Politics of the Female Body in Contemporary Turkey

Hilal Alkan is a researcher at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient Berlin, Germany. Ayse Dayi is the founder and director of Orca Dreams: Platform for Mindful Living. Sezin Topçu is a senior researcher at the French National Research Center (CNRS-CEMS-Ehess).Betül Yarar is a senior researcher at the Unit of Intercultural Education, University of Bremen, Germany.

This ground-breaking volume, replete with rich ethnography and cutting-edge theory, provides the single best analysis of women’s reproductive lives under an increasingly authoritarian, neoconservative Middle Eastern regime. The authors document multiple forms of reproductive surveillance, discrimination, and violence against women in Turkey, while also highlighting women’s pragmatism, creative use of technology, and feminist struggle. A must-read for Middle East gender studies scholars, medical anthropologists and sociologists of reproduction, and all those advocating for reproductive justice.

• IllustrationsContributors and EditorsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Changing Regimes of Governing Women’s Bodies in Contemporary TurkeyHilal Alkan, Ayse Dayi, Sezin Topçu and Betül YaraPart 1: Governing the reproductive body: Emerging markets and contested moralities1. Neoliberal Health Restructuring, Rising Conservatism and Reproductive Rights in Turkey: Continuities and Changes in Rights ViolationsAyse Dayi and Eylem Karakaya2. Crafting moral agency in transnational egg donation: The case of Turkish egg donors Burcu Mutlu3. ‘Fantastic microscopic hair of uterus’: Navigating reproductive trajectories, biomedical bodies and renegotiation of heterosexual femininities and masculinities Nurhak Polat4. Feeling like a ‘Misfit’: Kurdish women’s entangled reproductive experiences in Turkey Safak KiliçtepePart 2 Governing the maternal body: Between biomedical power and neoliberal healthcare5. Banning caesareans or selling ‘Choice’?: The paradoxical regulation of caesarean section epidemics and the maternal body in Turkey Sezin Topçu6. Monitoring pregnancies: The politics and ethics of reproductive health surveillance in Turkey Seda Saluk7. Egg-freezing narratives of women: Between medicalization and marketization Azer Kiliç 8. Tactics of women up against obstetrical violence and the medicalization of childbirth in Turkey Selen GöbelezPart 3 Governing the sexualized body: Neoconservatism, authoritarianism and counter strategies 9. Misogynist Body Politics under the AKP Rule in Contemporary Turkey Esra Sarioglu 10. Disciplining pious female bodies/sexualities in the authoritarian times of Turkey: An analysis of public moral discourses on the ‘Süslümans’ Betül Yarar 11 Guiding the female body through the Alo Fetva hotline: The female preachers’ fatwas on religious marriage, religious divorce and sexual life Burcu Kalpaklioglu 12 Positioning the critical pious self vis-à-vis authoritarian populist body politics: Limits of feminist dissent in pious women columnists’ narratives in Turkey Didem Ünal Index