Reorienting the nation: spatio-corporeal imaginaries and Turkey’s father of modern obstetrics, Dr Besim Ömer

Abstract

In this study, I use a queer theoretical framework to critically assess narratives of reproductive reorientation in the early Turkish republic. I focus on the writings of one of the central medical professionals associated with the Kemalist regime, Dr Besim Ömer. Inspired by Sara Ahmed’s approach to orientation, I undertake a queer reading of Dr Besim Ömer’s writings on reproductive bodies and the spaces that they inhabit. Spatial dimensions of reproductive misalignment and reorientation are especially evident in Dr Besim Ömer’s work between 1923 and 1938. Rural and urban women are written as out-of-line with respect to the presumed national family line of Turkishness, one that extended Turkish bodies from the heroically fertile past and into a successfully (re)productive future. This assessment is predicated upon a spatio-corporeal imaginary: the naturally fecund Turkish woman, a body whose otherwise reproductively inclined tendencies had become misaligned in both the stagnating rural and industrializing urban spaces of the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish republic. I draw upon Ahmed in order to highlight the slantwise character of desires for properly oriented reproductive bodies and spaces that were in-line with the nationalistic family line of Turkishness; desires that were predicated upon a placeless idealization and an embodied utopia. Spatio-corporeal imaginaries such as these have limited the scope and dimension of what constitutes, as Ahmed describes, ‘a life worth living.’

Keywords:

• Pronatalism
• queer theory
• reproduction
• spatio-corporeal imaginary
• Turkey

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Acknowledgements

My heartfelt thanks go out to my friend and intellectual inspiration while in Ankara, Dr Neslihan Demirkol. Her hours of patient assistance as I struggled with the nuances of Ottoman Turkish were second only to her kind companionship. Additional thanks go out to Doctors Kyle and Emine Evered and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and suggestions along the way. Finally, a special thank you to Michael Rogers for your patience and understanding during the long research process abroad.