“You are Like a Virus”

Abstract

Using in-depth interviews, I analyze the military medical inspections that conscripts in Turkey are required to undergo if they request an exemption from compulsory military service based on their homosexuality. The inspections respond to the Turkish military’s two main needs: Through these inspections, on the one hand, the military attempts to exclude feminine/dangerous bodies threatening its order based on homosocial bonding, thereby maintaining its role in the production of hegemonic masculinity in Turkey; on the other hand, through refining and proliferating surveillance mechanisms, the Turkish military seeks to prevent the conscripts from earning unjust exemption by pretending to be homosexual. By complicating Foucault’s account of medical authority, I aim to make sense of the interplay of these objectives and discuss the fragile medical processes through which the military extends its reach into the male population in Turkey. This article makes a contribution to our understanding of how the military, medical, and cultural notions of homosexuality intersect in governing hegemonic masculinity in Turkey.