Comrades-in-[Each Other’s]-Arms: Homosociality, Masculinity and Effeminacy in the Turkish Army

Abstract

In Turkey, the military regulation Article 17 prohibits men who suffer “visible sexual identity and/or behavioral defects” from serving in the armed forces. The final decision of exemption, however, is made by doctors depending on the cogency of the femininity/effeminacy draftees perform. Based on seven oral histories of gay men and a trans woman who served in the army, and five oral histories of gay men, including myself, who obtained the certificate of discharge, this article discusses the constitutive role of homosociality in the production of military masculinity and the abjection of effeminacy by raising three interrelated points: (a) (Turkish) military masculinity is essentially fragile and shattered due to the lack of distinct boundaries between male homosociality and homosexuality. Therefore the medico-military gaze, as well as the proper soldiers, must protect, albeit unskillfully, the boundaries separating the two. (b) For the medico-military gaze and the military culture, the real peril to homosocial bonding and military masculinity is not homoerotic intimacy or gay sex per se, but effeminacy. And (c) in the Turkish Armed Forces, effeminophobia is an instrument employed in defense of the homosocial safe zone.