 has comprehensive knowledge of queer theory and he shows the same approach to every field. Whatever subject you ask, politics, social class, gender, he mentions fluidity. He introduces himself sometimes as non-confirming, sometimes gender fluid, sometimes non-binary but flowing all the time. He defines queer perfectly saying that masculine heterosexual woman also happens to be queer.
While working-class respondents with conservative habitus act moralist by rejecting their gender identity and sexual orientation and marginalizing others, working-class interviewees with critical habitus reject the norms and affirm being labeled as ‘indecent’. They reject every type of classification by identifying with the ‘underground’ as underground does not have any gender, language, or color. As one respondent describes,
I am the underground. The most rancid place to be. The academy is also a class, for instance. Capitalist, intellectual. Kurds, Alevis also form a social class. But I am not involved in any of them. There is no color, language, or gender in the underground. It comes from the streets. Even the street is above you there.
Skeggs (2002) indicates that class in working-class interviewees displayed itself in efforts not to be recognized as working-class: ‘theirs was a refusal of recognition rather than a claim for the right to be recognized’ (p. 74). It was a denial of the representations of their positioning. Still, respondents with critical habitus identify with their social class. Working-class interviewees with critical habitus affirmed being positioned as members of an underclass without romanticizing it. But interviewees from the working class with conservative habitus deny and disidentify with their social class just as in the findings of Skeggs (2002) and Taylor (2014).
Family
The role of family is crucial, not only because respondents imitate them but also lacking their support results in deprivations, especially of education. For instance, one of the respondents coming from a Kurdish-Alevi, working-class conservative family had to leave home as her religious parents were excluding her, accusing her of having devil inside. She did not have chance to study as a result of working 16 hours per day. The respondent lacking the support of her family was alone and could not continue her education. As a result, she stated that she finds political organizations excessive and does not believe in change: ‘As a matter of fact, I actually prefer to create a right place for myself within the current system and live there, instead of changing and losing all my hope within the current system’. She works at a kitchen and maintains the conservative habitus of her family. However, another respondent who is a Kurdish-Alevi migrated from Sivas,
14
coming from working-class but this time political family, had a chance to study and become a white collar. Her family is illiterate but politically active and they supported her throughout. She chooses to struggle for all her minority identities and public visibility. As she puts it,
My family has a very low level of education but they are very progressive, never conservative. Because my father has been a leftist man from a very young age. So my socialism comes from my family’s roots.
Cultural Capital
In contrast to those middle class, educated, self-confident critical queer subjects, most of the working-class LGBTQ subjects are unable to even identify themselves. In addition to other factors that develop critical habitus, the ability of transforming cultural capital into social capital and the role of education is significant. As Taylor puts it, ‘. . . class still affects access into positions, travelling through space. Having the “right” cultural, economic and social capitals (which, when legitimated turn into “symbolic capital”, a resource which the working-classes “lack”) produces opportunities and advantages across various social spheres’ (Taylor, 2014: 2). A volunteer, for instance, who is from working-class was going to an non-governmental organization (NGO) thinking that it is a safe space to cross-dress. He was unwilling to engage in conversations nor make friends, only telling, ‘Can you paint my nails? I love the smell of it’. However, one of the middle class respondents was going there in order to socialize and have fun.
For the most part, respondents with the economic and cultural capital try to subvert the normative-intelligible order while those who lack cultural and economic capital, in other words, most of the working-class interviewees in our study, desire gender reassignment and comply with the gender hierarchy.
Ethnicity and Religion
It could be asserted that the sensitivity and consciousness of Alevi, Kurd and non-Muslim respondents of this study are more advanced than others regardless of their class and educational level. Even if they lack education, they are politically conscious and they tend to display critical habitus as a result of coming from leftist families or socializing within left-wing milieus. One of the Kurdish-Alevi transsexual respondents, for instance, mentioned of her leftist political socialization when asked about her school life. She expressed how she has noticed her minority identities through school life as a result of being attacked and discriminated. In fact, even when asked about her family, she shared her leftist political involvement and activism background.
While conservative, Sunni-Turk respondents dis-identify with their working-class identity and see themselves as ‘queens’ and reject their economically marginalized positions, Kurdish-Alevi working-class interviewees positively identify with their working-class identity. One Alevi working-class respondent, for instance, was proud of her class. She chose to continue living in Mamak 15 even after moving in with her middle-class girlfriend, because she feels like belonging there. Let alone disidentifying with their social class, some of the working-class respondents even label themselves as ‘the undermost’ and feel proud of it.
Working-class, Kurdish-Alevi, transsexual respondents with a critical habitus tend to reject every type of classification. They do not fit into gender norms. They stated confidently that they ‘gave birth to themselves’ and rejected being categorized. They also stand up for where they come from. One of them defines herself as a Kurdish-Alevi from Sivas. Another one mentions of the squatter settlement she grew up where everyone was squatting in solidarity with each other after work. Since the whole neighborhood was Alevi, she learnt that her identity was in minority only when at school.
Intersection of Kurdish and Alevi identity is important as they tend to be more political and activist. Both Alevis and Kurds have been subjected to marginalization, discrimination, coercion, and assimilation policies since the Ottoman period till now. It is one of the findings of this study that the intersection of Kurdishness and Alevism raise political consciousness and develop critical habitus. This study attests that ethno-religious identities had a significant impact on the development of critical habitus.
For some of the interviewees, their Kurdish or Alevi identity are just family matters. So they do not repeat the identification and maintain the dispositions. But as for most of the Kurdish-Alevi respondents, this is not an issue to be ignored. Their struggle includes both Alevism and Kurdishness because they are already interrelated.
Regarding the political respondents, those who transformed themselves from queer in itself to queer for itself, they may or may not be Kurdish, Kurdish problem comes to the forefront. For most of these respondents, Kurdish issue is a threshold in terms of democratization and resolution of other problems. For most of these queer respondents, freedom of Turkish LGBTQs requires passing through this threshold.
Still, trans people experience and struggle with transphobia and homophobia within the Kurdish movement. A Kurdish transsexual woman respondent coming from a political family, for instance, notes how she has been subjected to discrimination within the Kurdish movement. She asserts that people try to kill her not because they see a Kurdish girl but a transsexual woman when they look at her face. As a result, her gender identity and sexual orientation become prominent. She also emphasized that she had to leave her education because of her Kurdish identity. Her teacher intimidated that she will always fail her class as a result of being Kurdish. But appearance has the strongest effect. So, from her perspective, queer theory is just a utopia as there is a hierarchical inequality within the LGBTQ community as well. This was the case for most of the Kurdish-Alevi transsexual respondents.
Socialization Within Organizations
Most of the activist respondents with a critical habitus stated that the inadequate politics of the left-wing organizations and their homophobia and transphobia have brought them to queer politics. As one Kurdish-Alevi transsexual sex worker interviewee explains,
If you are active in a socialist organization or if you are visible in a field that they consider important, the things you say in a discussion are devalued. I mean even if a lot of people would agree, they shut you up. They constantly try to hinder your work. Or your value is not considered equal with the value of others. Your practice is not considered equal with the practices of other revolutionists. They single you out as being below them. Especially if you are a sex worker, oh lord! Even if the things you envision and believe in are the same regarding class conflict, they have a lot of prejudice against you. Therefore, they neither allow you to get to a central decision-making position, nor help pave the way for the political arena. They block you through various means.
Likewise, another working-class, Kurdish-Alevi transsexual respondent describes this as ‘the method of the enemy’. She explains how HDP supporter women dismissed her since she does not have breasts. She believes nothing will change if Demirtaş 16 comes to power and Kürdistan is established because then there will be yet another power bloc. She exhibits a full critical subversive subjectivity in this sense, although she wants to undertake gender reassignment and her biggest problem as a refugee is ‘not having enough money to afford cosmetics’.
In a similar manner, another transsexual sex worker respondent who exhibits full subversive critical queer subjectivity indicates that transsexuality stands for dissolution of the Kurdish identity as well so that Kurds would have access to places they are excluded from. This would enable Kurdish transsexuals to enter upper middle-class environments. Yet, another Kurdish-Alevi transsexual sex worker respondent indicates that while socialist movement imposes further violence to other transsexuals, Kurdish movement accepts her more since she is a Kurd. Still, she concedes that Kurdish movement is also homophobic.
Respondents who exhibit critical habitus kept harping on Gezi Insurgency. They emphasized that the movement which gained momentum in the early 2010s peaked through Gezi Events. After Gezi, the participants of Pride diversified and increased. In fact, the pride after Gezi was known to be the most comprehensive and massive one that had been held so far. Respondents with critical habitus stated that the movement even reached some conservative provinces of Turkey since then. In addition, Gezi was a period of coming out of the closet. A working-class, Alevi respondent coming from left-wing politics, for instance, mentioned how she came out of the closet during the Gezi Insurgency. She even changed her career path and decided to work only at places where she can come out.
Gezi was a breaking point for the respondents with a critical habitus. They stressed that becoming an item on the agenda and gaining sympathy was also a political outcome they have been struggling for. As one respondent stated,
You find the opportunity to fight together, to be together. It started to become visible during Gezi or so. Did we suddenly appear in Gezi though? No we didn’t.
Conservative Habitus
Social Class
Most of the interviewees with a conservative habitus have chosen gender reassignment. In their perception and self-presentation, this experience is about conforming with the gender binary. They reassign their gender and re-create the normative structure instead of challenging and subverting the authoritative legitimate values and norms by creating new in-between subjectivities. They re-produce gender binary being influenced by normative sexual orientations, practices, and roles. Because as Taylor (2014) puts it, ‘if you are not offered the options, how can you make the choices, how can you realize what you could be?’ (p. 83).
One of the significant factors that affect the performance of the respondents is their social class. Most of the working-class transsexual respondents try to fit into norms. A working-class trans woman respondent, for instance, defines herself as a woman. She reacts to the behavior of gay men, finds it extreme while accepting the same behavior exhibited by cisgender woman and man as ‘normal’. In other words, she is desirous of repeating the gender norms and becoming the normalized woman of the normative order. Working-class respondents who live through and in conservative habitus tend to comply with the normative order through speaking the language of the oppressor. As one respondent with conservative habitus claims,
At least now I am a woman, think about it, I became a woman and got married. I am getting married. If it wasn’t the case, what would I do? Prostitution.
Even those who say that they do not stereotype themselves try to adopt normative gender stereotypes. One of the working-class respondents with conservative habitus even takes a step further and praises family and states that a woman must act and be like a family woman. Their families do not stand by them but still, they value family above all else. Another working-class interviewee attributes elitism to gay men of Istanbul for being mannerly.
Some of them were so afraid of being recognized as unrespectable that in addition to staying at the closet they devalued feminine gays. Some of the sex worker interviewees introduced themselves as ‘the queen’ in order to be recognized as classed in response to judgements of middle classes. Most of the working-class interviewees with a conservative habitus emphasized respectability when asked about social class. They represented themselves as someone who have manners, knowing how to act. They introduced themselves as of ‘high quality’, ‘respectable people with manners’.
On the other side, some of the middle-class respondents also exhibited conservative habitus. Middle-class respondents with a conservative habitus were individualistic and focused on their personalities. They kept telling they believe in the potentials of individuals instead of social class, politics, and organizations. They were in pursuit of money and status. They do not believe in politics and perceive it as a profession. The description of discrimination for one of the middle-class respondents was, for instance, those who reject effeminate or old partners at the mobile application ‘Hornet’. Another middle-class respondent thinks that discrimination has nothing to do with class, and that everyone is subject to discrimination. He does not have problems like those from working-class. While working-class subjects struggle to survive, his biggest problem is lacking childhood photos.
Some middle-class interviewees with conservative habitus defined themselves as socialists even though they were not even organized within an LGBTQ association, let alone any other political organization. One respondent who is a middle-class business woman expects either intelligence or successful career from her partners even though she defines herself as left-winger. A middle-class respondent with a conservative habitus mentioned of evolution when asked about queer theory, stating that religious people cannot believe in evolution. Some middle-class respondents are concerned with new age philosophy and the issues of cosmic energy. They do not accept presence of discrimination within the society and call those claiming discrimination marginal. According to them, those who indicate the presence of discrimination are seeking and creating discrimination themselves. They also indicate that the discrimination has nothing to do with class conflict. One middle-class respondent’s activism is limited to 1-minute darkness protests. 17 She tells that she also participated in Gezi protests and yet she found it meaningless since her life was at risk. Another middle-class respondent similarly indicates that if there is a permitted meeting he will participate in or else he will not because life safety is his priority. He states that his psychology cannot handle participating in such an activity. One of them even mentioned of entropy when asked about activism. Some of the middle-class subjects introduced themselves as cosmic energy therapists, as healers. One of them stated that she does not support any decayed political organization except for those who work with bioenergy. They embrace new age philosophy as a belief. They indicate that they have a consciousness beyond given reality and they feel themselves responsible of healing other people.
Family
Most of the respondents with a religious and conservative family were acting in the same conservative manner despite complaining about the religiosity of their families. Even though some of the respondents were victims of violence in their religious families, they displayed conservative habitus themselves. One respondent, for instance, mentioned of her mother accusing her of being possessed by Devil. Another one remembered how her family hospitalized her. Still, they exhibit conservative habitus themselves and despise those who live their gender identity and sexual orientation openly. While working-class Kurdish-Alevi respondents with critical habitus referred to Kurdish Movement in every question, working-class Kurdish-Alevi but assimilated respondents coming from a conservative family referred to religion in every type of question.
Some working-class respondents reject coming out of the closet in order not to lose the support of their family. Because if they come out, or anyone finds out about them, they might lose the support of their family and undergo a downward mobility. They prefer the opportunities and comfort by not coming out in order to live a better life and benefit from the family support. One of the respondents, for instance, was born to a conservative family in Keçiören 18 and has never come out to his family. In return, he had a happy childhood and his family cared for his education and eventually he has a profession. He is a veterinary physician. He chooses social class rather than his gender identity and sexual orientation. He acts in the same conservative manner as his family, criticizing the activists for carrying ‘their privacy’ to public space.
Cultural Capital
It could be asserted that in reality only those with the right economic and cultural capital and those who are not conservatives are apparently subverting the normative-intelligible order. For the most part, those who lack cultural and economic capital, in other words most of the working-class interviewees in our study, are satisfied with the idea of gender-reassignment. They mostly comply with the gender hierarchy. While interviewees with critical habitus normalize and affirm sex labor, for working-class respondents with a conservative habitus sex work is the worst thing that could happen to them. Most of the working-class, unschooled, transsexual respondents with conservative habitus reject sex work in the name of honor and pride. For working-class subjects who lack cultural capital, their worst case is to undergo prostitution. Those who are forced to sex work act as if that fact does not exist. Their reaction toward sex work is conservative. However, middle-class subjects affirm the term similar to the transvaluation of the term ‘queer’. For one of the middle-class sex worker respondents, for instance, she is a service industry worker. But for another working-class transsexual respondent who takes the stage and sings at clubs, prostitution is the worst she could ever experience. She prefers washing the dishes, doing cleaning but never prostituting. Likewise, another working-class sex worker respondent acts as if she is not doing sex work for living because for her it is an unacceptable, indecent work. She has to do it unwillingly for money. She is not allowed to do anything else because she was thrown away from the nightclub in Kırıkkale 19 she used to work at. Despite being in financial difficulties, their biggest concern is saving their honor and chastity. As Taylor (2014) underlined, one ‘needs access to certain things that make you feel normal’ (p. 81).
Working-class respondents with conservative habitus understood religion from education and referred to religion when asked about their educational backgrounds. They also spoke with the language of the normative order. One working-class transsexual respondent openly referred to the treatment of homosexuality. In a similar manner, another transsexual sex worker answered each question by referring to religion. When asked about social class, she mentioned of those who are veiled and who are not. Talking with current conservative codes, she kept praising the values of family. She was proud of having married and veiled neighbors.
Still, this does not mean that all working-class respondents who lack cultural capital prefer not to challenge the class relations. On the contrary, some of them do by retreating into conservative habitus in order to prove their respectability and value. Interviewees who express conservative habitus differentiate themselves from others by accusing them in being immoral, indecent, and unclean similar to middle-class subjects who differentiate themselves from working class through their morality and hygiene (Skeggs, 2002). They strive for self-valorization to overcome class condition by expressing themselves in the codes of the normative order. Therefore, conservative habitus provides a safe terrain for imagining and representing themselves as respectable, elevated, and integrated to the dominant normative codes of social acceptability. Hence, there is a significant class dynamic operating through the terms of conservative habitus for most of the working-class queer subjects.
None of the working-class interviewees with conservative habitus have faith in change. They have transformed themselves but they do not believe in politics. They find politics absurd. Most of the transsexual respondents in fact support AKP. Some of the oppressed go right instead of left because they lack the hope that everything could be different; a form of consciousness which mostly develops with education. One of the working-class respondents with conservative habitus stated that she had stopped dreaming as she knew they were not going to come true.
Ethnicity
Most of the working-class interviewees spoke the language of the dominant normative order and devalued activists. Only those with unassimilated other minority identities (Kurdish and/or Alevi) had queer consciousness.
While respondents coming from similar political Kurdish-Alevi families act in a similar manner and exhibit critical habitus, respondents who also come from a working-class and Kurdish but assimilated family display conservative habitus like those who identify themselves as Sunni-Turk from similar class, family, and education background. For instance, two respondents are educated and have police officer fathers and housewife mothers. But one of them is Kurdish-Alevi and has always participated in special events/days such as 1 May Labor Day, Newroz, Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) trials, and Suruç. 20 In fact, she answers even questions on leisure time activity in a political manner. She does not say that she goes to the movies or pubs. Instead, she talks about news portals she follows such as Bianet, Etha, Evrensel, Sendika.org, and Siyasi Haber. 21 However, the other one is Sunni-Turk and shows a typical conservative reflex and is afraid of demonstrations.
Public/Private Distinction
Queer subjects with conservative habitus display different behaviors in private and public spheres and this result from their habitus. They present themselves as critical agents subverting the normative legitimate norms at their private spheres while exhibiting conservative attitudes at the public sphere. Respondents, who live their gender identity and sexual orientation in private life and accuse activists who live it publicly of being indecent, immoralist, and disgusting, exhibit conservative habitus. Respondents with conservative habitus attributed indecency to activists and condemned associations for exhibiting eroticism. A working-class transsexual respondent, for instance, describes himself as a modern individual who sings and dances and who has lovers and occasional sexual partners. As for him, the reason for not being exposed to any violence despite being open to everyone is the fact that he is not degenerated. What he means by degeneration is being political, being an activist, and carrying gender identity and sexual orientation into the public sphere. Likewise, another transsexual sex worker respondent defines activists as fleabags exploiting money coming from Europe, using drugs and partying with this money. She thinks that demonstrations are organized to show off to Europe. To her, we are not the country to set up LGBTQ organizations. Interviewees with a conservative habitus found it meaningless to carry ‘private issues’ to the public sphere. One of them, for instance, claims that ‘Activists try to implant what is not in the minds of people. This is manipulation’. He states that political activism has led to marginalization of LGBTQs. Respondents who exhibit conservative habitus were using online platforms and mobile applications in order to find partners but were ill-disposed to going to bars.
Some of the working-class Kurdish-Alevi respondents coming from conservative families who support AKP also express the same attitude. For the sake of upward mobility, they abandon their minority identities:
I have never been a nationalist, never done politics anywhere, never tried to stand out with my political view, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or beliefs in any way. People didn’t know . . . That’s why I was never discriminated against.
Socialization with Organizations
Respondents with conservative habitus tend to be secretive and right-winger. They reproduce hetero-sexism and embrace nationalist and religious discourses. While coming out directs toward left-wing, covertness leads them toward becoming right-wingers. Covertness directs them toward masculine, nationalist-religious profile. Because self-regulation and being in control of gender identity and sexual orientation is required for gaining and maintaining respectability in reference to the dominant normative-intelligible order. In other words, subjects do self-constraint, self-monitor, and self-regulate their sexuality. As a transsexual interviewed by Amnesty International try to prove her respectability by conforming to norms:
Oh, I am a heterosexual transsexual in full acceptance of the word . . . Actually if you think about my gender identity, I feel so ordinary, I am a heterosexual woman. (Le Roux, 2012)
Some of the conservative, middle-class respondents do not have any knowledge about queer theory. When explained, they warned us that this kind of things should not be spoken in public. Conservative middle-class respondents do not have any economic concerns. They are reactive against activists and they think that associations resemble to brothels as they assert that ‘some things should be lived behind closed doors’. Working-class interviewees who are either Sunni-Turks or assimilated Kurds are complicit toward normative-intelligible order which is oppressing and restricting them.
Those who exhibit conservative habitus were against social activism. While some of the interviewees with conservative habitus who participated in Gezi described it as an amusement, like a fun party, some of them criticized it for being dangerous. They were against demonstrations such as Gezi because their lives were in danger. They cared about their safety in the first place and expected demonstrations to be entertaining. As one respondent puts it,
The first protest I was in was Gezi and after that I have realized that participating in demonstrations are life-threatening.
Intersectionality
Crenshaw’s metaphor of basement containing ‘all people who are disadvantaged on the basis of race, sex, class, sexual preference, age and/physical ability’ where the most disadvantaged ‘by a full array of factors’ remains at the bottom can be invoked here to underline the critical praxis intersectional perspective could support. If the problems of subordination, marginalization, and discrimination can be addressed on the basis of ‘the most disadvantaged’ people’s intersectional experience to ‘remake the world’, then, ‘those who are singularly disadvantaged would also benefit’ (Crenshaw, 1989: 167). Our ‘intracategorical approach to intersectional complexity’ (McCall, 2005) focused on the experiences of queer subjects in Turkey. As such, we ‘strategically’ used the categories of identity with critical distance without losing sight to ‘the range of diversity and difference within the group’ (McCall, 2005: 1782). We attested that critical habitus enabling critical agency most clearly glimmers in the experience and consciousness of the multiply-burdened, the most disadvantaged section of the queer subjects; the trans-gendered and working-class with other (ethno-religious) minoritized identities. In other words, intersectionality does not remain a theory, an abstraction or synthetic addition of identities (Erel et al., 2010) but an experience developing critical habitus which enables critical agency against overlapping forms of social oppression. In our case, it develops against an intersectional compound of ethnocentric nationalism with religious elements, imposition of conservative gender roles and identities – sexism and hetero-sexism – and class-based marginalization.
According to the findings of this study, the emergence of political consciousness and critical agency depend on how many intersecting other identities you own or relate to. Our interviewees who are subjected to multiple forms of oppression exhibited critical habitus. For this reason, it could be asserted that being Alevi and Kurdish is significant in creating queer awareness. One transsexual sex worker respondent, for instance, kept telling ‘that thing’ when referring to what she does for living. On the other side, a prominent Kurdish trans activist was hiding it in the beginning before she raised her political consciousness. Likewise, another transsexual respondent coming from a working-class and Kurdish family states that her family prepared her for future discrimination. Her family told her that she would learn folk songs and that others would mistreat her by calling her filthy Kurd. She was told by her parents that she would always be subjected to violence and mistreatment and would be marginalized as a result of not speaking Turkish. Yet, she has been surprisingly exposed to transphobia even in socialist and Kurdish movements which triggered her critical habitus. In fact, this is a solid case of how oppression works intersectionally.
Most of the working-class respondents were afraid of activism because they were afraid of being criminalized, losing their jobs, and social acceptance. Given the authoritarian and oppressive conditions in Turkey, this attitude could be understandable. Yet, those owning multiple, intersecting minority identities are aware of the inequalities and discrimination. They affirm activism and experience critical agency. Researches on intersectional identities show that those with more than one minority-oppressed identity, either ethnic, racial, classed, gendered, or sexualized are more likely to develop ‘multiple consciousness’ (Harnois, 2015: 2). This applies to this study as well. Respondents with the intersection of class and other minority identities raised political consciousness and displayed critical habitus. In other words, subjects who are conscious of more than one system of oppression and inequality are more likely to develop political consciousness and critical agency.
Still, being Kurdish and Alevi is not enough to develop critical habitus; as there are conservative respondents as well. Those who exhibit conservative habitus deny their minority background. However, respondents who are literate and/or who come from a politically active family and/or socialize within left-wing milieus become politically conscious of their minority status and challenge, subvert, or oppose the dominant normative structure.
Conclusion
This study explored literature-based assumptions within the field and discussed possibility of critical queer agency against sexual, gender, class, and ethnic-based inequalities and corresponding power relations from an intersectional perspective in the case of Turkey. How individuals experience the intersection of inequalities, how they define themselves and others have been discussed in relation to certain forms of habitus. While some of the respondents exhibited critical subversive agency through a critical habitus, others exhibited conservative habitus and replicated norms in order to be recognized as respectable.
Those who are concerned with class-based status by censoring their gender identity and sexual orientation tended to develop conservative habitus while those who affirm their minority identities at all costs over class-based status tended to develop critical habitus. Social class, family and educational backgrounds, ethno-religious identities, involving in organizations and left-wing milieus and having more than one minority identity initiate the development of critical habitus. Most of the respondents maintain the social class of their families. Cultural capital is significant in identifying themselves and displaying critical queer subjectivity. While middle-class respondents with cultural capital reject every type of classification affirming fluidity, working-class respondents who lack cultural capital tend to express themselves through the codes of the dominant normative order. Still, there is a significant class dynamic here in terms of their strival for self-valorization beyond their class condition. Conservative habitus provides them the possibility of imagining and presenting themselves through the terms of social respectability of the dominant normative structures. Middle-class interviewees who associate themselves with Turkish, Sunnite, and conservative norms displayed conservative habitus as well, while most of the working-class Kurdish-Alevi respondents displayed critical habitus. In other words, having more than one minority identity had an impact on the development of critical habitus. Those who exhibit critical habitus describe themselves as ‘the other of other’ and struggle for every identity they own.
Supplemental Material
sj-docx-1-crs-10.1177_08969205241236529 – Supplemental material for Queer Experience in Turkey
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-crs-10.1177_08969205241236529 for Queer Experience in Turkey by Ezgi Bora and Kürşad Ertuğrul in Critical Sociology
Footnotes
References
Supplementary Material
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