The startling effect of the word race: a glance at racism in Turkey through the eyes of young men who support gender equality

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the widely ignored racism and racialization in Turkey through the eyes of young men who self-identify as feminist, pro-feminist, or gender-egalitarian. It draws on in-depth interviews with 39 cisgender university students and graduates, aged between 18 and 24, from the ethnoreligious majority (Sunni Muslim Turkish) and minority (Kurdish, Alevi, and Alawite) families. It examines how young men who support gender equality frame, experience, and perpetuate racism. Informed by critical race theory, I argue that rejecting race as a meaningful category and failing to acknowledge racism's systemic characteristics helps the participants from the majority trivialize or justify their racist attitudes. The startling effect of the word race also influences minority participants, hindering them from reflecting on racialization and racism experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical race theory
• feminism
• racialization
• ethnoreligious minorities
• young men
• Turkey

Acknowledgements

I heartily acknowledge the invaluable contributions of Professor Crystal Fleming, Professor Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, and Associate Professor Victoria Hesford from Stony Brook University, and Professor Emerita Gul Ozyegin from William & Mary in shaping this manuscript’s framework. I am also thankful to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

This study received the Stony Brook Institutional Review Board approval (CORIHS#2018-4438-F).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Ünlü primarily draws on Charles Mills’s (1997) conceptualization of “the racial contract.” The racial contract operates at the center of the modern (Eurocentric) world for “privileging the whites as a group,” exploiting the non-whites, and denying them “equal socioeconomic opportunities” (Mills 1997, 11). Mills highlights the epistemological characteristic of the contact, the outcome of which is white ignorance. White ignorance refers to not knowing, not acknowledging, and not feeling the history and legacies of white privilege. Similarly, Ünlü (2018) argues that the Turkishness contract dictates the states of Turkishness, including the Turkish-identified individuals’ ways of knowing and not knowing, feeling and not feeling, and acknowledging (seeing, hearing) and ignoring (not seeing, not hearing) the oppression minorities suffer.

2 Until 2013, the education system forced children starting from primary education to recite The Student Oath, which begins with the lines “I am Turkish, I am honest, I am hardworking” and ends with “My existence shall be a gift (dedication) to the Turkish existence.” Similarly, for many years, National Security textbooks warned high school students of traitors who seek “to divide Turkish society along race lines or along the lines of religion or religious sects” (Altinay 2004, 128). The constitution still identifies national education’s objectives as producing citizens who take pride in Turkishness and remain loyal to nationalism (see Altinay 2004).

3 As a result of the warfare between PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) and the Turkish state, many Kurdish people suffered displacement and economic hardship throughout the 1990s. The government strategically forced these Kurds, mostly peasants, to become “village guards” against Kurdish guerillas (McDowall 2007).

4 On the other hand, we should not read this example as minority male bodies are the only prime targets of racialization and police violence in Turkey: the state’s ethnic violence targets minority women, too (see Burç 2019; Erel and Acik 2020). However, this study is limited to cisgender men’s experiences.

Additional information

Funding

The research was supported by an internal award from Stony Brook University.