DEFENSE OF DISSERTATION

Caner Hazar

The LGBT Movement in Turkey, 1980-2020:
Applying a Heteronational Matrix Analysis


Wednesday, September 8, 2021
10 AM-12 PM

Committee Members:
Nancy Naples, Co-Chair
Zehra Arat, Co-Chair
Mary Bernstein
Elizabeth Holzer
Kathryn Libal

In this dissertation, I explore the question: what national dynamics influence the strategies and actions of LGBT activists in the Turkish context? I analyze the historical development and shifts in the grassroots LGBT activism in Turkey. I draw on semi-structured interviews with 36 activists from 6 cities in Turkey and from my knowledge as a participant in the LGBT activist community in Istanbul from 2009 to 2012. I introduce and develop the term “heteronational matrix” to explore how gender and sexualities are dynamically woven into the symbolic and material construction of the nation and influence LGBT activist strategies as the national political context changes over time. In Chapter 1, I discuss the social construction of gender, my heteronational matrix perspective, and social movements theory. In Chapter 2, I discuss the data collection process, sources of information, interview questions, and analysis. In Chapter 3, I explore how trans sex workers and the early LGBT movement developed their political speech in the 1980s and the 1990s in interaction with the classed, political, and gendered fault-lines of the Turkish nation-state and civil society. In Chapter 4, I analyze how LGBT activists developed a grassroots praxis with which activists saw their historical situatedness (along with wars in the Middle East region, militarism in Turkey, and oppression of other ethnic and religious communities) as intrinsic to their gendered experience in the 2000s. In Chapter 5, I explore how new tensions emerged between the grassroots LGBT activism and the Turkish state and global LGBT politics, specific to the 2010-2020 period. In Chapter 6, I assess the contribution of “heteronational matrix” as a dynamic perspective to understand the intersection of gender and sexuality and nation and as a contribution to social movements literature. I conclude with some possible future research directions.


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