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Cover -- Author Biography -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Photographs -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Queering Sexualities in Turkey -- 1. Sexuality, Masculinity and Male Sex Work -- 2. Rent Boys and the Contours of Exaggerated Masculinity -- 3. Rent Boys' Intimacies in Neoliberal Times -- 4. Queer in the Spatial, Temporal and Social Margins -- 5. Contemporary Male Sex Work -- Conclusion: Perverse Mobilities and Deviant Careers -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Back Cover

Exploring the divergent aspects of the rule of neoliberalism in Turkey since 1980s, each chapter in this book highlights a specific dimension of this socio-economic process and together, these essays construct a thorough examination of the whirlwind of changes recently experienced by Turkish society. With particular focus on the new ways in which social power operates, expert contributors explore new discourses and subjectivities around environmentalism, health, popular culture, economic policies, feminism and motherhood, urban space and minorities, class and masculinities. By questioning the.

Exploring the divergent aspects of the rule of neoliberalism in Turkey since 1980s, each chapter in this book highlights a specific dimension of this socio-economic process and together, these essays construct a thorough examination of the whirlwind of changes recently experienced by Turkish society. With particular focus on the new ways in which social power operates, expert contributors explore new discourses and subjectivities around environmentalism, health, popular culture, economic policies, feminism and motherhood, urban space and minorities, class and masculinities. By questioning the primary influence of the state in these micro-political matters, they engage with concepts of neoliberalism and governmentality to provide a fresh, grounded and analytical perspective on the routes through which social power navigates the society. This sustained examination of the new axes of power and subjectivity, with a particular eye on the formation of new political spaces of governance and resistance, deepens the analysis of Turkey's experiment with neoliberal globalization.

Today Turkey is one of the few Muslim-majority countries in which same-sex sexual acts, counternormative sexual identities, and expressions of gender nonconformism are not illegal, yet are heavily constrained and controlled by state institutions, police forces, and public prosecutors. For more than a decade Turkey has been experiencing a "queer turn"—an unprecedented push in the visibility and empowerment of queerness, the proliferation of sexual rights organizations and forms of sociabilities, and the dissemination of elements of queer culture—that has engendered both scholarly and public attention for sexual dissidents and gender non-conforming individuals and their lifeworlds, while it has also created new spaces and venues for their self-organization and mobilization. At the point of knowledge production and writing, this visibility and the possible avenues of empowerment that it might provide have been in jeopardy: not only do they appear far from challenging the dominant norms of the body, gender, and sexuality, but queerness, in all its dimensions, has become a preferred target for Islamist politics, conservative revanchism, and populist politicians.

Abstract
Gender studies and its professors are attacked and oppressed by patriarchal, masculinist, antifeminist, and anti-LGBTI discourses and institutional practices. This trend is not limited to white- and/or Christian-majority countries, as the literature has documented thus far. Antigender campaigns can easily infiltrate Middle Eastern and/or Muslim-majority contexts in which feminists and queers have long struggled to transform societies, cultures, and states. In Turkey a state-led antigender movement has been unfolding, with burdensome outcomes for women and sexual minorities as well as activists and faculty members. The most recent step taken in the state-led antigender turn was Turkey's withdrawal from the Council of Europe's Istanbul Convention Action by a precipitous presidential decree. Drawing on thirty-three interviews with gender studies scholars, this article documents their ambivalent and perturbing connection with the state. The recent antigender atmosphere may make them feel downtrodden, silenced, and vulnerable in personal and professional domains, while it rejuvenates their resilience, renders their ongoing feminist/queer struggles meaningful and passionate, and cultivates an air of hope and optimism. To fight ostracism by public institutions and to attain their academic rights, the respondents use their empowering feelings, hope, and commitment against patriarchal and homophobic state forces.