Beyond silence and voice: gender, sexuality and antimilitarism in Turkey and Israel

ABSTRACT

Turkey and Israel project two distinct military regimes which construct gender and sexuality in specific ways as part of their respective security agendas. Despite the differences, however, both entitle women and LGBTQs to certain exemptions from the military service, and in doing so silence their antimilitarist activism. Women and LGBTQs counter this process through their acts of conscientious objection, through which they claim a voice in matters of militarism, security and war. While doing so, however, they reproduce a dichotomous conceptualisation of silence and voice, which falls short of explaining their agency as well as its outcomes. Drawing on a comparative analysis, I argue that a more nuanced understanding of agency necessitates deconstructing the dichotomy between silence and voice, each of which may have multiple meanings, connotations and consequences. Whereas silent acts of grey objection do not always point to a lack of agency and resistance, or domination, and may indeed create change; voice and visibility that follow their declared acts of objection may entail costs and loss of agency, in that not only does it come at the expense of the masculinisation/militarisation of their acts but may also result in the immediate deterioration of their rights to refuse.

KEYWORDS:

• Antimilitarism
• gender
• sexuality
• agency
• Turkey
• Israel

Acknowledgments

I thank Emin Fuat Keyman, Ayşe Gül Altınay, Ayşe Kadıoğlu, Zeynep Gülru Göker, Aydın Özipek and Rela Mazali who provided insight and expertise that greatly assisted the research, as well as two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. http://www.kaosgl.org/sayfa.php?id=13367 Accessed on 11 August 2018.

2. https://www.haberturk.com/polemik/haber/817610-sakincali-escinseller-askere-gitmeyecek Accessed on 11 August 2018.

3. https://awiderbridge.org/transgender-in-the-idf/#sthash.ZAUcxHOz.dpuf Accessed on 15 July 2018.

4. https://awiderbridge.org/first-transgender-officer-in-the-idf/ Accessed on 15 July 2018.

5. https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5,150,809,00.html Accessed on 11 August 2018.

6. http://oznik.com/petitions/010822.html Accessed on 12 August 2018.

7. https://972mag.com/lgbtq-israelis-come-out-against-occupation-and-homophobia/127863/ Accessed on 2 August 2018.

8. http://www.myaguarnieri.com/2009/11/young-israeli-women-follow-their-consciences-into- prison/ Accessed on 2 August 2018.

9. Retrieved from https://www.wri-irg.org/es/node/2481 Accessed on 23 May 2017.

10. https://www.kaosgl.org/kategori.php?id=1-10 Accessed on 2 August 2018.

11. Intermediate Decision at 18, MilC (GS) 151,174,205,222,243/03 Military Prosecutor v. Matar [2004] (unpublished decision) (on file with the author) (Rimalt 2007, 132).

12. Retrived from http://www.ntv.com.tr/turkiye/erdogan-600-bin-asker-kacagi-var,V2W7cyTDyEKQcD5Ng2pgWA Accessed on 10 Sepetmber, 10 2015.

13. https://www.wri-irg.org/en/story/2003/war-resistance-israel-overview Accessed on 11 August 2018.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Doğu Durgun

Doğu Durgun has completed his undergraduate degree in Economics at Hacettepe University, his master degree in Political Science and Modern Turkish History at Galatasaray University, and his Ph.D. in Political Science at Sabancı University. He has been a teaching assistant in Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabancı University between 2010 and 2016. He has been working as a field worker/social worker in the Association for Solidarity with Asylum Seekers and Migrants since December 2018. He has published on gender, sexuality, antimilitarism/conscientious objection and foreign policy. His areas of interest include critical security studies, critical military studies, social movements and feminist/queer theory.