https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6112-3878
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ABSTRACT
This article contributes to studies on youth in Turkey by exploring gender, sexuality, intimacy, and relationship practices among college students. Our findings show that there is change (a) towards greater gender equality; (b) about attitudes regarding family, sexuality, and romance; and (c) in understanding and experiencing gendered violence in the groups of students we examined. Progressive values appear to become more common among the participants despite the increasingly conservative tone of the political and cultural climate. However, traditional relationship patterns and norms, including the idealization of monogamous relationships, robust familial ties, and sensitivity for moral reputation, seem prevalent even though these were not associated with the ascendant politico-religious conservatism. By constituting ‘secular but conservative’ intimate selves and relations, our respondents approve the freedom and right to explore possibilities for others, and yet not immediately for themselves, as they preserve an unequivocal moral self.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 See, for example, Bettie, Women without Class; Bogle, Hooking Up; England and Ronen, “Hooking Up”; Kimmel, Guyland; King, Faith with Benefits; Pascoe, Dude; Pierce, Sex College; Wade, American Hookup; Ward, Not Gay.
2 Seemiller and Grace, “Generation Z.”
3 Turner, “Generation Z.”
4 Risman, Where the Millennials?
5 See, for example, Akay, Gençliğin; Alemdaroglu, “Governing”; Çelik, “My State”; Çelik and Lüküslü, “Spotlighting”; Lüküslü, “Necessary Conformism”; Neyzi and Darıcı, “Generation in Debt”; Özbay and Soybakis, “Political Masculinities”; Saktanber, “We Pray”; Saktanber, “Cultural Dilemmas”; Sarıoğlu, “New Imaginaries”; Yılmaz, “Youth”; Yonucu, “Urban.”
6 Akpınar, “Intergenerational.”
7 Friedland, “Love.”
8 Özbay, Queering.
9 Gökarıksel and Secor, “Devout”; Sayan-Cengiz, Beyond.
10 Özyeğin, New Desires, 19.
11 Özyeğin, New Desires, 18–19; Lüküslü, “Creating.”
12 Published in 2015.
13 Arat and Pamuk, Turkey.
14 Düzgit and Balta, “When Elites.”
15 Öktem and Akkoyunlu, “Exit from.”
16 Acar and Altunok, “The Politics”; Cindoğlu and Ünal, “Gender”; Özbay and Soybakis, “Political Masculinities”; Savci, Queer.
17 The “secular but conservative” standpoint resembles the state-led idealization of the new Turkish woman as “secular yet constrained,” in the early Republican period, see White, “State Feminism.” Our concept differs from this expression by deemphasizing the normalized morality and its effectiveness on both genders.
18 Özyeğin makes a comment on the inability “to explain in purely class terms.” See New Desires, 110.
19 Lüküslü and Çelik, “Gendering.”
20 See also Özyeğin, New Desires.
21 Sujon, “Domesticating.”
22 The survey included six questions about intimate violence, and as noted in the method section, we use the quantitative results as more of a general framework for the lack of meaningful relation between variables in the data. Although these numbers are not conclusive, they are worth noting even as descriptive statistics indicating a certain trend.
23 Özyeğin, New Desires, 1.
24 Ibid., 7.
25 Özbay, Queering; Özyeğin, New Desires; Savcı, Queer in Translation.
26 Özyeğin, New Desires, 2.
27 Ibid., 6.
28 Ibid., 34.
29 Arat and Pamuk, Turkey; Düzgit and Balta, “When Elites.”
30 Arat and Pamuk, Turkey; Kücük and Özselcuk, “Fragments”; Öktem and Akkoyunlu, “Exit from”; Özbay and Soybakis, “Political Masculinities”; Savcı, Queer.
31 Özyeğin, New Desires, 2.
32 Ibid., 21.
33 Alemdaroğlu, “Escaping”; Sarıoğlu, “New Imaginaries”; Özbay and Soybakis, “Political Masculinities”; Savci, Queer.
34 Özyeğin, New Desires, 25.
35 Adaman, Neoliberal Turkey; Özbay, The Making.
36 The number of internet users in Turkey has risen from two million people in 2000 to 70 million in 2021 and that makes Turkey the 13th country in the world in terms of internet users (www.internetworldstats.com).
37 Acar and Altunok, “The Politics”; Cindoğlu and Ünal, “Gender.”
38 Arat and Pamuk, Turkey; Balkan, Balkan, and Öncü, The Neoliberal; and Yeşilada and Noordjik, “Changing Values.”
39 Acar and Altunok, “The Politics.”
40 Arat and Pamuk, Turkey; Cindoğlu and Ünal, “Gender.”
41 Özbay and Soybakis, “Political Masculinities.”
42 Large-scale national data can provide many directions of change, such as the marital status of young people. According to the official Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK) figures, the average first marriage age has consistently increased for both genders: 26 for men and 22.7 for women in 2001; 27.9 for men and 25.1 for women in 2020. There are 9,206,000 “young individual” citizens (aged 18-24) who could be at college by the end of 2020. Among them, 4 percent of men and 16 percent of women are married. Data available at https://data.tuik.gov.tr
44 Bogle, Hooking Up; England and Ronen, “Hooking Up”; King, Faith with Benefits; Pierce, Sex College; Wade, American Hookup.
45 BÜKAK, “Takılma Kültürü.”
46 Lüküslü, “Creating.”
47 Arat and Pamuk, Turkey, 255.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Cenk Özbay
Cenk Özbay is an associate professor of sociology and gender studies at Sabancı University, where he teaches classes on gender and masculinities, sexualities, urban sociology, and neoliberalism. His work has appeared in books, encyclopedias, and journals, such as Sexualities, Social Politics, Journal of Gender Studies, South Atlantic Quarterly, New Perspectives on Turkey, and GLQ. He is co-editor of Yeni Istanbul Calismalari (2014, Metis) and The Making of Neoliberal Turkey (2016, Routledge) and author of Queering Sexualities in Turkey: Gay Men, Male Prostitutes, and the City (2017, I. B. Tauris).
Maral Erol
Maral Erol is a professor at Işık University Humanities and Social Sciences Department in Istanbul, Turkey. She completed her PhD in Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Duke University for five years. Her research interests include gender, science and technology relations with a focus on biomedical technologies and medicalization; critical masculinity studies; biopolitics and political ecology. She has published articles and book chapters on the medicalization of menopause in Turkey, the body, gender and sexualities, menstruation, andropause, and aging in journals such as Sexualities, Journal of Gender Studies, Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, Social Science & Medicine, and Medical Anthropology.
Cigdem Bagci
Çiğdem Bağcı is an associate professor of social psychology at Sabancı University. She received her PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London. She has extensively published on group processes and intergroup relations; intergroup contact; collective intergroup processes; self and group efficacy; social identity; prejudice and discrimination; minority groups; and immigration.
Nurcan Özkaplan
Nurcan Özkaplan is an independent researcher and feminist economist, affiliated with Işık University.