The queer assemblage

In this chapter, I argue that the queer is an assemblage produced by a variety of institutions, objects, and processes. In the previous chapter, I demonstrated how the heteropatriarchal-nationalist government of the Turkish Republic has changed over time in the way that it institutes hierarchal relationships of heteronormative, nationalistic, racialized belonging over bodies. In the contemporary period, explicitly LGBTQ actors, new forms of globalization, and a changing media landscape all challenge the state's control over queers. While I argue that queer identity is itself a special assemblage of control in part created by the state, now queers find themselves subject to other kinds of scrutiny and control by non-state actors and discourses. As Dean argues, assemblages can be thought of as a ‘regime of practices’, emphasizing their heterogeneous composition, particular historical trajectories, and polymorphous relations (Dean, 2010, p. 40). Queerness is therefore an assemblage, constituted by ideas and material circumstances located between the state, the military, non-profit organizations, progressive and conservative media, and so forth, and is utilized to shape different kinds of individuals’ actions. Yet queers also live resisting and transforming understandings of queer identity as they define their relationship to these institutions. By thinking of the queer as an assemblage, I hope to demonstrate the confluence of power relationships bound up in managing sexuality in Turkey; sexuality was and is highly regulated by the state, but continues to be so in concordance and conflict with a range of other actors – including queers themselves.

I will use interview data to explore the assemblage of institutions, actors, and processes that produces queers. I also look to the ways queers have in turn shaped these institutions, demonstrating that resistance is constantly managed in the production of queer subjects. I proceed by exploring the institutions referred to by my informants, who identify a range of concerns, social pressures, and political events that contribute to the construction of their identity. These are the parts of the assemblage that – in conjunction with the body itself – materialize and govern queer others.

The processes that my informants alluded to in our discussions about Turkish politics and queer life are diverse. They include traditional institutions, like the military, as well as LGBTQ non-profit organizations, which my participants see as having more of an empowering influence within their lives.