Strategic In/Visibility of Turkish Egg Donors: Reproductive Labor, Secrecy, and Stigma in the Transnational Bioeconomy

ABSTRACT

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a Northern Cypriot clinic, I examine how practices of secrecy function as strategic tools for invisibilization in the lived realities of Turkish egg donors engaged in an illicit, gendered, and stigmatized form of reproductive labor, both within and across national borders. Combining feminist studies of reproductive labor with an analysis of secrecy, stigma, and dirty work, I adopt a notion of secrecy as an embodied social practice to explore ethnographically how secrecy is integral to the bioavailability of Turkish egg donors. Secret practices enable these young women to intimately navigate gendered moral, health, socio-legal, and financial concerns within the challenging wider context of restrictive reproductive biopolitics, a legally ambigious cross-border biomedical market, fragile socio-economic conditions, and a heteropatriarchal sexual culture in Turkey. For Turkish egg donors, who opt for strategic invisibilization, moral and financial concerns sometimes override health and legal considerations. Secrecy sustains this transnational bioeconomy while simultaneously concealing its exploitative harms and risks.

ÖZET

Kuzey Kıbrıs’taki bir klinikteki etnografik saha çalışmasına dayanarak, Türkiyeli yumurta donörlerinin gündelik yaşamlarının gerçekliği içerisinde gizlilik pratiklerinin nasıl stratejik araçlar olarak işlediğini inceliyorum. Bu pratikler, hem ulusal sınırlar içinde hem de dışında, cinsiyet temelli ve damgalanmış üreme emeğini yasadışı bir şekilde yürütüldüğü durumlarda görünmez kılmayı sağlar. Üreme emeği üzerine yapılmış feminist çalışmalarla gizlilik, damgalama ve pis iş analizini birleştirerek, gizlilik kavramını Türkiyeli yumurta donörlerinin biyoyararlanımında nasıl temel bir rol oynadığını etnografik olarak araştırıyorum. Gizlilik pratikleri, bu genç kadınların, Türkiye'deki kısıtlayıcı üreme biyopolitikaları, yasal olarak belirsiz bir sınır ötesi biyomedikal piyasa, kırılgan sosyo-ekonomik koşullar ve heteropatriyarkal bir cinsel kültür bağlamında cinsiyete dayalı ahlaki, sağlık, sosyo-hukuki ve finansal kaygıları yakından yönetmelerini sağlar. Stratejik görünmezliğe başvuran Türkiyeli yumurta donörleri için, bazen ahlaki ve finansal kaygılar sağlık ve yasal kaygıların önüne geçer. Gizlilik, bu ulusötesi biyoekonomiyi sürdürürken aynı zamanda sürece içkin olan sömürücü zararları ve riskleri örtbas eder.

KEYWORDS:

• Egg donation
• Northern Cyprus
• reproductive labor
• secrecy
• stigma
• Turkey

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to my research participants. I also thank the editors of this special issue for their insightful comments on the initial version. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to the journal’s editors and the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. This project was approved by the MIT COUHES (protocol # 1312006088).

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. All names are pseudonyms.

2. The data for this article stems from a larger ethnographic research project I conducted for my dissertation, Besides interviewing egg donors, I also interviewed Turkish couples seeking gamete donation and/or sex selection in Clinic Delta, along with medical experts from various clinics across Turkey and Northern Cyprus.

3. In 2005, monthly gross minimum wage was around 1,270 Turkish Liras in Turkey and around 1,700 Turkish Liras in Northern Cyprus.

4. “Tüp Bebek Merkezleri KKTC’de üçüncü büyük sektör [Tube Baby Centers constitute a third big economic sector in TRNC]” http://www.eurovizyon.co.uk/kibris/tup-bebek-merkezleri-kktcde-ucuncu-buyuk-sektor-h51591.html; “KKTC’de ‘Tüp Bebek’ İle İlgili Önemli Gelişme! [An Important Development Regarding Tube baby in TRNC]” https://www.kibrisadahaber.com/mobi/kktcde-tup-bebek-ile-ilgili-onemli-gelisme.html; “Sağlık Turizmi için Avantajımız Çok [We have many Advantages in Health Tourism]”

“http://www.tursaf.org.tr/haberler/saglik-turizmi-icin-avantajimiz-cok-hulya-harutoglu/

5. “Tüp Bebek Turizmi [Tube-Baby Tourism], Kıbrıs Postası, August 2, 2009. Available at: https://www.kibrispostasi.com/c35-KIBRIS_HABERLERI/n28111-Tup-bebek-turizmi (accessed February 12, 2023).

6. For a discussion of legitimate relatedness in the context of assisted reproduction in Israel, see Kahn (2000).

7. The initial legal regulation of assisted reproduction in Northern Cyprus dates back to the 2002 bylaw, which has undergone three amendments (in 2006, 2009, and 2016, respectively).

8. For analysis of egg donation as a form of virginal façade (Özyeğin 2015), see Mutlu (2021).

Additional information

Funding

The ethnographic research on which this study was based was funded by the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (# 1456130).

Notes on contributors

Burcu Mutlu

Burcu Mutlu is an assistant professor at Department of Anthropology, Ozyegin University, Istanbul, Turkey. She received her PhD in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology & Society from MIT in 2019. Her research interests cover assisted reproductive technologies and biobanking, and feminist technoscience.