Legacies of Socialist Masculinities in Contemporary Oppositional Politics in Turkey

In this episode, I am hosting Sercan Çınar again.Back in the fourth episode, we discussed the historical, political and social dynamics that played an important role in constructing, what Sercan calls, socialist masculinities. Sercan detailed how the political violence of the 1970s in Turkey was utilized by the socialist-Marxist movement to reproduce the dichotomy of man/woman and masculinity and femininity. He also pointed out two important factors that differentiate socialist masculinities from hegemonic masculinities. Please take a listen to episode four for a detailed discussion.In this latest episode, we shift our focus to the legacies of the political violence of the 1970s, specifically in relation to the current socialist-Marxist movement in Turkey and the configurations of socialist masculinities.One of the legacies is a lingering conservative politics of sexuality amongst the socialist-Marxist movement. Drawing upon his own experiences with the current socialist-Marxist movement as well as his research, Sercan will argue that sexuality is still considered as a matter for the private sphere and, whenever it is politically voiced in public sphere, it can receive backlash from men performing socialist masculinities.Some within the socialist-Marxist movement also fear being replaced by the feminist and LGBT movements as the main source of oppositional power. Since the political violence of the 1970s and the coup d’état of 1980 weakened the socialist-Marxist movement in Turkey, the increasing influence of feminist and LGBT movement in Turkey posed a threat to the position of men who perform socialist masculinities. Sercan will note that although we can observe socialist-Marxist movement aligning with the feminist and LGBT movements, there are still tendencies to consider these movements as “separatist” or “products" of capitalism or post-modernist academia.