Cross-dressing in Turkish Cinema

Politics, Gender and National Trauma

Burcu Dabak

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780755634248
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

As in western cinema, cross-dressing is a recurrent theme in Turkish film. But what do these films, whose characters typically cross-dress in order to escape enemies or other threats, tell us about the modern history of the Turkish Republic? This book examines cross-dressing in Turkish films in the context of formative events in modern Turkish political history, arguing that this trope coincides with and is illustrative of trauma induced by Turkey's multiple coup d'etats, periods of authoritarianism, enforced secularism and 'modernization'. Burcu Dabak Ozdemir analyses five case study films wherein she reveals that cross-dressing characters are able to escape persecutors and surveillance - key instruments of oppression during Turkey's coups. She shows how cross-dressing in the films examined become a destabilising force, a form of implicit resistance against state power, both political and in terms of binaries of gender and identity, and a means to register moments of national trauma. The book historicises the concept of cross-dressing in modern Turkey by examining what the author argues is a formative trauma worked through in the films examined: the westernization policies of the Kemalist regime whose most immediate symbolic presence was worn - the enforced adoption of western dress by citizens. Of interest to scholars of gender, queer, film and trauma studies, the book will also appeal to students and scholars of contemporary Turkish culture and society.

1

Framing Turkey and mapping cross-dressing films: Turkish modernization as cross-dressing performance

The three distinct periods of cross-dressing film production, the 1960s, the 1980s and the 2000s, coincided not only with significant milestones in Turkish political history but also with times of national trauma, in this case, military coups. Therefore, I discuss the 1960 and 1980 military coups and the 2007 military memorandum and their effects on cultural life in order to understand the main tensions of the periods and the contexts which they provided for cross-dressing performance. However, in order to understand Turkish politics and culture, the significance of the modernization process should be considered before turning to the effects of military coups. After that, the cinema of the three periods will be analysed to show the kinds of textual landscape in which cross-dressing films were located in order to understand the relationship between the texts. Gender movements and discussions of the periods will be considered next in order to understand how the gender discourses of the periods intersected with the other discourses. This chapter therefore represents a stage which is framed by the three selected military coups where the choreography of theory which is outlined in the next chapter and the case studies which will be outlined the subsequent chapters meet. I prefer to use the verb ‘mapping’ because ‘maps are not only representations of the world, they also have the ability to change the way we think about and act upon places depicted in those maps’ (Dodge et al. 2009: 27). Furthermore, maps not only make visible the relationships between a place and its surroundings but also help us to describe a place according to these relationships. It can therefore be claimed that maps also have a performative function. On the other hand, mapping as an action includes power over the space. Mapping a space implies not only capturing and possessing the space but also attributing value to it. These points all reflect what I want to do with the films. The questions addressed in this chapter will be ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘which’ cross-dressing films show up.

Turkish modernization

The modernization process and its underpinning tension can be seen at work in all kinds of social relations, desires and anxieties and are central to Turkish political and cultural life. It can be claimed that the Turkish national identity was structured in the tension between being modern/western and being traditional/eastern, so understanding the effects of Turkish modernization on society and culture is vital for understanding the possible alternative readings of cross-dressing performance which are particular to Turkish society.

The Ottoman Empire collapsed after the First World War and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk established the westernized and modernized Turkish Republic in 1923. According to Yeşim Arat (2000), Kemalist ideology was based on three main premises: western as well as modern, rejecting the Ottoman heritage and legitimizing their modernization project with reference to the pre-Islamic Turkish past. The unique and important characteristic of Turkey’s modernization which makes it different from western examples is that it is a state-centred project (Aktar 1993; Ercan 1996; İnsel 1996: 2002; Mardin 2000; Sarıbay 1982). In Turkey, the modernization politics aimed to create a modern state as dominant over society instead of transforming the citizens into modern subject/citizens (Can 1998; Durgun 1997; Keyman & İçduygu 1998; Nişancı 2001; Öğün 1995). Furthermore, ‘Turkey is the only Muslim country adopting secularism as the fundamental principle of the modernization project’ (Özsoy 2009). Controlling the position, visibility and appearance of women in society was regarded as the best way to show the secular, modern and western tendency of the modernization (Göle 1996; Kandiyoti 1988).

During Turkey’s modernization period, women were a crucial part of the process. The legal emancipation of Turkish women constituted the vehicle for the modernization (Arat 1997; Durakbaşa 1999; Göle 1996; Kandiyoti 1988). This is not surprising and it is not specific to Turkish Kemalist modernization because, according to Nira Yuval-Davis (1997: 2), ‘it is women, the bureaucracy, and the intelligentsia who reproduce nations, biologically, culturally and symbolically’. ‘At the same time, discourse and struggles around the issues of “women’s emancipation” or “women following tradition” (as have been expressed in various campaigns for and against women’s veiling, voting, education and employment) have been at the centre of modernist and anti-modernist nationalist struggles’ (Yuval-Davis 1997: 23). The emancipation of Turkish women was the centre of Kemalist modernization; in fact, it was characterized under the term of ‘state-feminism’. The most important date for the emancipation of Turkish women was the adoption of the Swiss Civil Code on 4 October 1926. By means of adopting this law on western private life, women’s position in family life was re-organized. This law made polygamy illegal, gave the right of divorce to women as to men, made civil marriage obligatory, and removed any difference between men and women in terms of inheritance. On the other hand, the Swiss Civil Code did not allow absolute equality between husband and wife: the husband was still the head of the family. The turban and the fez were outlawed by the Hat Law and Dress Revolution in 1925. In 1930, women gained the right to vote before most European countries had introduced it. In 1914, women started to study at universities and in 1934, the first woman judge was appointed. The image of the new woman of modern Turkey can be summarized as an educated, professional woman in the workplace, a socially active woman as a member of social clubs, a biologically reproductive woman in the family as a mother and wife, and a feminine woman entertaining men at balls and parties. The duties of modern Turkish women, according to Atatürk, were raising the next generation and being the source and social foundation of the nation (Arat 1997; Durakbaşa 1999; Göle 1996; Kandiyoti 1988). This is referred to as ‘state feminism’. As a result, it can be said that the Turkish modernization/westernization sought to create emancipated woman citizens who would be the window through which one can see Turkish modernization. Carole Pateman (1988) described this process as the transformation of traditional patriarchy to civil patriarchy, thus emphasizing that civil society and citizenship are also patriarchal masculine notions and norms. So, clothing and styles of dressing served as modernist sites where the battle of conflicting ideologies took place.

Jenny B. White (2003: 149) stated, ‘Dress became a cornerstone of Turkey’s modernist transformation. In 1925, Atatürk travelled around the country to introduce “civilized dress” to the people. Headgear had been sign of status and distinction during Ottoman times, the different types demonstrating rank, profession and sex.’ Modernization transformed bodies into the essence and symbols of nation by using clothing. Traditional and Islamic ways of dressing were forbidden in the public sphere. According to Kaya Genç (2013: 1), ‘The world’s first hat revolution took place in Turkey in 1925. On November 25 of that year, the parliament passed a law that made it mandatory for all men to wear Western-style hats in public places; all civil servants had to wear them, and no other type of hat would be allowed. Those who went hatless would be left alone, but if one wanted to wear a hat then one had to either wear the proposed model (and not the traditional turban or fez) or face the consequences, which could be as severe as the death penalty.’ This ‘Hat and Dress Revolution’ initiated by Atatürk produced protests in many cities and many people were arrested. Severe and criminal sanctions were used to implement the new codes of dress, transforming dressing and the body into objects of surveillance. As can be seen easily in records of the period, the Turkish Kemalist modernization process which was based on the appearance of citizens did not take long: in a very short time, Turkish citizens were transformed from Figure 1.1 to Figure 1.2.

Figure 1.1 Ottoman women.

Figure 1.2 Republican women gathered around Mustafa Kemal at a ball.

So it can be claimed that Turkish citizens actually wore modernization. If cross-dressing is accepted as a journey in the uncertain space between two poles of a binary which can be visualized by dressing, then Turkish modernization might be called a form of cross-dressing which operates across traditional to modern. Turkish national identity was formed in the fracture between traditional/east and modern/west as both traditional and modern and neither traditional nor modern. In this fracture between modern and tradition, these terms – west/east and modern/traditional – emancipate their binary opposite and produce new meaning for Turkey’s national identity. Joseph R. Gusfield (1967) suggested that traditional society is not a stable and distant society like a binary opposite of modern society (unlike the claims of classic modernization theory which allow us to think about modernization as a linear symmetric phenomenon independent from historical and geographical concepts), but that traditions are invented according to the requirements of the modern world in order to legitimate modern discourses. For example, some intellectuals of the republic such as Ziya Gökalp tried to rewrite the history of pre-Islamic Turks in central Asia according to the requirements of the new modern Turkey. He argued that women had been considered equal to men among pre-Islamic Turks in central Asia, unlike during the Islamic Ottoman period. According to Gökalp (1968: 147), ‘Old Turks were both democratic and feminist … In every business meeting woman and man had to be present together.’ The Islamic tradition as practised by the Ottomans was accepted as the reason for excluding women and the new citizens of the Kemalist ideology were structured as the opposite of Ottoman citizens, although they were the same. According to Gökalp, democracy and feminism were the basis of ancient Turkish life, which was postponed during Ottoman Empire. The endeavours of Ziya Gökalp can be accepted as ‘presentism’, which is a kind of historical writing which approaches the past using the concepts and concerns of the present.

In other words, traditional and modern societies exist simultaneously and produce a hybrid society. Modern society brings an idea of the future; traditional society brings an idea of past in this relationship. To this extent, the term ‘non-western modernization’ indicates an impossible aim. It can be argued that modernization can be considered as a level which was structured by the west in order to determine ‘other’ as a position. In order to deepen the discussion on this point, Immanuel Kant’s argument about time experience in the spatial sense can be used. The relationship between developed countries, developing countries and underdeveloped countries is very similar to Kant’s theory of the relationship between nearing, nearness and near-hood (nahheit) (cited in Heidegger 1972: 15). A brief summary of near-hood is as follows: there is one point in linear time and your position is measured from this specific point. By your actions, you became near to or distant from a specific point in stratified time. In addition, this specific point changes its position according to your position. Turning back to the discussion about modernization, it can be claimed that the specific point is the measured level of modernization. The level which the west has reached historically is regarded as the criterion for modernity. Non-western countries are considered modern or ‘primitive’ and undeveloped based on their closeness to or remoteness from this level. However, this level constantly changes its position. Therefore, modernization for non-western nations is an endless process and a marker of the differences between the west and the non-west. The national identity of a modern state in non-western countries is structured by the tension between west and east. In Turkish modernization, however, this tension is visualized by dressing, if Indian or African countries’ modernization is taken into consideration. Turkey is particular with respect to modernization discourse by using dress. It can therefore be claimed that Turkish modernization is a kind of fictional and imaginary formation.

In order to discuss the differences between western and eastern modernization, the view of Charles Baudelaire, who can be accepted as the voice of the western modernist aesthetic, might be useful. He stated that modernization inspires and produces the modernization of the citizen’s soul as well. Not only cities, fashions and pastoral visions but also identity is thus not only changed but also produced by modernization. Baudelaire’s argument might be applicable for the western type of modernization. On the other hand, it can be claimed that the Turkish modernization process created a modernist state without making modern individuals of its citizens. Reşat Kasaba (1999: 30) stated that Kemalist leaders took modernization to mean clean streets and cities, the modern appearance of citizens, and the type and style of institutions which matched western examples. The answer to why the modernization process in non-western countries produces a modern state rather than modern individuals would be the Enlightenment, which was experienced by western countries but not by non-western countries. ‘The conception of universal individualism and modern human rights first appeared in the Enlightenment, was religiously founded by John Locke (1695), metaphysically/ethically founded by Kant (1781), economically founded as the source of the wealth of nations by Adam Smith (1776)’ (Izenberg 2011: 124). So the modernization process of non-western countries without experience of the Enlightenment gives more attention to the state than to its citizens. So because the modernization of Turkey was a top-down imposition and because of its unsuccessful endeavours to create modern citizens, ‘the republican leaders were realistic enough to recognize that a strong and loyal Army was vital if the young republic was to endure’ (Demirel 2004: 129), and they ‘saw armed forces as the main pillar of the new regime. However, they were also quite aware of the fact that the military’s entanglement in politics worked against both unity and discipline in the military’ (Ahmad 1969: 47, 55). That is why ‘after Mustafa Kemal came to power in 1923, one of his primary goals was to isolate the military command from direct involvement in partisan politics’ (Lerner & Robinson 1960: 26).

As an instance of non-western modernization,¹ Turkish modernization delineates the distinction between the west and the east. Therefore, the national identity of Turkey as an example of non-western modernization can be articulated in between the two, and it constantly carries the tension of being in-between. In this journey of national identity between west and east, the military is a persistent presence. When military coups are discussed, this modernization process should also be considered. Discussions around military coups cannot be divorced from discussions around modernization. Furthermore, there are some similarities which can be found between gendered Turkish modernization experiences and the idea of cross-dressing as a journey between binary poles. The brief history of Turkish traumas should start with the Kemalist modernization project because it can be accepted as the first traumatic development of modern Turkey’s history. If there had been a national cinema at that time, I am quite sure that cross-dressing films would have been popular narratives of the time. Furthermore, it can be claimed that each military coup...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgement
• Introduction
• 1 Framing Turkey and mapping cross-dressing films: Turkish modernization as cross-dressing performance
• 2 Choreographing theory
• 3 Ontological security: Meeting point between cross-dressing and national traumas
• 4 Fracturing language, voice and speech: Whose voice, whose language, who speaks? I cannot hear
• 5 Fracturing space and time: Where is my home? Where is my nation?
• 6 Fracturing masculinity and femininity: Why boys like that, girls like this?
• Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Filmography
• Index
• Imprint