Women and Cultural Citizenship in Turkey: Mass Media and “Woman’s Voice” Television 9780755608003, 9781780763927

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Dedicated to my loving parents, Metin and Tulay ¨ Seval S¸anlı

Published in 2016 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd London • New York www.ibtauris.com c 2016 S¸olen S¸anlı Copyright  The right of S¸olen S¸anlı to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. References to websites were correct at the time of writing. Library of Modern Turkey 14 ISBN: 978 1 78076 392 7 eISBN: 978 0 85772 846 3 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Typeset in Goudy Old Style by GS Typesetting Services Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

List of Figures and Tables

Figure 1. Wheel of Power and Control. Source: Domestic Abuse Intervention Project: www.theduluthmodel.org

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Tables 1. The Four Media Giants of Turkey and their Media Activities, 2005

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2. “Woman’s Voice” Cases by Topic and Program

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Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to thank my dissertation adviser Paolo Carpignano for his unwavering support, patience and enthusiasm over the years. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Jeffrey Goldfarb for being an ardent advocate of the public sphere and a wonderful mentor, and to Orville Lee for his timely suggestions and comments. I ¨ ¨ on my dissertation committee. Her was honored to have Nilufer Gole work has influenced my intellectual development in many ways. All respondents who have contributed to the study by opening their lives and hearts to me have my deepest appreciation. I would also like to thank Joshua Gamson for his powerful pioneering work on talk shows, and his mentorship. My dear friend Mehmet Sinan Birdal has influenced this work from its inception and never stopped questioning and suggesting by sharing texts and thoughts. I would like to thank him for his critical reading of the first few chapters, and for his pointed comments. Aybil ¨ Goker has been a wonderful inspiration through the years and I thank ¨ Bilgic¸ her for her intellectual enthusiasm and encouragement. Nilgun was an avid supporter and helped with the conception of the book cover. ¨ S¸anlı has extended her help by transcribing some of Yes¸im Genc¸turk the interviews. I could not have completed my dissertation without the warm friendship and hospitality of my friends in New York City, Eren Akalın and Murat Asil. I would like to thank Burhan Karac¸am, Nuri C ¸ olakoˇglu, and Eylem Yanardaˇgoˇglu for facilitating my access to busy media professionals, and Melek Yargın and Yes¸im Sezdirmez for allowing me access to ratings data.

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¨ u¨ paved the way for the sociological study of popular culture Ays¸e Onc in Turkey and commented on my research in the early stages of its conception. I hope I am saying “something new”, as she demanded. ¨ Hasan Bulent Kahraman commented on various drafts and shared his ¨ comments at the initial stages of the project. I also thank Haldun Gulalp for pointing me in the right direction. Many scholars have influenced me as my teachers through the years. I ˙ would like to thank C ¸ igdem Kaˇgıtc¸ıbas¸ı, Ilter Turan, and Binnaz Toprak at Koc¸ University, as well as Leslie Sklair, Angus Stewart, Sonia Livingstone, and the late Roger Silverstone at the London School of Economics and Political Science for being my teachers. I would also like to express my appreciation to Loic Wacquant for making the intricate world of Pierre Bourdieu’s writings accessible. Last but definitely not least, I would like to thank my husband Joshua Jorge Vasquez for holding my hand through the panic attacks and everchanging moods that accompany the writing process. This work is dedi¨ cated to my parents Metin and Tulay Seval S¸anlı, for a lifetime of love, inspiration and support.

Introduction

When these programs first started, frankly, I had an optimistic expectation and a pessimistic expectation. Due to the notion that the “personal is political,” I had a good feeling that this was being voiced in a venue so widely watched. I thought, women will start talking, it will really be seen how widespread [the violence] is. Stories are powerful in such cases. Starting from there, with the intervention of the women’s movement, I thought maybe this can turn into a request for shelters. I mean, “we’ve been telling you for years, see it’s clear in these programs” kind of thing. You expect a reflex from the state, you expect responsible governance. If that doesn’t happen, you expect maybe the media will carry it there in cooperation with the women’s movement. Or you expect that the people who make these programs will make a plea. I, for one, had an optimistic expectation when they first started. This could go from here to there. But when this didn’t happen, it was foreseeable that this would go as far as killings. The negative version happened, the other one definitely did not happen. And such a demand is still not being made.1 ¨ ur ¨ E. Ozg Feminist activist/journalist

When I embarked upon a journey to conduct field research in Turkey in the summer of 2005, my goal was to study the immensely popular women’s talk shows, the so-called “Woman’s Voice” shows (WVs), which had been dominating daytime television since 2002. As I arrived in Istanbul in June, however, the most popular of the programs,

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Kanal D’s Woman’s Voice had just been cancelled due to an “honor killing” associated with it: a woman had been shot to death by her son as soon as she arrived in her home town of Elazıˇg2 after appearing on Woman’s Voice the day before. A plethora of press coverage followed. Most journalists concentrated on the program’s exploitative nature and celebrated its cancellation. As my research into the production techniques later revealed, their critiques were partially accurate. However, the Woman’s Voice genre also did something quite unprecedented: It made a previously invisible and silent group – rural and rural–urban migrant women – visible and vocal. More importantly, the programs allowed the women to speak in their own voices and give firsthand accounts of their own experiences of marriage, divorce, child custody, their relationships with in-laws, domestic violence, rape, abduction, employment, and education for the first time in Turkish broadcasting history. After all, a guest’s death at the hands of her son revealed the alarmingly vulnerable status of women in Turkey under the tutelage of the so-called “gender honor code.” The journalists’ as well as feminists’ silence about this eye-opening aspect of the programs was curious to me. I found in the later months of research that this silence was not limited to journalists and feminists. Most television audiences I interviewed who came from urban and “republican” backgrounds dismissed the importance of Woman’s Voice programs and distanced themselves from the programs by denying any interest in them. On the other hand, most viewers living in squatter town areas reported watching WV with interest, and assigned social significance to the programs. In the following months of my research, I explored the foundations for the vehemence with which EUDs (established urban dwellers) distanced themselves from the programs while STRs (squatter town residents) embraced them. I have ultimately concluded that the rejection of WV consumption contains a negotiation for class positions. My research indicates that, while those with “low republican capital” embraced the programs, those with “high republican capital” ignored or criticized them. By taking this position, the viewers also distanced themselves from the events discussed in the programs. Since such events signified “low status,” their position towards the programs was also boundary work. Michele Lamont argues that boundaries between social classes “exist only if they are repeatedly

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defended by members of inner groups” (1994, 3). The “inner groups” who most rigorously defend their boundaries are the upper milieu of the class structure, especially in times of perceived or real challenge to their privileged positions in that structure. Pierre Bourdieu argues that tastes function as “markers of class” (1984, 2). It is also important to note, however, that such distinctive tastes and lifestyles which define the “dominant class” are subject to change, and can be replaced by other tastes and lifestyles if there is a significant transformation of the social class structure. While it is difficult to talk about a total transformation in the Turkish context, as I will illustrate below, the republican secular elite’s thus-far-unchallenged power is waning in the face of Islamist3 mobilization, large waves of rural–urban migration, and economic and media liberalization in the last three decades. Thus, symbolic boundaries between “us” and “Others” are now defended more vigorously.

The “Woman’s Voice” Research I refer to the genre studied here as “Woman’s Voice” programs, since the format is fairly homogeneous regardless of the actual titles of the shows. The three WV programs aired on national television at the time I was conducting my research were: Serap Ezgu¨ ile Biz Bize (“Among Ourselves ¨ on Show TV; Inci Ertuˇgrul Sizin Sesiniz (“Inci Ertuˇgrul, with Serap Ezgu”) Your Voice”), on TGRT; and Kadının Sesi (“Woman’s Voice”), hosted by Yasemin Bozkurt on Flash TV.4 These programs were aired live in the daytime every weekday. They lasted approximately three hours including commercial breaks. Given their long duration and presence on multiple channels, the programs dominated daytime television between 2002 and 2008. From 2008 onwards, the daytime slot devoted to the “Woman’s Voice” format began to be filled with matchmaking programs such as ˙ Su Gibi (“Like Water”) on Fox and Esra Erol’la Izdivac ¸ (“Marriage with Esra Erol”) on Star. In fact, in June 2010 Yasemin Bozkurt began hosting ˙ a matchmaking program herself on Flash TV called Dest-i Izdivac ¸ . The matchmaking programs seem to be less risky for the channels, since they are not as likely to be associated with honor killings. This book draws on field research conducted in Istanbul in June– December 2005, which sought to simultaneously address the content, production and reception of the programs in question.

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Discourse Analysis The discourse analysis of 15 randomly selected episodes of the three WV programs on air at the time of research concludes that WV oscillates between empowerment and exploitation. On the one hand, the discourse created on WV corresponds to the findings of talk show scholars who work on the media in Europe and the US. These media scholars conclude that talk shows offer unique potentials for “public sphering”5 (Carpignano et al. 1993; Gamson 1998; Livingstone and Lunt 1994). The talk show is one of the few spaces where “ordinary people” engage in conversation on television. Talk shows create a “contested space” in which new discourses arise, challenging the expert opinions that dominate the public sphere (Carpignano et al. 1993). In contrast to the pre-written, edited, rehearsed and carefully delivered texts of other formats such as news or drama, talk shows produce alternative discourses. In this regard, I have found that WV works in four complementary ways. First, it makes a previously invisible group, namely women with low republican capital,6 visible for the first time in the public sphere. Second, WV constitutes a public sphere where these women can engage in unscripted firsthand narrations of events that define their lives. My participant observations during studio visits revealed that WV differs from its Western counterparts in the sense that the speech is not coached and, since the programs are aired live, no editing is possible. Third, through their unrehearsed speech, guests make visible the structures of gender relations in which they are confined, especially due to the “honor code.” Finally, across distances, the guests form bonds with other women in the audience, which might potentially empower them as well as the audience. The results of discourse analysis research are discussed in Chapter 3.

Production Research To understand media production in Turkey, and specifically WV production, with the necessary depth, I interviewed 17 media executives, producers, TV hosts, and writers. I also visited all three WV sets and observed the production process, and the interactions between the audiences, hosts, and guests. As a result of research into the production of the programs, I have identified a number of key points where production

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patterns curb the political potential of WV. First and foremost, rapid host turnover resulting from the replacement of hosts or their transfer to another channel were found to be characteristic to the genre in Turkey. One repercussion of rapid host turnover is that people with little or no preparation and background in social and women’s issues are recruited as hosts. Therefore, the hosts are often incapable of placing the issues in the general framework of patriarchal power. Also, the programs’ failure to cooperate with members of the women’s movement in Turkey renders them oblivious to women’s issues in a general framework. Finally, the limited number of domestic violence shelters and other social programs for victims of domestic abuse, as well as the failure of law enforcement to apply the law in areas where women are generally disadvantaged (such as the implementation of child custody rights and domestic violence) render the WV programs unlikely venues for the solution of social problems, and create a dangerous environment for those who appear on the programs as guests. Talk shows are also part of a greater economic structure, and are subject to the rules of commercial broadcasting. In WV programs, issues are not placed in context, and their shock factor, rather than the underlying social structure, is emphasized. Indeed, WV programs cannot be considered ideal venues of public sphering. Although they entertain important issues that have previously been absent from television, they do so with little or no women’s rights agenda. The results of production research are discussed further in Chapter 5.

Audience Reception Research To understand audience reception patterns, 10 men and 29 women were interviewed in relation to their television viewing activities in general and their thoughts about WV in particular. Further respondents were reached with the help of one or two initial informants. Although viewers in Turkey cannot be reduced to two homogeneous groups, as I will discuss below, I mainly became interested in the television viewing activities of two groups of people living in or on the outskirts of Istanbul: 1. Viewers who originate from urban backgrounds: since this group represented individuals who (and whose parents) lived in urban areas

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all their lives, I coded them as “established urban dwellers” (EUDs). This group was more likely to display republican dispositions: for example, ten out of the 11 EUD respondents (seven out of the eight EUD women) were college-educated and had worked outside the home or were currently working. 2. Viewers who were first- or second-generation rural–urban migrants who lived in squatter town areas: they are called “squatter town residents” (STRs) for the purposes of this research. Seven out of the 21 women in this group worked outside the home, predominantly as domestic workers. Only five out of the 28 respondents in this group (three of the 21 women) were either college-educated or were currently in college. The rest of the STR women reported either not having been sent to school at all by their families or only having been allowed to graduate elementary or middle school (even after the move to the city). The seven male and 21 female STRs were residents of two major squatter areas of Istanbul (Dudullu and Gebze).7 Eleven EUDs lived either in established middle-class neighborhoods such as Suadiye and ¨ ¸ ukyalı ¨ Kuc or a in gated community. The respondents were recruited through the snowball method and an e-mail announcement. Three of the 11 EUDs responded to the e-mail I sent to the residents of a gated community through that community’s e-mail list. Additionally, I utilized two EUD and two STR informants who referred me to their friends, acquaintances, or neighbors. Those respondents further referred me to people in their own personal networks, so that I was able to reach a diverse population. The age, educational background, and employment status of each respondent are listed in Appendix 1. One important advantage of the snowball method was the possibility to easily establish rapport with the respondents and engage in candid discussions about not only their cultural habits but also the role of violence in their lives. In the Turkish context, where strangers may sometimes be viewed with suspicion, the snowball method proved especially valuable. For example, multiple STR viewers went beyond their opinions on WV programs and engaged in narrations of the violence they were personally subject to by their spouses or in-laws. On the other hand, it must be acknowledged that the snowball sampling method is typically associated

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with the recruitment of respondents with similar social characteristics. Although measures have been taken to avoid this pitfall, the snowball sampling method limited the outcomes of the research. The results of audience reception research are reported in Chapter 4. It must be noted that the categories of EUD and STR do not overlap neatly with the categories “republicans” and “non-republicans.” For example, many STR residents expressed Kemalist opinions and were open to republican ideals such as the emphasis on women’s education. Their daughters similarly displayed “republican” dispositions by being in college. However, the college-educated young girls and women who were squatter-town residents still displayed “non-republicanism” in the sense that their employment was contingent on their future husbands’ and his family’s ideas about women’s work outside the home. The “gender honor code” played a considerable role in their lives. Thus, each respondent could be placed on a scale ranging between two extremes: republican and non-republican. The closer they were situated towards the “republican” end of this axis, the more they distinguished themselves from the WV programs, and vice versa. For the most part, STRs indicated that watching “Woman’s Voice” helps them develop critical political opinions concerning their roles and status in Turkish society. Although WV programs were often labeled “vulgar” and “tasteless” by most EUDs (as well as journalists and feminists), along with my STR respondents, I assign political significance to them. The concept of “cultural citizenship” helps us understand why.

Theoretical Framework: Cultural Citizenship This work contributes to the “cultural citizenship” literature pioneered by Joke Hermes (1997), John Hartley (1999), Graham Murdock (2002), Nick Stevenson (2003), and Toby Miller (2007). Miller defines “cultural citizenship” as “the right to know and speak” (2007, 35). His analysis illustrates how citizens’ consumption of what is held as “culture” has direct repercussions on their citizenship and on democracy. For example, criticizing Food TV’s minimal engagement with food issues around the globe, including global warming, multinational takeovers of farming industries, animal-rights issues, issues of obesity and eating disorders, and Third World hunger and poverty, Miller argues that the seemingly

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innocent consumption of food, a commodity simultaneously “cultural” and “natural,” is clearly linked to politics, economy and power. The cultural citizenship model is critical of the way in which politics and economy are prioritized as important, serious, and urgent, while issues of a “cultural” and “private” nature, such as consumption, popular culture, women’s issues, and family issues are rendered secondary, unimportant, and often taboo. The cultural citizenship paradigm helps bridge the gap between politics and culture by asking the following three questions, which are often left unasked by those who study issues of citizenship and political participation.

The Question of Visibility Are certain segments of society excluded from the public sphere by being deprived of the right to represent themselves and participate in the creation of political discourse? If they are represented, how are they represented? The vivid firsthand narrations of violence against women from the victims’ perspectives are unprecedented on Turkish television. The WV programs opened up a much-needed forum regarding issues of violence against women, revealing the prevalence of the “gender honor code” and how it affected many women’s lives. To be sure, visibility cannot be taken at face value and celebrated as such (Dyer 1998; Entman and Rojecki 2000). WV faces what Joshua Gamson calls “paradoxes of visibility” (1998, 19), that is: how certain groups have been visible needs to be scrutinized. WV programs are highly commercial venues in which social problems are often not placed in a greater social context, but rather treated as individual scourges. The WV programs also fail to suggest solutions to their guests and audiences. However, it needs to be acknowledged that this kind of visibility for the first time allows the rural–urban migrants to participate in the national conversation on who “we” are and how “we” should live.

The Question of Imposition vs. Expression The second component of cultural citizenship asks what kind of hopes, utopias, and desires popular culture imposes on television viewers

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(Hermes 1997). What kind of cultural characteristics appear desirable in the mass media while other perspectives and lifestyles remain outside of mainstream discourse? In Turkey, under the TRT (Turkish Radio and Television) monopoly, a hygienically modern version of society was presented. Those who lived according to the gender honor code were not considered “cultural citizens” of the Turkish Republic but as aberrations from the norm. “Blaming the victim” was common if and when violence against women was discussed on Turkish mainstream media prior to the WV programs. “First person media” (Dovey 2000) render violations of women’s basic human rights more visible than ever before. An important critique that the cultural citizenship paradigm directs at Habermasian public sphere theory is that the latter prioritizes rationalcritical speech on issues of “public interest,” and it expects political deliberation to be objective, rational and based on expert opinions and scientific data. The cultural citizenship model argues that we must take emotion and experiential knowledge seriously. I propose that WV talk shows challenge the primacy of rational, objective, and “republican” speech that had dominated the public broadcasting monopoly of TRT. Coleman and Ross (2010) in their recent work analyze the new dimensions of the “public” in the first-person world of talk shows, reality shows, blogs and YouTube. They argue that the emphasis has shifted from the BBC- style paternalism of public service broadcasting to an environment where virtually everyone has access to “persuasive influence” (Coleman and Ross 2010, 50). Similarly, Graham Murdock argues that first-person narratives and the sharing of stories have a role in “fostering capacities and reciprocities of citizenship” (2002, 16). While they operate within the limitations of commercial broadcasting, first-person media seem to create a new form of public sphere where the “subaltern” can speak more articulately (Spivak 1988). Daytime talk shows create a “contested space” in which new discourses arise, challenging the expert opinions that dominate the public sphere (Carpignano et al. 1993). The first characteristic that sets “first-person media” apart is that the expert, if present, is just another participant. The audience hears firsthand, authentic, personal knowledge, rather than an expert’s “objective” point of view. Instead of language that references scientific data, “I” statements – that is, experiential knowledge – is prioritized.

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Second, a “human face” is placed on “general issues” on talk shows (Gamson 1998). Joshua Gamson exemplifies this in his work Freaks Talk Back when he refers to moments on daytime talk shows in the 1990s where it became possible to identify personally with the plights of sexual-orientation minorities, who were appearing for the first time on mainstream media in the US as real people rather than as “freaks.” Gamson writes of the case of a young lesbian woman appearing on Ricki Lake: “[F]or a moment, watching Amy, you could actually feel what it meant to be hated . . . the pain in which lesbian pride resides” (ibid., 94). This moment of real empathy would be difficult to achieve with only the presentation of statistics about hate crimes against gays and lesbians by a TV anchor. On talk shows, the guests represent themselves, rather than being represented by others. Finally, as Anthony Giddens notes, day-to-day moral decisions now occupy the sphere of the “political” more than ever, as tradition is no longer able to regulate our everyday moral decisions. From issues pertaining to the body, such as abortion and genetics, to environmental concerns or the breakdown of the patriarchal family, we are now more than ever in need of a public conversation about how we ought to live (Giddens, as cited in Dovey 2000, 168; Castells 1997).

The Question of Lowbrow Culture and Politics The third component of the cultural citizenship paradigm posits the WV-style lowbrow, popular culture as a politically relevant field. Many respondents in my field research made a distinction between high- and lowbrow television programming, and relegated the latter to the status of political irrelevance. In the same vein, theories of media and the public sphere inspired by Habermas’s work on the public sphere share a disdain for lowbrow, popular culture as forms of culture distracting the audience from the “truly important” affairs of the state, such as taxes, wars, elections, and so on. Only recently have media scholars coined terms such as “democratainment” (Hartley 1999) and “politicotainment” (Riegert 2007) to refer to the political negotiations on popular programming such as telenovelas, reality shows, prime-time series and comedy shows. In a Time article, media and television critic James

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Poniewozik hails these so-called “soft media” programs as politically relevant in their ability to raise issues “people actually care about,” and in covering the 2008 presidential elections with a refreshing air of head-on sincerity lacking in most “serious” news media. He asks: When The View gives an increasingly press-shy candidate his toughest interview in a while, when it and David Letterman prod the scars of the Democratic primary in interviews with Clinton, when pundits debate the fairness of Us Weekly covers and when Saturday Night Live crystallizes the discussion of sexism and vice-presidential choices, what’s so soft about them? (Poniewozik 2008)

In Turkey, citizens with low “republican” capital have not only been excluded from the production of culture; they have also been excluded from spaces where they could voice their concerns over their citizenship. In the post-1980 atmosphere where the media are fragmented, their contributions find more room and legitimacy. However, the social agenda that their contributions propose is once again ignored by the elite and pushed into the background, since the elite reject, in an attempt at boundary work, the forms of lowbrow culture where certain issues of importance are made public. This study contributes to the “cultural citizenship” literature cited above that furthers Habermas’s (1989) theory of the public sphere, and posits “lowbrow culture” as a political venue. This study also further complicates the “cultural citizenship” paradigm by emphasizing the role of boundary work. In what follows, I will show how EUDs distanced themselves from WV in an attempt to distinguish themselves from a picture of Turkish society that they did not want to see and with which they did not identify themselves. Coupled with the socially conservative attitude toward women’s rights of the ruling Justice and Development Party the republicans’ inability to fully understand gender issues renders women from rural and rural–urban backgrounds utterly vulnerable in the face of familial and other forms of violence.

1 Public Discourse: Republican Capital and Women

This asteroid has been sighted only once by telescope, in 1909 by a Turkish astronomer, who had then made a formal demonstration of his discovery at an International Astronomical Congress. But no one had believed him on account of the way he was dressed . . . Fortunately for the reputation of asteroid B-612, a Turkish dictator ordered his people, on pain of death, to wear European clothes. The astronomer repeated his demonstration in 1920, wearing a very elegant suit. And this time everyone believed him. ´ Saint-Exupery The Little Prince

In this chapter, I would like to develop the notion of republican capital and provide a brief history and overview of women’s status in Turkey. I argue that a woman’s status and options in Turkey have been contingent upon which group her family belonged to: those with high or low republican capital. Women were disproportionately affected by the Kemalist revolution. Those from rural areas remained, to some extent, at the mercy of their fathers and tribal leaders. Sometimes they were not allowed to attend school at all; often they were not allowed to go beyond elementary school. On the other hand, women from urban families who had embraced the republican revolution early on were educated to become teachers, nurses, doctors, and lawyers, and ultimately constituted the first generation of “emancipated,” “enlightened” Turkish women. 12

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The founding republican elite maintained a monopoly over representation in the public sphere by maintaining direct control over audiovisual media from the 1930s until 1990. This history is explored further in Chapter 2. Due to the state broadcasting monopoly, TRT, representation in mass media was only accessible to the members of the republican elite. The naturalization of the modern and secular ways of life was achieved by other-ing traditional, religious, and ethnic lifestyles and world-views. While this fulfilled the task of secularization and nation-state formation, many voices were left outside of official ideology. Women from different backgrounds were represented in the public sphere disproportionately, although “women” as a symbolic group played a significant role in the construction of the Turkish Republic. Women’s, rights largely remained a symbolic attempt at development and Westernization, rather than a genuine mobilization for gender equality. Women who were visible in the public sphere were confined to the role of the “republican woman,” stripped of their femininity and delineated within carefully observed parameters of modesty. Elizabeth Maddock Dillon (2004) notes that the “privatization of femininity” and the limitations imposed on the female body’s public representation have been the founding disciplining technologies of the liberal order in the Anglo-American case. According to her, while women were central to the construction of liberal subjectivity, this very construction interpolated them as “private” and “apolitical.” Similarly, in modern Turkey, the public sphere cannot be characterized by an “absence” or “lack” of women; on the contrary, women have always been active players in the sphere of public representation. However, the parameters within which women were represented determined the meaning of female sexuality. On public television, women were confined to the roles of “gracious ladies,” “respectable housewives,” or “revered mothers” (Saktanber 1995, 156). Elite women’s representation in the public sphere, however, created the illusion that women enjoyed an adequate voice in the public sphere, and thus the disproportionate character of this representation was rarely questioned. It was not until the 1980s that feminism began to function as an independent social movement, and the status the republican revolution had granted Turkish women began to be problematized. The secularization and granting of equal rights to women in the 1920s and 1930s had resulted in the legal betterment of women’s status. However,

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in the 1980s it started to become clear that the immediate circumstances of many women left much to be desired.

Republican Capital and Power I propose that in the Turkish context what I will call republican capital had a critical importance in the field of power until the 1980s.1 In the first few decades of the Republic, a person with high republican capital was secular and only privately religious (if at all); was a believer in and admirer of the Western civilization, culture, philosophy and technology; had a modern approach to women’s rights (which dictated the promotion of women’s education and workforce participation); held the Turkish nation’s elevation “to the levels of contemporary civilization”2 as the highest goal of his or her personal life; and viewed those who did not have a republican habitus as needing to be tutored in the ways of modernity and civilization. The urban elites displayed a certain sense of “in-situ Orientalism” – an Orientalist attitude towards the peasants (Kahraman 2000). This was closely observed by British journalist David Hotham in the 1960s: In no country that I have visited do the educated classes speak of the “ignorance” and “backwardness” of their own peasants so much as in Turkey. Turkish intellectuals are absolutely at sea in villages. For them, they are like a foreign country, and the peasants a foreign people. (Hotham, as quoted in Delaney 1991, 208)

According to Deniz Kandiyoti, in the modernizing Turkish Republic, “different constructions of what it means to be modern have come to inform not only the most intimate aspects of life but also subtle codes of class and status” (1997a, 120). Kandiyoti notes that the transition from traditional to modern lifestyles necessitated “differentiation of tastes, fashions and leisure . . . in conjunction with changing patterns of stratification” (ibid.). Urban mores had begun changing at the turn of the century. As Europeanized (alafranga) items of furniture and clothing were adopted by the elite, Ottoman-Turkish (alaturka) bodily dispositions and habits began to be considered backward and vulgar. “Such changes implied not simply a refashioning of tastes but also a hierarchy of worth whereby former habits, such as eating with one’s hands,

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could be redefined as unhygienic or even repulsive and older patterns of deference could be deemed uncivilized” (ibid., 119). I conceptualize republican capital as a specific form of cultural capital that emerges in the Turkish context. In the embodied state, cultural capital becomes habitus3 and thus displays itself in the “long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body” (Bourdieu 1986, 243). The modern bodily dispositions of someone with high republican capital in the early twentieth century ranged from eating habits (not with hands or on the floor) to entertainment styles (men and women together),4 from dress codes and grooming (rejection of the veil, beard and mustache, as was formalized by the so-called “hat revolution” in 1925) to hygiene (Westernstyle bathrooms, use of consumer goods in cleaning), from etiquette (adoption of Western table manners) to address using Bay and Bayan, Bey and Hanım (Mr, Ms, Mrs) instead of the kinship implying bacı (“sister”) teyze (“aunt”) amca (“uncle”); from the organization of work and leisure, as was formalized by the adoption of the Western calendar, to the ability to read and write in the newly adopted Latin alphabet, and so on. According to Pierre Bourdieu, individuals acquire cultural capital through socialization in the family, school, media and other institutions they are exposed to in their lifetime. Cultural capital can in turn be converted into social capital, economic capital and symbolic capital.5 One gains access to a powerful network of individuals through one’s family, marriage or profession, or acquires access to powerful networks through one’s attendance of concerts, balls, art shows, weddings or membership in exclusive country clubs. Thus, cultural capital can be converted into social capital. Further, the growth of one’s cultural dispositions as well as one’s social network would increase one’s chances of attaining a well-paying and secure job, increasing one’s economic capital. Finally, cultural capital has the capacity to disguise itself as natural, and thus becomes symbolic capital. The dominant make it seem natural that the best schools (and later, the best jobs) are filled with people from the dominant class. The system, by claiming to choose by merit rather than “nobility,” hides the functions of cultural and social capital. Those who possess “symbolic capital,” which disguises itself as no capital at all, “naturally” gain access to the field of power. In Turkey, until the 1980s entrance into the economic field (an important part of the field of power) was determined by factors such as the

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right habitus, location and connections, and size of one’s business. At its inception, the modern Turkish state lacked the economic basis of most European modern states: a bourgeois class independent from the state apparatus, which was to bring about capitalist accumulation. At the turn of the century, there were as few as 100 manufacturing sites with more than ten workers in the Empire, the ownership of which was 90 per cent foreign and non-Muslim (Keyder 1987, 45). Moreover, the industrial workers employed at these sites were also predominantly non-Muslim. Prior to the declaration of the Republic in 1923, the members of the nationalist Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) were already concerned with the creation of a “national” bourgeoisie, at the expense of the non-Muslim merchants and artisans who constituted the central actors in the market during the Ottoman period. The relationship between the state and entrepreneurs was a symbiotic one. Operating within a technology-dependent, late-industrializing economy, the fledgling Turkish entrepreneurs also needed the state to share their risk and provide financial resources (Buˇgra 1995). Thus, the first Muslim entrepreneurs of the twentieth century came into being through their connections with the nationalist, modernist and secularist CUP members. The fathers of the first-generation Turkish bourgeoisie were less likely to come from land ownership, trade or artisanal backgrounds and more likely to be public officials, such as military officials, some even serving in the parliament and in the government (ibid.). They enjoyed high levels of education, as well as the ability to speak foreign languages.6 Public servants and military officers constituted the middle class. These positions required at least a high-school diploma, a higher level of education than most Turks during the 1920s and 1930s. Considering that secularism and nationalism were emphasized in formal education, it is possible to conclude that upward mobility was only possible for actors with a secular habitus or the willingness to adopt a secular habitus in the first few decades of the Republic.7 Moreover, public displays of religiosity were not tolerated, thus only individuals and their families who were willing and able to conform to the transformations in clothing were able to attain middle-class positions, which meant upward mobility for their children.8 The field of power was dominated by republican professionals as well. One piece of evidence for the conversion of republican capital into social ¨ u¨ (1981) and economic capital in the professions was found by Ays¸e Onc

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in a study where she inquired into the surprisingly high number of pro¨ u¨ argues that in industrialized countries fessional women in Turkey. Onc over the past 150 years “the classical professions of law and medicine have evolved into self-perpetuating systems” into which only children of elites are admitted (ibid., 189). However, in Third World countries, a trained elite needed to be created rapidly to meet the demands of newly introduced industrial techniques. She argues that “such rapid expansion of elite cadres with specialized higher and technical education is not possible without a large infusion of individuals drawn from backgrounds of manual or peasant origins – unless women from the upper reaches of the social hierarchy begin to enter professional schools” (ibid.). This explains the somewhat surprising phenomenon that, in Turkey in the 1970s, 18.7 per cent of all lawyers and 14 per cent of all physicians were ¨ u¨ compares these rates to women’s professional involvement female. Onc in the West. In contrast, in the USA only 3 per cent of lawyers and 6 per cent of physicians were estimated to be female in the 1960s. Under conditions of rapid extension, the elite recruitment patterns into the most prestigious and highly remunerated professions are maintained by the admission of women from upper reaches of the social hierarchy . . . Given the importance of professional contacts and referrals in such fields as medicine and law, women with family connections in the elite world find it much easier to establish themselves in the job market than men from manual and peasant backgrounds. (ibid., 189–90)

In the economic realm, in the 1960s and 1970s, Turkey turned towards “import-substitution industrialization” (ISI), a method that empowered the big industrialists such as Koc¸ and Sabancı. This left the smaller-scale businesses (the owners of which may have lived in the peripheral towns and did not display a republican habitus) very little room to maneuver. The liberal period starting in the 1980s continued to empower the large holding companies such as Koc¸ and Sabancı for two reasons. First, they had easier access to state-sponsored,9 low-interest credit to expand their operations due to their extensive connections to the political elite, and the ability to be better informed about these opportunities (Buˇgra 1995, 198). Indeed, 89.4 per cent of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMSE) studied by the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce in 1991 had never received any state incentives (ibid., 96). Second, in the 1980s, the large-scale industrialists were able to dominate the import–export

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sector through the creation of large import–export enterprises, which were supported by government incentives. The economic liberalization of the 1980s brought onto the scene new economic actors who had thus far remained small and provincial. The so-called “Anatolian tigers” were small-scale entrepreneurs who were active in the Turkish periphery but lacked the attention and patronage the Istanbul-based industrialists had received. To make up for this lack of attention and patronage, in 1990 they created their own interest ¨ IAD ˙ group, MUS – the Association of Independent Industrialists and ¨ ˙ Businessmen. MUSIAD’s small-scale entrepreneurs have been successful in the last three decades because they served a global demand for “flexible production.” Ays¸e Buˇgra argues that “at the international level, with the accelerating pace of technological progress and shortened production life-cycles, efficiency increasingly required the down-sizing of large firms, the decentralization of vertically integrated enterprises and the replacing of hierarchical management practices with less rigid ones” ¨ IAD ˙ (1998, 524). The business leaders who formed MUS served these neoliberal demands well. Prior to the 1990s, owners of economic capital integrated themselves into the center and received a slice of the economic cake more easily if they built close ties with the secular and nationalist state. In that sense, the rate at which they increased their economic capital also depended on the size of their republican capital. Those with high republican capital preferred to grant access to others with similar characteristics into their ranks, forging a close link between high republican capital and high social capital. Further, like symbolic capital, which works as long as its existence goes unrecognized, republican capital served the purposes of “distinction” and legitimized the rule of the republican elite. Women’s access to rights depended on their families’ levels of republican capital.

The “Woman Question”: Women’s Status in the Early Years of Modernization Despite the common belief that, in Turkey, rights were bestowed upon women from above after the Kemalist revolution, a growing body of literature today suggests that women were also active agents in their own

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liberation as early as the nineteenth century (C ¸ akır 1994; Demirdirek 1993; Durakbas¸a 2000; Zihnioˇglu 2003). Women’s status first became a source of contention during the modernizing Tanzimat period (1839–76). The first female writers began to question the role that Islam assigned to women. For example, Fatma Aliye Hanım, a young feminist writer of the time, suggested a reform of the family, and argued, by giving extensive references to the prophet’s life, that polygyny10 was an Arab custom and was not inherent in the teachings of Islam (Sirman 1989). At the end of the Tanzimat period, the modernist Young Turks, who believed not only in the adoption of Western technology but also in the Western rationalistic world-view, argued that women were the “cradle of civilization” who would raise the modern citizens of the Ottoman Empire (ibid.). Women’s education was viewed by these early feminists as the only path to true liberation. However, as the “cradles of civilization,” women also remained locked into the roles of “mother,” “wife,” and “rational housewife.” Women’s education and integration into the workforce remained a source of debate, since their extension from the private world of the home into the public sphere clashed with Islamic ideals of segregation (ibid.). In keeping with the Young Turks’ views, Kemalist reforms began to transform women’s legal rights in the early 1900s. Only one year after the young Republic was declared in 1923, the law on unification of education gave girls and boys equal rights to education. With the adoption of the Swiss civil code in 1926, polygyny was abolished, and the rights of men and women with regard to divorce and inheritance were equalized. Finally, in 1934, women were given the right to vote and run for office. With the civil code, the founding fathers of Turkey accomplished something the leaders of other predominantly Muslim nations could not. They were able to separate the personal status laws regulating family and gender relations from the tutelage of Islamic law.11 They were able to do so by legitimizing gender equality using references to pre¨ Islamic Turkic traditions. Ziya Gokalp, the founder of Turkism, argued that, in pre-Islamic Turkic cultures, women and men had been equal with regard to family, property and political activity (Kandiyoti 1991). In Egypt, feminism was rejected because it was associated with British colonialism (Badran 1991). In Iran, gender equality came to be viewed as

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“westoxification,” a polluting, destructive influence of the West (Najmabadi 1991). In Turkey, however, gender equality was constructed as having its roots in authentic Turkish culture, and thus accepted with fewer objections. However, an overwhelming body of literature on the role of women in Turkish modernization argues today that women’s roles were primarily symbolic, manifesting the secular and modern nature of the state to the outside world.12 It is argued that the symbolic place of the woman as the bastion of modernity barred her from becoming truly liberated and active in women’s movements. As Deniz Kandiyoti (1991) notes, political authorities in the Middle East have typically banned women from forming independent women’s organizations. Turkey was no exception: in 1923, the Women’s People’s Party was denied permission to come into being. Instead, its leader, Nezihe Muhittin, was advised to start a “women’s union,” which was closed down in 1935 (Arat 2000). Kandiyoti further argues that the male elite’s interest in women’s rights in Muslim countries was always confined to “a broader agenda about ‘progress’ and the compatibility between Islam and modernity” (1991, 3). Indeed, no independent women’s organizations were to be found in the public sphere until the 1980s.

The Current Status of Women in Turkey Despite efforts at “citizenization”13 and the granting of formal rights to women with regard to their roles in family, education, and employment, deep chasms can be observed between the conditions of different groups of women in Turkey today. While the urban/rural or center/periphery divide is often regarded as the key distinction,14 I argue that women’s status is more likely to be contingent on their family’s republican capital, rather than on simple geographical location. It is important to note that children of those public servants appointed to small Anatolian towns displayed high republican capital, even though they lived on the periphery, in the Anatolian hinterland. Conversely, rural–urban migrants would display low republican capital even though they lived in cities. The center/periphery paradigm also overlooks the fact that, within Anatolia, rural and urban areas could be quite distinct, not to mention that different regions in Anatolia could display different cultural norms and

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traditions, south, north, east and central Anatolia displaying different characteristics. Ethnographic studies in rural areas have uncovered the patriarchal practice whereby parents withhold schooling beyond elementary school from young girls, who are then fated to be married at a young age through an arranged marriage (Delaney 1991; Incirlioˇglu 1993). The literacy rate, at 85.3 per cent for women in 2009 (compared with 96.4 per cent for men), attests to the continued practice of not sending girls to school ¨ writes, of the south-eastern and at all (UNESCO 2012). Yakın Erturk predominantly Kurdish region of Turkey, that “[m]any of the women over 30 years of age in the region do not speak Turkish, the official language; many are married by religious law, which is not recognized under the modern, secular legal system; many are not even registered with the population bureau, thus they do not officially exist” (1995, 144). Indeed, a study conducted in 1996–7 estimated that, in eastern and south-eastern Anatolia,15 22.7 per cent of all marriages in rural areas were religious marriages, while in urban areas in the same region, religious marriages constituted 14.7 per cent of all marriages (Ilkkaracan and Ilkkaracan 2003). Unless accompanied by civil marriage, the socalled “religious marriage” has no legal substance and has been banned by the state (Article 230 of the Penal Code). Religious marriage accounts for the deprivation of rights granted to women formally by the law. It renders them less than “cultural citizens.” Another indication of disregard for official law is found by Ilkkaracan and Ilkkaracan (2003). Their study indicates that, in eastern and southeastern Anatolia, the rights determining women’s share of an inheritance are primarily decided through tribal customs and not according to the Civil Code (61.3 per cent of the interviewees reported this). It was also found that 10 per cent of the women living in the urban areas of east and south-east Anatolia, and 18.3 per cent of women living in the rural areas of the same region, did not speak Turkish, the official language, further alienating them from their citizenship rights which require the use of Turkish. Making the decision to cast one’s vote in elections is also found to be something women are not trusted to do alone. Only seven 16 ¨ out of ten women in Umraniye, half of all respondents in eastern and south-eastern urban areas and a quarter of women in rural eastern and south-eastern Anatolia reported being allowed to make that decision on

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their own (Ilkkaracan and Ilkkaracan 2003). Jenny White cites a young woman’s protest at not having been able to vote for her favorite party in the most recent election: “The last time, my father took me and he took my and my mother’s vote and stamped them with the party he wanted” (White 2002, 95). Moreover, most political discussion occurs in locales exclusively accessible by men (Delaney 1991; White 2002). The neighborhood kahve (coffeehouse) resembles the Tischgesellschaften, salons and coffeehouses that Habermas identifies as locales where the bourgeois public sphere came into being in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. Coffeehouses are places for the formation of public opinion. Women’s entry into a coffeehouse is highly uncommon and unacceptable; therefore, women lack a public locale where they can exchange political opinions. Despite legal rights, women also lack reasonable access to the workforce.

A Glance into the Structural Limitations on Women’s Employment On WV programs, which will be discussed at length below, women are often labeled as golddiggers and materialists. The programs omit any discussion of the structural and cultural foundations of women’s marginalization from the workforce. Here, I would like to provide some background on how women are disadvantaged in the labor market when compared with men. Also, while women from republican backgrounds and rural–urban migrants who were able to obtain university degrees are relatively advantaged in the job market, women of rural backgrounds and rural–urban migrants with little or no education lack equal access to well-paying, secure jobs. Women’s marginalization in the workforce stems from a combination of patriarchal prejudices and structural factors resulting from Turkey’s general economic conditions, as well as women’s overall lower university graduation rates compared with men. In 2006, while of all men over the age of 15, 9.4 per cent were university graduates, the percentage for women was 5.8 per cent. Women’s workforce participation lags behind that in OECD countries, as well as certain Muslim countries, according to a report by the State Planning Institute (SPI) of Turkey and the World Bank (2009). As of January 2009, women’s workforce participation in Turkey stood at 23.5

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per cent, down from 34 per cent in 1988 (ibid.). The main reason for this decline is believed to be increased urbanization. Women have typically been active in unpaid family and agricultural labor in rural areas. With rural–urban migration, more women are becoming housewives, which contributes to an overall drop in women’s labor force participation. Ecevit (1995) argues that, compared with the fast industrial growth of the 1964–73 period, manufacturing industry saw a major decline after the adoption of the export-oriented model in 1980. “As factories reduced production, due to stagnation in both exports and internal market sales, they began to decrease the number of shifts worked, dismiss workers or send them on leave” (ibid., 84). Ironically, this crisis period also corresponded with the most major wave of migration in Turkey. Due to rural–urban migration, the urban population of Turkey at working age went up by 15.5 million between 1988 and 2006 (SPI and World Bank 2009). Thus, in the 1980s men and women began to compete for already scarce employment opportunities. However, women were disproportionately disadvantaged compared with men due to their lower educational levels, the lower quality of the jobs available to them, work– family problems and cultural prejudices.

Education Women on average have lower levels of formal education than men. Despite legal equality, this trend was maintained by the general patriarchal practice of not allowing girls to continue schooling beyond elementary school, due to a belief in the inappropriateness of girls’ and boys’ social mixing after puberty, as well as the need for their labor in the home ¨ (Delaney 1991; Ozbay 1995). Although women’s illiteracy rate declined signifantly since the 1980s (42 per cent decline between 1988 and 2006, according to the SPI and World Bank), in 2009 the adult illiteracy rate was still 14.7 per cent for women and 3.6 per cent for men (UNESCO 2012). Similarly, while women’s university graduation rates have increased by 214 per cent since 1988, women were still significantly less likely than men to be university graduates in 2006, as shown above (SPI and World Bank 2009). University education seems to have the most positive impact on labor force participation. Approximately 74 per cent of female rural–urban migrants who are university graduates are found to be active in the workforce.

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Lower-Quality Jobs and Work–Family Problems Urban working conditions are found to be arduous and economically unsatisfactory for uneducated segments among the rural–urban migrants. The lower the education level of a woman who lives in an urban area, the more likely is she to be working in the informal sector. For example, 86.9 per cent of illiterate urban women who work are employed in the informal sector, compared with slightly less than half of all elementary and middle school graduates, and only 8.6 of university graduates (ibid.). Of those women working in the informal sector, 77 per cent are paid less than the minimum wage (ibid.). Thus, low wages, combined with insecure and unpredictable working conditions, long uncompensated hours, few and inadequate transportation options and a lack of benefits, render the option of working less appealing for female rural–urban migrants with little education. Given that many women are charged with a variety of household duties such as childrearing, cooking, cleaning, ironing, and so on such conditions and wages do not make outside employment worth their while. Lack of affordable childcare options is found to be one of the major barriers to women’s outside employment (ibid.). Moreover, although the new Labor Code that went into effect in 2003 stipulates that “it is unlawful to discriminate based on gender,” in practice, discrimination against women in the workplace and in hiring continues (WWHR-New Ways 2005, 48). Common discriminatory practices include “the preference for single rather than married women, as well as differential treatment of women and men as unskilled and skilled workers” (Ecevit 1995, 86). Ecevit also reports as a common practice “dismissal of women before men in times of crisis” (ibid., 86). This practice is due to the deeply embedded understanding of the man as the primary breadwinner. Therefore, if a married couple is employed in the same workplace, employers find it moral and just to dismiss the woman, if downsizing is necessary. This way, it is assumed, no families will be deprived of their livelihood completely, and the man will continue to bear the pride of providing for the family.17 Also, certain jobs and places are off-limits to women. For example, according to the Labor Code, women cannot work underground or under water, in arduous and dangerous jobs, and in some cases on night shifts (WWHR-New Ways 2005, 50). Although discrimination on the

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basis of sex is outlawed, even government agencies continue to advertise job openings with qualifications such as “male engineer wanted,” partly because the wording of the labor law is ambiguous and its functioning is regulated by special by-laws. The clause requiring married women to obtain their husbands’ permission in order to work was annulled by the Constitutional Court in 1992 for being “unconstitutional.” However, the Civil Code continues to contain clauses with negative repercussions for women’s work, stating that “the harmony and welfare of the marriage union should be borne in mind when choosing and subsequently performing a job or profession” (ibid., 48). Moreover, because of educational inequalities and other structural limitations, only a small percentage of women climb to higher positions, indicating the existence of a glass ceiling. Women’s inertia in entering the labor market might have something to do with the fact that they do not see peers in higher positions, and therefore lack the incentive to try for those positions. Indeed, a study finds that only 19 per cent of employees in higher positions in the banking and insurance sectors are ¨ uk-S ¨ ¸ enesen and Pulhan 2000). The percentages of women women (Gunl at the higher levels are 24 per cent and 22 per cent in the textiles and tourism sectors, respectively. Based on the companies sampled in this study, women constitute 41 per cent of all employees in the banking and insurance industry, 46 per cent of all employees in textiles and 23 per cent of all employees in the tourism sector. In sum, women find it difficult to thrive in the workplace. The legal precautions taken against sexual harassment in the workplace remain insufficient.18 Most importantly, sexual advances or remarks to working women are considered “normal” and inevitable by other men and even some women, and often go unreported. Women feel that reporting an inappropriate workplace advance is not worth risking one’s reputation. Often, the complaint needs to be filed with a superior who, more than likely, will be a man. Many women fear that superiors may not act as sensitively as the issue requires, either downplaying the severity of the assault or implying ways in which the victim may have “invited” it. Even some women believe that the victim must have provoked the sexual advance, and therefore deserved the harassment. Therefore, the workplace can be a hostile environment for women, and if their employment is

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only complementary to the family budget, women may choose to cease working, especially after becoming mothers.

Cultural Factors ¨ ¨ Ozyeˇ In her study on domestic workers in Ankara, Gul gin finds that women’s participation in the workforce as domestic servants depends on factors such as whether they are doorkeepers19 or live in a squatter settlement; “paternalistic constraints on women’s work” – that is, the male obligation of protecting women; demands of young children; the ¨ economic position of the household; and labor demand (Ozyeˇ gin 2001, ¨ 67). Ozyeˇgin reports that doorkeepers’ wives find it easier to become domestic workers, since the spatial and temporal characteristics of their residence do not require them to travel long distances or work away from their husbands’ surveillance. Thus, doorkeepers are able to “maintain protective and paternalistic control over their wives’ participation in this area of informal work,” and are more likely to allow their wives to work as domestics (ibid., 54). Based on the domestic workers’ firsthand narrations of the process through which they became domestic workers by carefully negotiating work schedules, childcare and choice of employers with ¨ their husbands, Ozyeˇ gin concludes that “stories illustrate powerfully that poverty is not a great dissolver of patriarchy” (ibid., 53). The sentiment about women’s employment outside the home was eloquently voiced by a young man I interviewed. Commenting on his younger sister’s success at high school, Dursun20 (STR), an outspoken 28-year-old man from Gebze, continued: She will study for her own good. The money she’ll make in the future, I mean, I don’t know if her husband will let her work or not, but she’ll help her husband with that. We [her natal family] can’t say, “we put you through school, now give us the money.” Life conditions have become so hard that – people lose their trust in their society. If things were in place in society, if the order in society was right – it’s right and logical for women to work. But in our society, in some cases it’s considered wrong . . . I personally, even if I was hungry, I wouldn’t let my wife work. Even if I knew I was going to be hungry I wouldn’t let her work. But I wouldn’t judge those who do . . . I don’t know, it’s against my principle. I mean I’m in favor of women

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working but because there’s a defect in Turkish society, because some men’s perceptions are different, not to allow that, I would push myself, tire myself, I would not side with letting my wife work outside in order not to face these problems.

Dursun refers to a couple of key points here: first, when his sister marries (which, as an “honorable” young girl, she is expected to do), the decision whether or not she will work outside of the home will be up to her husband. Second, Dursun’s reference to “some men’s perceptions” is telling. He is implying here that other men find that a working woman is “open” in many senses – open to sexual advances by other men, open as in not enclosed in a home, open as in not covered with a headscarf, open in dress and therefore, potentially dishonorable. Since it is considered to be the husband’s responsibility to step up and defend his wife’s (and thereby his own) honor in case of a sexual proposition, or even the perception thereof, Dursun is stating here that, rather than facing a problem like this, it is simply better not to let one’s wife work. Carol Delaney (1991, 42) writes that social intercourse between unrelated men and women is almost equivalent to sexual intercourse, which is why town and city (as well as Europe and America) are considered bulas¸ık,21 unlike the village, which is temiz (clean, pure) because it is kapalı (covered), as are its women. In the town and city, women and men mix more openly; they can hardly avoid it.

The workplace constitutes a space where social intercourse between unrelated men and women occurs inevitably. Delaney further explains that “this inability to control the times and places of such mixing is unsettling for villagers. It is almost certainly the reason that those who move to town keep their women at home and under such stricter surveillance than in the village” (ibid.). I will delve deeper into examples from WV that manifest the cultural issues associated with women’s labor in Chapter 3.

Physical and Symbolic Violence Against Women Although on the surface the WV programs appear to be about missing persons and long-lost family members, the discourse produced through firsthand narrations reveals the extent of violence against women, in both

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its physical and symbolic forms. Physical forms of violence include sexual violence (rape, and other forms of sexual harassment) and battering. What I call symbolic violence derives from Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of symbolic capital and symbolic power. Symbolic violence is exerted by those in power over those who do not recognize it as power. Those who possess “symbolic capital,” which disguises itself as no capital at all, exert “symbolic violence,” a violence not recognized as such (Bourdieu 1998a). Thus, power disguises itself as male privilege, which is almost assumed to be naturally given. As the Wheel of Power and Control shows (Figure 1),22 physical and sexual abuse are easily recognizable, blatant forms of violence. That is why they are placed on the outer rim of the wheel. However, “symbolic” forms of abuse such as economic abuse; emotional abuse; using male privilege; using children, minimizing, denying and blaming; coercion, threats and intimidation; and using isolation are not as easy to recognize. These forms of symbolic violence trap women in abusive relationships. For example, isolation from her natal family, which Kandiyoti (1988) calls the custom of the “stranger bride,” deprives women of the possibility of taking refuge in their natal homes to escape domestic abuse. The fear of losing their children keeps abused women in abusive relationships. The lack of financial resources as a result of "economic abuse" also keep women in abusive relationships. “Emotional abuse” leads to the victim’s loss of self-esteem as a result of years of humiliation and name-calling, and feelings of guilt. The cultural and structural barriers to women’s rights to education and employment discussed above make it difficult for women to imagine a life without a husband. Multiple narrations of physical violence have been encountered on the WV programs. Ays¸e K. was a guest of Inci Ertuˇgrul (“Your Voice”) on 11 November 2005. Her words, quoted below, demonstrate the power of intimidation, use of children, fear tactics, name-calling and references to imagined infidelity inflicted by her abuser. No other television program in Turkey consistently features a more powerful discourse on domestic violence from the mouth of the survivor: When the fight is over, the next day, he declares his love to me. Let me tell you something (turns to her husband): I no longer have love for you Metin. I’m scared. I’m scared because I’ve been beaten, tortured so much. (Turns to the host.) When he makes a long face, I immediately get scared that

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Figure 1. Wheel of Power and Control. Source: Domestic Abuse Intervention Project: www.theduluthmodel.org he’ll scream at me, blame me, do something to me. He talks to my son. He says, “your mother has a lover.” He talks about “my lover” to my son!

Metin’s behavior, as conveyed by Ays¸e K., thus conforms to textbook definitions of the instruments domestic abusers use to keep their partners under their power and control. The cycle of violence continues as the couple goes through stages of violence, “honeymoon,” tension and violence over and over again (Alabama Coalition Against Domestic Violence 2006). It has been found that one in every three women is subject to domestic violence in Turkey (Altınay and Arat 2007).23 This national study places the rate of domestic violence at 11.8 per cent for women who are university graduates, 29 per cent for high-school graduates, 43.3 per cent

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for illiterate women and 45.6 per cent for women who have not finished any schooling. When the man is a university graduate, regardless of the woman’s educational level, the rate of domestic violence falls to 17.9 per cent. Domestic violence is reported by one in every four families with an income of 2,500 new Turkish lira (YTL) and higher (the highest bracket determined in the questionnaire), while it is at 43 per cent at an income level of 250 YTL and lower (ibid.). Thus, as education and income increase, rates of domestic violence are found to decrease; however, not even the most educated women are immune to domestic violence, as is found to be the case universally.24

The Honor Code What makes some women’s situations more acute is their subjection to the so-called honor code. Drawing on matter-of-fact assertions that emerge on WV, I argue that the concept of namus (“honor”) is key to understanding gender relations in Turkey. In this regard, my research contributes to an understanding of the prevalence of customs based on the “honor code.”25 In a UNFPA report, Filiz Kardam defines “honor” as “the property of women which is controlled by men” (Kardam 2005, 19). Honor is concerned with the control of a woman’s sexuality by the men who are, under the codes of honor, responsible for her. Such men include her father, father-in-law, brothers, brothers-in-law, uncles, cousins, and even her sons. Honor refers to the man’s obligation to closely monitor a woman’s activities, including “chastity, having no extra-marital relations, dressing properly, conducting oneself according to expectations and knowing one’s duties according to traditions” (ibid., 16). If such norms are not observed, an “honor killing” may occur. Although they are punished by law, “honor killings” are viewed as justified and necessary in the eyes of the local collectivity. They are, by and large, committed to maintain the family’s “honor” in the eyes of the community. Examples of dishonorable conduct can range from adultery, premarital sex, rape, divorce and eloping (ibid.). The means of cleaning the stain on the family’s honor is by killing the woman implicated. In some cases, but more rarely, the man involved is also killed. It is estimated that between 2001 and 2006 there have been 1,806 honor killings in

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Turkey (US Department of State 2008). However, this number should be considered a gross underestimate, since many honor killings go unreported. Especially if the woman killed does not have a birth certificate,26 her death can easily go unreported and unrecorded. The same report notes that during the same period, 5,375 women in Turkey committed suicide (ibid.). Although it is not known how many of these suicides were “honor suicides,” the number of women’s suicides may be important, since sometimes women are forced to commit suicide so that the family does not have to commit an honor killing (Kardam 2005). Although the Turkish republican elite assigns honor killings to lingering traditions and customs, the so-called modern law has played into the hands of “tradition” (Koˇgacıoˇglu 2004). For example, until recently, Article 462 of the Turkish Penal Code indicated that if “dishonorable conduct” was taking place, the murderer was assumed to have been provoked, and the sentence would be reduced by one-eighth. However, in the face of increasing media coverage and public outrage, the Turkish criminal justice system has begun treating honor killings more harshly. ¨ unya ¨ ¨ Guld Toren’s case became one of the most publicized cases of an ¨ unya ¨ honor killing. Guld was raped by her aunt’s son-in-law. She was later killed by her brothers in an honor murder. A sentence of life im¨ unya’s ¨ prisonment was given to one of Guld brothers, who shot her in the head as she was recovering from her previously sustained injuries at the hands of her family. Her other brother received a sentence of 23 years, since he was a minor at the time of the murder.27 As the sentences for honor killings have increased, it has been observed that families are now more likely to force the girl to kill herself. Another strategy for circumventing the criminal justice system has been the recruitment of a minor for the murder. Partially to address this phenomenon, a new Article of the Penal Code (Article 38) states that whoever forces a person to commit a crime receives the same sentence as the perpetrator, and that if the person forced is a minor, the sentence is increased. Among the nationalist elite and political leadership in Turkey, there is an attempt to “ethnicize” honor killings – that is, to portray them as a cultural custom of the Kurdish population that is concentrated in the south-east of Turkey. Some highly influential nationalist journalists have argued that the problem of “honor killings” has no bearing on the Turkish

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government, since the practice was strictly part and parcel of Kurdish ¨ ok ¨ 2006; Ardıc¸ 2006). Koˇgacıoˇglu (2004) reports a similar culture (Ozk attempt to delimit honor crimes to the south-east of Turkey in the ruling JDP’s party program. The ethnicization of honor killings serves the Turkish state’s purpose of distancing itself from these acts and considering them to be “problems of others.” However, according to a report published in 2008 on honor killings by the Turkish Prime Ministry’s Human Rights Directorate, the majority of such killings that were recorded in the previous five years (2003–7) happened in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, with 167, 144 and 121 murders in each city, respectively.28 While the north-western Marmara region accounts for 28 per cent of all such murders, the south-eastern region accounts for 12 per cent (Feudal and Honor Killings Report 2008).29 Those who frame honor killings as part and parcel of Kurdish culture, despite evidence to the contrary, ignore the fact that women of non-Kurdish origin are subject to similar kinds of violence, and that Kurds are an element of the supposedly all-inclusive culture of Turkey. One promising development has been the mass media’s close attention to honor killings in the last decade, as the extensive coverage ¨ unya ¨ ¨ of Guld Toren’s and Kadriye Demirel’s killings suggests. Kadriye Demirel was killed by her brother upon being raped and impregnated by her cousin. Both murders were covered extensively by all major newspapers in 2003 and 2004. The funerals were attended by large groups, including state officials and NGO workers, and have opened up a public discussion on honor crimes.30

Post-1980: The Rise of the Independent Feminist Movement Honor killings, violence against women and other problems of women as private, autonomous individuals became part and parcel of feminist rhetoric in the 1980s. Until then, the public sphere was dominated by the liberal feminist rhetoric readily connecting increased access to education and employment to women’s liberation. Prior to the 1980s, women’s rights were emphasized only to the extent that they served the good of the country (Arat 2000). The so-called “state feminists” in Turkey succumbed to the official discourse that the republican revolution

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had liberated Turkish women, overlooking inequalities stemming from regional, ethnic and class differences (Tekeli 1995). In the 1980s, the “independent feminists” began to question the rhetoric that asserted that the republican revolution had liberated women, and was thus owed the devotion of every Turkish woman. Yes¸im Arat notes that “when private lives and interpersonal relationships were questioned, hierarchies and controls that had been ignored now surfaced. Sexual liberties and freedoms, once taboo, became articulated issues” (Arat 1997, 105). The first example of activism against something commonly considered a “private” family matter was the Women’s Solidarity Campaign Against Battery in 1987. As an end result, Mor C ¸ atı, the Purple Roof Women’s Shelter Foundation, the first women’s shelter and information center in Turkey, came into being in 1990. In 1998, 2001 and 2004, significant changes were made to the Turkish Civil and Penal Codes, as 126 women’s organizations joined forces to pressure the government to bring about these amendments. Accordingly, women can now obtain restraining orders against their abusive husbands and retain their maiden names in front of their husband’s last names and a foreign man marrying a Turkish woman can obtain Turkish citizenship (leveling a former law that only allowed a foreign woman marrying a Turkish man to obtain citizenship). Also, the minimum age for marriage (without parents’ consent) has been raised from 15 for women and 17 for men to 17 for both. In 2004, “sexual harassment in the workplace” was officially criminalized. Also, until the reform in 2001, the Turkish Civil Code stipulated that the man was the head of the family. Accordingly, if a man did not “legally recognize his family, his children are not granted citizenship because they are classed as children of unclear parentage: they cannot obtain a ¨ birth certificate, go to school, get a job or even be legally married” (Ozbay 1995, 109). The new Civil Code abandoned this clause. The elimination of the head of household clause enables a single mother to obtain a birth certificate for her child even if she cannot prove “clear parentage” by an officially recognized husband. While today it is much more possible to talk about a feminist grassroots movement in Turkey than before the 1980s, there is evidence that one of the most important problems of the feminist movement is its elite roots and its continued inability to connect with the masses. One commonality between “state feminists” and “independent feminists” was their class

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backgrounds (Bora 2007). Today, feminism continues to be an endeavor of highly educated, middle-class, urban women with high republican capital. Despite efforts to break from that tradition, some branches of the feminist movement continue with the quest of “teaching the masses and raising them to the level of contemporary civilization” that characterizes the Kemalist elite. A deep understanding of the patriarchal system and women’s inter¨ nalization of that system seems absent. S¸ahika Yuksel writes about her firsthand perspective as a domestic violence activist in the first years of women’s shelter advocacy: the most serious problems arose because our feminist outlook and expectations, and our concept of family, were not compatible with those of the applicants . . . Our principle of giving the individual responsibility for making her own decisions was considered strange and alien by the women, who were not used to deciding for themselves. There was another inner obstacle which was more difficult to break: women brought up with the expectation that the nuclear family was the only route to happiness found it very hard to accept alternative lifestyles, and did not enjoy the prospect of sharing a residence with other women, even to escape their husbands’ ¨ brutality. (Yuksel 1995, 285)

As Ilkkaracan (1997, 6) writes: most of the women’s groups and associations formed during the postrepublican era have concentrated on “helping” women living in the villages, instead of questioning the role that the Republic had determined for them. Moreover, the dichotomy they perceived between themselves and the rural women hindered their understanding of the problems and potentials of these women, whom they were supposedly trying to “help”.

The feminist movement in Turkey sometimes seems disconnected from “other” women that it is attempting to elevate. One contributing factor to this alienation is the conviction that the “liberated” women have of their own liberation, which I also found in the WV producers’ and hosts’ discourse. Ays¸e Saktanber notes this in her study of Kadınca, one of the first feminist magazines in Turkey, which began publication in 1978: In its language, Kadınca distinguishes itself from women, thereby denying that all women, including its staff, may be facing similar situations. Instead

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of using the pronoun “we” when taking up women’s problems, the pronoun “you” is used, saying “you must put your foot down, you must not let yourself be oppressed, you must unite!” (Saktanber 1995, 160)

Nazik Is¸ık, a domestic violence activist, points to the relationship with the violence she has suffered and the violence “others” suffer with these insightful words: If I were to begin regarding the violence I suffered as unimportant, the relationship between me and this struggle, as well as the relationship between me and the women I touch in this struggle would attain a different essence, a different form. I would become somebody “who struggles for others,” “a giver,” I would turn into “just a philanthropist,” “a person on the top,” cease to be someone from the “inside.” I would become an “outsider,” “a numb observer.” Yet, I was/am in this struggle for myself too. (Is¸ık 2007, 42, translation and emphasis mine)

A major dividing factor between state feminists and independent feminists has been the former’s continued commitment to the official line of state nationalism and their neglect of Kurdish and other ethnic or religious minorities. Also, state feminists viewed Islamists as their archenemy, although independent feminists occasionally formed solidarities with veiled women who wanted to enter university campuses. The general top-down attitude of some groups of feminists is nowadays being challenged by organizations such as KAMER (Women’s Center), which was founded in 1997 in Diyarbakır, a south-eastern city with a large Kurdish population. KAMER now has a network spanning 23 eastern and south-eastern cities (179 provinces), with 30,000 activists under their umbrella (Altınay and Arat 2007). KAMER’s “local organization” (yerinden o¨ rgutlenme) model is praised for its ability to emerge and de¨ velop in each province according to the province’s needs based on local women’s demands and participation (ibid.). A third “feminist group” which emerged within the landscape of the post-1980 period – Islamist feminists – was successful in bridging differences between themselves and those they were trying to elevate. This is evidenced by the fact that, for example, in 1995 the Islamist Welfare Party was able to recruit 18,000 female activists who were in turn able to signup another 377,889 female members to the party in Istanbul alone (Eraslan 2004, 824). Their success was also closely related

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to the fact that the activists and their clients originated from similar, rural–urban backgrounds. Another factor has been the Islamist parties’ distribution of food and coal to poor households, and the solicitation of votes in conjunction with this economic aid. Islamist feminists are critical of women’s roles in the West, in capitalism and in the modern Turkish state (Ilkkaracan 1997).31 In that sense, their discourse is close to a Marxist-socialist feminist critique of capitalism. ¨ Gole ¨ (1996) was the first scholar to propose that veiling should Nilufer be analyzed as an opportunity for women from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds and repressive family structures to attain access to the public sphere – specifically, to education, employment and the field of cultural production.32 The new veiling phenomenon, according to her, should not be equated with the docile, submissive, passive prototype of traditional Islamic veiling. “On the contrary, young, urban, educated ¨ groups of Islamist girls are politically active and publicly visible” (Gole 1997b, 57). However, their political activism and public visibility is viewed negatively by the secular middle classes with high republican capital. These groups’ activities are associated with the perceived threat that the Islamist fundamentalist forces are conspiring to bring about an “Islamist coup,” resembling that of Iran. Female activists played an important role in Islamic mobilization. Islamist political mobilization patterns contrasted with Kemalist secularists’ attempts at mobilizing voter support. White (2002) argues that the secularists’ alignment with modern, individualistic, goal-seeking forms of behavior alienated the voters and made their message appear topdown. Thus, they were not as successful as the Welfare activists in mobilizing support. The increasing economic wealth and political might of those individuals and groups with low republican capital (including veiled women) is causing a power struggle between the old republican elite and these newcomers into the field of power (S¸anlı 2005).

Islamist Mobilization and the Breakdown of the Republican Model During the first years of the formation of the Turkish Republic, to deal with the challenge of controlling a multiethnic population and the power

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of religion inherited from Ottoman history, a monolithic form of nationalism was invented whereby “Turk” was established as an overarching identity open to anybody who wanted to claim it (Bozdoˇgan and Kasaba 1997). In contrast to the Ottoman period, now it was nationalism, and not religion, that was to bind the population together. The roots of the “Turkish nation” were “discovered,” and a proud nationalist history began to be inculcated into the minds of citizens (Heyd 1954). A carefully constructed history curriculum taught children to be proud of their preOttoman, pre-Islamic Turkic past. ¨ Ataturk’s Republican People’s Party (RPP) ruled according to these principles until 1950. The Democratic Party, which came to power in 1950 in the nation’s first multiparty election, solicited votes by appealing to Islamic sensibilities. As a result, Islam began to be part and parcel of the public sphere again.33 Political Islam continued to gain popularity with the emergence of the National Outlook Movement in 1967 under the leadership of Necmettin Erbakan. By 1974, the movement was powerful enough to become part of a coalition government under RPP leadership. The political environment following the military coup of 1980 created a new set of conditions that facilitated not only the strengthening of political Islam (Kushner 1997) but also the “rapid enlargement of the religious field” (S¸en 2010, 61). The military officers responsible for the 1980 coup found fertile ground in the 1980s to counteract the leftist movement of the 1970s with the Turkish Islamic Synthesis (TIS), in order to restore “‘national culture’ imbued with ‘Islamic values”’ (ibid., 65). Consequently, religion became part of the compulsory curriculum in primary and secondary education, the staff of the Directory of Religious Affairs doubled in size within ten years following the coup, and the number of students enrolled in high schools to study as imams and preachers (Imam Hatip Liseleri) almost doubled between 1980 and 1991 (ibid., 68). The ruling Justice and Development Party (JDP) gained 34 per cent of the people’s vote in the 2002 general elections, 46 per cent of the vote in 2007, and 49.9 per cent of the vote in 2011. They draw on a version of TIS in which “Turkish culture, history and religion are held ¨ to be not only unique, but also superior to other cultures” (Ozdalga ¨ 2006, 552). Religious leader Fethullah Gulen’s international network spanning media, education and business associations operates on the

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principle of the Turkish Islamic Synthesis and, at least superficially, aims to promote Turkish culture abroad. In this conceptualization, Islam’s negative connotations are assigned to an Arabic essence, and Turkish Islam is held to be more moderate and compatible with modernity. ¨ Ozdalga (2006) notes that Europe succumbs to this idealized version of Turkish Islam without noticing its ethnocentric properties. This account also neglects the fact that various types of Islamisms are practiced in Turkey. Nevertheless, up until mid-2013, when the Gezi movement broke out, Western media hailed the JDP-style “conservative democracy” as a model for the fledgling democracies of the Middle East in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, strengthening Turkey’s position in the region.34

The Headscarf Problem The headscarf or turban problem has occupied the Turkish political ¨ agenda as a divisive and controversial issue since the late 1970s. Over time, it has come a debate concerning the boundaries of the public and private spheres in Turkey. Turban has come to be viewed as a flag of rising ¨ political Islam, which is believed to threaten the secular tenets of the Turkish Republic because it is feared that it aims to replace the existing regime with a regime based on Shari‘a (Islamic law). In 2008, the JDP made a push for the formal legalization of the veil at universities, which was overturned by the Constitutional Court. It was, of course, considered yet another indication that the “Islamist” JDP, which controls both the legislative and the executive branches, is in the throes of bringing about an Islamist revolution. Finally, in October 2013, the prime minister lifted the ban on the headscarf in all public institutions, with the exception of military personnel who are required to wear a uniform, and public attorneys and judges. This was done in the context of the JDP’s greater “democratization package.” There is a growing social science literature showing that veiling may not simply be a sign of religiosity but a way to deal with transitions ¨ ¨ in her pioneering The Forbidden in a patriarchal society. Nilufer Gole, Modern (1996), argued that veiling corresponds to the appearance of actors in the public sphere who have thus far been excluded from it. It is a means of women’s access to the modern public sphere, which has so far been forbidden to them. However, veiling does not necessarily

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have to be an act of militancy. It may simply be an attempt to display propriety and modesty in a squatter-town setting. S¸erif Mardin calls this phenomenon “neighborhood pressure” (mahalle baskısı) (Arman 2007). ¨ Similarly, Jenny White observes that, in Umraniye, a prospective bride has to be devoid of any hint of indiscretion. She writes: “There was a fine line between displaying one’s attractiveness and gaining a bad reputation. Some young women and their families refused to take a chance, and from a young age the girls dressed in enveloping clothing and head scarves when they appeared in public” (White 2002, 90). It is also argued that the perception of the “city’s corrupting influence” might cause men to become more repressive in urban settings, and could lead to the extreme control of women’s sexuality, to an even greater extent than in rural settings (Delaney 1991; Kardam 2005). Kandiyoti (1988) further identifies younger women’s adoption of the veil as an “intensification of traditional markers” to signify that they are still honorable, even though they may work outside the home. In that sense, veiling could be considered a way of coping with urban life and the new demands such a life brings. Many young female squatter-town residents continue with their schooling beyond elementary school, violating the rural conduct of gender segregation. By veiling, however, they manage to remain within the acceptable confines of the gender structure, protecting their honor and marriage prospects, while gaining access to the public sphere. Thus, their veiling may not necessarily signify militant Islamism. In my field research, I encountered a young woman called Meltem who had a very compelling explanation for why she covered her head. Meltem was a 20-year-old STR respondent who had recently graduated from university in Erzurum.35 Meltem’s neighbor Ays¸e was also present. Meltem: I studied in Erzurum. It was a closed circle. Turkey is not well developed, let me tell you that. They don’t like students in Erzurum. As a self-protection instinct, I decided to cover myself. Also, my friends were veiled too. Interviewer: What do you mean when you say “they don’t like students”? M: I mean they don’t want us there. They’re bigots, they could not educate themselves. When they see you open, they perceive it differently.

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I: But now that you’ve returned to Istanbul, you continue to veil? M: But it’s not an Islamist [thing], no chador and stuff, never. Modern. I wear pants and stuff as usual. This was to protect myself in such a narrow circle. You look around, everybody’s covered, your friends are covered, no family, you’re alone. I mean, also, some of our friends did some wrong stuff. Then you get scared even more. You start questioning yourself: “Would I make a mistake too, make wrong friendships?” You withdraw into your shell. I: Was it to protect yourself? M: Yes, some people, some friends say “Why did you veil, is it your boyfriend [who forced you]?” That upsets me, what does that have to do with anything? Because they don’t know the inside, they say these things. That’s wrong. That was that. Turkey couldn’t educate itself. ¨ (my daughter) says the same thing. She says, “They Ays¸e: Muge pressure you so much. It’s not for the sake of veiling, but they say things like: You came here and destroyed the fertility of our land.” M: Yes, really, that’s what they say. ¨ is in Konya.36 She tells me that they say “You came, the rain A: Muge stopped falling. Go back to your hometown.” M: Yes, true, true, true. A: She says older guys say such things to them as they’re passing by on the street. M: Wouldn’t you be intimidated? I’m glad we survived after all. ¨ says there’s people who dress very indecently [in Konya] too. A: Muge It’s not like dressing in Istanbul. You should protect yourself if the place is bad. You have to . . . M: . . . adapt yourself to the place you go to. A: You don’t have to veil, but you should at least wear something with sleeves instead of walking around naked. Half-sleeves at least. She says “there’s people who dress like that [openly] and they deserve it, but we get the same kind of treatment undeservedly.” ¨ Here, Meltem and Muge’s experiences reveal not only a strategy for getting an education against all odds, but also a certain portion of the society’s resistance to women’s increased levels of visibility and potential power. As Carol Delaney (1991) observes, a woman is considered to

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have been “contained” (like a field) as long as she’s covered. Delaney goes on to argue that young girls contribute to the preservation of their honor by taking over the bodily expectations from an honorable girl: In order to preserve her reputation, a girl participates in her own enclosure: she averts her eyes when unrelated men are around, wears the headscarf and other voluminous coverings such as s¸alvar (baggy pants), and stays at home. By these activities, she demonstrates that she is kapalı (covered, closed) as opposed to ac¸ık (open, uncovered), that she is temiz (clean, pure) as opposed to pis (dirty, defiled). She is preserved in this state until marriage, when her husband has the right to open her and thereafter control the times and places of her opening. (Delaney 1991, 42, italics in original)

Ultimately, veiling affects a woman’s implicit exclusion from the public sphere, destroying her “to-be-looked-at-ness,”37 and providing young university students in conservative towns or families with some “outside” space to operate in while remaining within the safe confines of the veil, covered, and thus symbolically inside. There is evidence that veiling may also be a means of class and status negotiation. Aksu Bora (2005) cites a domestic worker she interviewed who decided to veil as an attempt to distinguish herself from her squattertown neighbors, whom she perceived as inferior to her: I was open before I came to Ankara. I didn’t use a veil, I used to wear short skirts. My husband was not too strict either. I came to the squatter town in Ankara. I found the squatter town residents so inferior from me . . . They’re filthy, their houses are very dirty. I closed [veiled] after a while. But I never really accepted being closed completely. (Fatma, cited in Bora 2005, 89, translation mine)

Culture Wars Specifically in the last decade, the Turkish public sphere has been completely overtaken by a discussion over the real objectives of JDP, and whether or not they are Islamist fundamentalists in disguise, trying to overthrow the secular state and replace it with an Islamic one. However, in this cacophony of voices, secularists, who claim to defend equal rights

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for women in all spheres of social life, overlook the fact that the ban on the headscarf in universities, the parliament and many other public spaces limits veiled women’s access to education, employment and political office. Moreover, while veiled women’s entry into universities is scrutinized as a sign of Islamic militancy and an overt corruption of secular institutions by Islamist elements, male students with equally if not more threatening agendas enter universities freely. There is no feminist consensus over the need to dismantle the ban, and Islamist and secular women’s rights activists have failed to forge an alliance around the headscarf issue. The roots of this divide might be sought in the power struggle delineated in this book. Berna Turam (2008) points to the increasing polarization between secular and Islamist activist women, and assigns this polarization to factors such as rapid urbanization, as well as Islamists’ class mobility and public visibility. “Woman’s Voice” programs are one of the venues where injustices against women are presented in the public sphere. Cultural practices like viewing and interpreting television shows such as WV programs are intrinsically linked to political processes because the political agenda is determined through the inclusion or exclusion of certain voices from the public sphere. I argue that WV producers fail to place issues of physical and symbolic violence in a social context because of their topdown republican approach to the guests and the issues. Furthermore, the issues raised by WV are also kept off the political agenda because of the republican elite’s distancing of itself from the program. Currently, culture wars are being waged over who has a right to be represented and heard. Two interconnected factors contribute to this crisis in representation. The first is the immense influx of rural–urban migrants into major urban centers in the last three decades. The second is the increased legitimacy and visibility that the Islamist discourse and Islamic habitus have acquired in the public sphere. As the relentless debates over a range of topics, such as the presidency and the veil, between the “secularist” republicans and “Islamists” in the last few years show, the country is increasingly being divided into conservative and secular factions. However, by concentrating on an imagined fight over secularism, these single-minded, feverish debates keep other, more pressing problems, such as the conditions of women, marginal to the public sphere.

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Migration and the Changing Face of Urban Life In 1927, 24 per cent of the Turkish population lived in urban areas. The percentage of the urban population rose to 34 per cent in 1965, 53 per cent in 1985, and 65 per cent in 2000 (City and Village Population 1927–2000, n.d.). The most recent estimates place the percentage of the urban population at 76.8 per cent of the entire population. According to these estimates, 18.2 per cent of Turkey’s 74.7 million population ¨ lives in Istanbul (Adrese Dayalı Nufus Kayıt Sistemi Sonuc¸ları 2011). While the migrant population could be relatively easily integrated into the labor market and absorbed into city life until 1980, due to the government’s import-substitution industrialization policies, which favored employment, in the aftermath of the liberalization of the 1980s it became harder for the migrant populations to secure formal employment in the city. C ¸ aˇglar Keyder argues that, “given the influx of two hundred thousand barely literate immigrants every year, it would be overly optimistic to expect a global-city dynamic, even if it had been more robust than Istanbul’s, to provide sufficient gravitation in the labor market” (1999, 25). Studies of squatter settlement (gecekondu) research point to four distinct “othering” periods of the squatter dwellers in social science literature (Erman 2001; Erman 2004; Demirtas¸ and S¸en 2007). In 1950 and 1960s, the gecekondu residents were considered by the researchers as “the rural Other,” with continued links and allegiances to their villages. In the 1970s, squatters came to be viewed as the “exploited/disadvantaged Other,” as by-produtcs of unplanned rapid urbanization in periphery countries. In the 1980s and 1990s, as a result of amnesties given to squatter settlements on public lands and the permission to build up to four storeys on existing squatter homes, the gecekondu resident acquired two separate identities: the “undeserving rich Other” or the “urban poor Other” (Erman 2004). Finally, the 2000s saw the emergence of the term varos¸ or varos¸lu as a new othering mechanism (ibid.). Accordingly, the gecekondu residents are largely viewed as groups divided according to their political, religious and ethnic allegiances, and as being violent and politically radical (Erman 2001). By the 2000s, public discourse about rural–urban migrants had taken on a racist tone. Journalist Mine Kırıkkanat’s rhetoric, quoted below, provides an apt example. In this op-ed piece published in daily newspaper

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Radikal on 27 July 2005, Kırıkkanat is describing the squatter residents’ weekend outings on a city beach: As the men lie around in their underwear while ruminating, the women, in chadors or veils, all without exception in tessettur ¨ [Islamic garb], are fanning the fire, making tea, or shaking babies on their feet or on a rocker. The same sight is repeated every ten square meters. Our dark people are cooking and eating meat on the seaside, with their asses facing the sea. You cannot encounter one family cooking fish on their grill. Maybe if they liked fish and knew how to cook fish, they wouldn’t lie around in dirty wife beaters and long underpants, they wouldn’t rigorously scratch themselves, they wouldn’t ruminate and burp, they wouldn’t be this thick, this short-legged, this long-armed and this hairy to begin with!38

The sense of “invasion” urban elites have been feeling against these “disgusting” bodies and habitus is prompting groups with high republican capital to try to distinguish and separate themselves from these “Others” through cultural boundary work. In an attempt to cope with the influx of “culturally inferior” migrants into the urban landscape, republican elites have been moving into gated communities since the early 1990s (Ayata ¨ u¨ 2005).39 Ays¸e Onc ¨ u¨ (2005) 2002; Bozdoˇgan 1997; Kurtulus¸ 2005; Onc argues that moving into a site (Turkish, pronounced as in the French cit´e) is a strategy to protect one’s middle-/upper-middle-class status. Although they are ironically often adjacent to squatter-town communities, these upscale suburban communities leave the unwanted masses outside. In most of these sites,40 the contrast between the serene, clean, carefully landscaped life inside and what remains outside is striking. One of my respondents described going out into the poor squatter town neighborhood surrounding the site where she lived as “going beyond a fortress.” Another attempt to deal with the sense of invasion urbanites felt was through popular culture. Cartoons, produced by new generations of the republican elite, attempted to come to terms with the immigrant’s ¨ u¨ observes the arrival vulgar habitus through ridicule and humor. Onc of the hacıaˇga on the cultural scene of humor, with his nouveau riche (combining low cultural capital with high economic capital) attitude, fake piousness, overconsumption of objects of low culture (lahmacun, arabesk, belly dancers etc.), and overzealous social-climber wife (1999, ¨ u¨ argues that “constructions of the immigrant as the absolute 100–4). Onc

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other in the neoliberal ethos of Istanbul is [sic] part of an ongoing struggle to redefine the boundaries of middle sectors or classes” (ibid., 98). A cultural struggle was also waged over the rise of arabesk music between the old republican elite and the newly urban masses, who constituted its fan base. Arabesk is “a new hybrid genre mixing Turkish ¨ classical and folk elements with those of the West and Egypt” (Ozbek 1997, 211). In the late 1970s and 1980s, arabesk came to signify everything about the squatter-town lives of migrants. By those with high republican capital, arabesk was “seen as a threat in its so-called impurity, fatalistic outlook and degeneration [sic]. It is said to ruralize and contaminate the urban environment” (ibid.). Arabesk was banned from broadcast during TRT’s monopoly, and was not heard on the radio or television until the 1990s despite sales in record numbers.

Culture and the Political Economy of Islam Arabesk represented the disenchantment of the migrant with city life, which failed to deliver the “better life” and upward mobility it had ¨ promised. Indeed, Meral Ozbek (1997) argues that squatter towns’ support for the Islamist Welfare Party in the 1990s had to do with the party’s references to a “pure and just order.” By the 1980s, the squatter towns had emerged as an important base for votes. Jenny White (2002) ¨ observes that in Umraniye, a squatter town area that is increasingly incorporating itself into the city proper, the Welfare Party’s use of vernacular, face-to-face politics worked as a powerful tool of mobilization: Welfare and its successor, the Virtue Party, owed much of their success to their ability to incorporate hybrid populations and to build on local community networks. To gain access to these community networks, the party itself had to become “intimate.” It did so by interacting with constituents on an individual level through known, trusted neighbors, building on sustained, face-to-face relationships, and by situating its political message within the community’s cultural codes and norms. (ibid., 7)

White identifies two main consequences for the Welfare Party’s successful form of populist political organization: “First, it has challenged the authoritarian, centralized, top-down paternalism of the political system,

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and has empowered a new generation of politicians that constituents perceive to be ‘just like us”’ (ibid., 22). Indeed, the leader of the ruling Justice and Development Party (JDP), Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is often identified with his Kasımpas¸a roots, as “close to the people.” On the other hand, the Islamist movement cannot be considered monolithic, and is characterized by many divisions and varieties. Despite its populist image, the movement is increasingly developing its own elite groups. Jenny White writes that “economic and status divisions within the Islamist movement have led to the development of an Islamist elitism that potentially undercuts the movement’s link with local cultural norms and the party’s populist image” (ibid., 23). Cihan Tuˇgal’s ethnographic work in Sultanbeyli, a poor suburb in Istanbul known as one of the “castles of Islamism” in the 1990s, demonstrates the “naturalization of capitalism” among the JDP’s poor urban electoral base (2009, 217). Tuˇgal uses the Gramscian concept of “passive revolution” to show how former radical Islamists were absorbed into capitalist hegemony between his first stage of fieldwork in 2000–2 and the second stage, which took place in 2006. By 2006, the JDP had consolidated its neoliberal hegemony, which, Tuˇgal finds, had a direct impact on the residents of Sultanbeyli. These former Islamists wanted upward mobility and were aggressive in taking advantage of the links between the municipal and national government, the JDP party administration, the Sufi community and business (ibid., 220–1). As good populists, the JDP were able to instill hope in people’s minds, “the belief that things could be different” (Mouffe 2005, 56). While the utilization of party ties was deemed legitimate, the path towards upward mobility was no longer the state (the so-called “Papa State” – devlet baba) per se, as it had been in the previous decades. “Family, religion and community ties” were viewed as the appropriate means to fight poverty, and the Kemalist state was viewed with skepticism, as can be discerned by the critique of the prototypical public servant (memur) who clings to a state-provided job, watches the clock, “and always wants to quit work when the clock strikes five” (Tuˇgal 2009, 217). Thus, many former Islamists bought into neoliberalism because, under the JDP’s tutelage, they saw avenues for upward mobility, whether those avenues existed in reality or not. They believed that, through a combination of a strong work ethic and the right connections, they could achieve the upward mobility they had deemed

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impossible before. Moreover, under the socially conservative JDP’s tutelage, they could reconcile these economic desires with their Islamic and communitarian sensibilities. Consumption became an axis along which new status and class formations were negotiated in Turkey in the 2000s. The Islamist way of life, as well as Islamic dispositions, have gained a certain amount of legitimacy and visibility in the public sphere. Veiled women are no longer confined to squatter towns, but are increasingly spotted in high-end shopping districts and malls, such as the ones in Etiler and Baˇgdat Street. Islamists are catered to in “Islamist” hotels, find representation in the media, and enjoy shopping in veil stores, while keeping abreast of developments in fashion through veil fashion shows (Bilici 2000; Navaro-Yashin 2002). The invasion of spheres formerly under the monopoly of the republican elite also creates a “political economy of culture” through which status and class are negotiated (White 2002). ¨ (2002) points out, the new Islamist actors tend Moreover, as Gole to originate from recently urban backgrounds, and to establish their Islamist discourse within the institutions of modern education. The secular elites feel that their pillars of modernity, such as universities and the military establishment, are being threatened by an invasion of the Islamist factions. Veiled students’ entry into universities gained such symbolic significance because of this struggle for monopoly over legitimacy. The negotiations of class and status through cultural consumption that lie at the heart of this project must be considered within this context of multiple transformations in Turkey.

The JDP, Social Conservatism and Women’s Rights Although the fieldwork for this project was conducted in 2005 and presents a snapshot of Turkish society in the mid-2000s, it is important to discuss here some of the new developments that have taken place in the realm of women’s rights since 2005. The recent gains in women’s rights are being undermined by the JDP’s conservative policies. However, rather than this being due to their Islamism, the JDP’s emphasis on the family is indicative of their socially conservative and neoliberal approach, reminiscent of American Evangelicals (S¸anlı and Birdal 2012). The JDP uses religion and social conservatism to recreate the bonds between state

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and society in a neoliberal fashion. In line with their American counterparts, the JDP’s socially conservative cadres believe “in the institution of the family, individual generosity, and voluntary acts of charity,” and not in the social state, as the answers to social problems such as poverty, unemployment, substance abuse, domestic violence, and so on. (Insel ¨ and Bahc¸e 2009). Prime Minister Erdoˇgan often re2003, 302; Kose peats the maxim: “Don’t ask the state for a job.” One important aspect of the neoliberal transition was the blurred boundaries between the informal and formal sectors (Buˇgra 2012). The welfare regime to which the Turkish state subscribed has historically been a “conservative-corporatist type” exemplified by Germany. Accordingly, social rights are primarily determined by the male head of household’s status at work, assuming he is in the formal job sector. The neoliberal shift of the 1980s not only diminished the number of jobs available in the formal sector (globally, due to automation and job exportation, and additionally in Turkey, the diminished number of jobs in the public sector) but also made jobs in the informal sector more abundant (mainly due to the increase in subcontracting, which allows for flexibility and is typically union-proof).41 Thus, as the corporatist type of employment assumes the existence of a formal-sector worker, in the neoliberal atmosphere it is increasingly less likely to equip dependents and women with social security rights. Another important aim of neoliberalism is “individual ‘responsibilization’ for health, welfare and education” (Peters, as cited by Chopra 2003, 422–3). The JDP’s healthcare overhaul includes the introduction of the misleadingly titled “Universal Health Insurance” program,42 which incentivizes the disenfranchised workers to transfer from the informal to the formal employment sector (which offers health insurance), and thus places the “responsibility” of obtaining health insurance on the shoulders of individuals and families (Keyder 2007). However, given the structural limitations on finding a job in the formal sector, health insurance coverage may also become scarce in the future. Populism absolves the state from the previous deal of acting like the Papa State, but it also does this in a way acceptable to the disenfranchised masses. In the JDP era, the consensus between the state and society in Turkey is no longer being upheld by a “paternal state,” which is the provider of jobs and social services, but rather a state that derives legitimacy from its populism and affinity to the masses, the creation of

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a socially conservative state being a part of this attempt. Religion thus becomes an instrument in accomplishing the following tasks: religiosity (or at least a public embrace of Islam) creates new capital formations loyal to the neoliberal state (such as the businessmen represented by ¨ IAD ˙ MUS and TUSKON), and helps construct populist legitimacy in the eyes of the masses by trying to appear culturally close to them, for example, by emphasizing Prime Minister Erdoˇgan’s modest social class roots. A conservative discourse and set of policies concerning women are also on the rise in the 2010s. For example, in 2010, Prime Minister Erdoˇgan declared his belief that “men and women are not equal but complementary” (Belge 2010). As Dicle Koˇgacıoˇglu notes, the JDP, both in rhetoric and policy, seems to seek “solutions to women’s problems in general and honor crimes in particular by asserting the centrality of the family” (2004, 132). However, since the family is often the perpetrator of “honor killings,” the emphasis on the family is likely to prove dangerous for women. The family is also where poverty-reduction and care of the disabled, sick, elderly, and children is to take place. Ays¸e Buˇgra argues that the current 17 per cent non-farming labor participation for women is compatible with the expectation that women will stay at home and take care of their elderly, ailing or young family members (Buˇgra 2012). The JDP’s culturally conservative family policies are also compatible with their economic neoliberalism (Ecevit 2012). For example, Prime Minister Erdoˇgan has repeated time and time again that he expects families to have at least three children. He justifies this with the need to increase Turkey’s population over its current 76 million.43 It can be argued that this fits the neoliberal agenda of creating a robust cheap labor force for the future. Similarly, Erdoˇgan and his party’s rhetoric on abortion revealed their ultra-conservative thoughts about abortion and rape. For example, the minister of health declared in 2012 that “women who have been raped should give birth and the child will be taken care of ¨ ¸ ek by the state if necessary.”44 The high-profile Ankara mayor Melih Gokc also famously stated that “a moral woman would never need to have an abortion” (Yılmaz 2013). According to feminist organizations, while Erdoˇgan’s anti-abortion discourse was not accompanied by laws limiting abortions, his rhetoric has caused some public hospitals to discontinue

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abortion services completely, or limit abortions for pregnancies beyond eight weeks.45 While statements like these discursively justify sexual violence against women and aim to make abortion less accessible, another new policy actively jeopardizes women’s lives, given the power of the honor code in Turkey. Recently, reports began emerging in the mass media of young women who claimed that their families had been notified of their extramarital pregnancies, a taboo for most Turkish families. This policy was reportedly put in place with the manifest intent of providing quality prenatal care to mothers, and is usually undertaken via a phone call to the pregnant woman’s phone number on file with her family practitioner.46 The lack of sensitivity around the issue (not to mention the violation of doctor-patient confidentiality) jeopardizes young women’s lives. In an unexpected turn of events, in May 2013 the JDP government’s assaults on individual liberties47 and women’s rights – accompanied by an aggressive agenda for urban transformation,48 an arrogant discourse taking its power from an the overreach of the executive branch, the republican elite’s anxieties over looming Islamic fundamentalism, and negative feelings about media partisanship and propaganda-led to perhaps the most pervasive civil grassroots protest movement in modern Turkish history. The #occupygezi movement began as a small occupation of the central Gezi Park to rescue it from unlawful demolition with the goal of building a shopping mall in its place. The hashtag denotes the effective use of social media in organizing and mobilizing the people. The protests quickly took an anti-government tone, and connected unexpected segments of the population in an anti-government movement: environmentalists, feminists, republican men and women, some veiled women, anti-capitalist Islamists, Kurds, LGBT groups, ultra-nationalists and old ultra-left fractions all became unlikely allies united to rescue one more hallmark of the city from being lost to the forces of aggressive urban transformation and neoliberalization. While the Gezi movement (in its eclectic, leaderless, humorous, social media-powered mode) has made many people hopeful about social and political change, it remains to be seen if its gains will lead to further democratization in Turkey.

2 The Public Sphere, Mass Media, and Talk Shows

In this chapter, I will begin with a theoretical discussion of the public sphere, debate the role of talk shows in “public sphering,” and lay out the characteristics of mass media and the public sphere in Turkey. The “Woman’s Voice” programs have brought the needs of women to the fore as never before. However, the republican elite’s attempts at distancing and distinction from such “vulgar” representations of everyday life render the subversive discourse created on WV ineffective and politically irrelevant. A feminist-critical approach to Habermas’s concepts of the public sphere and power, coupled with Bourdieu’s insights into symbolic power, informs the link between political citizenship and cultural consumption this project attempts to establish. While I uphold Habermas’s emphasis on “achieved consensus” as the basis of a legitimate democratic order, I point to some shortcomings in Habermas’s theory that account for his limited understanding of what is “political”: first, I argue that Habermas does not see the inequalities embedded in speech acts. Such inequalities stem from status differences of the speakers, as well as the style in which they speak and from where they draw the authority to speak. Insights provided by feminist critics of deliberative democratic theory are utilized to complement Habermas’s inadequate take. I also argue that Habermas’s strict distinction of the ideal bourgeois public sphere from the private sphere accounts for his omission of gender from his analysis. Further, cultural consumption is generally assigned to women,

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as political citizenship is considered a “male” activity. I draw on the growing literature on cultural citizenship to argue that the consumption of forms of so-called “lowbrow culture” has political repercussions as well.

Habermas and his Shortcomings ¨ In The Theory of Communicative Action Jurgen Habermas suggests that, to remedy the pathologies of modernity, the lifeworld has to regain its communicative primacy. The “elitist splitting-off of expert cultures from contexts of communicative action in daily life” should be overturned, he argues (Habermas 1987, 330). An effectively functioning public sphere is a sine qua non of a healthy democratic society. This is in line with Habermas’s earlier work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, where he developed a theory of an ideal bourgeois public sphere. According to Habermas’s account, in the early capitalist era, the free press shouldered the task of providing individuals with unrestricted, uncensored information, which they then freely discussed, and in doing so aspired to serve the “public good.” Given the great importance Habermas assigns to conversation, in his view, rational-critical debate lies at the foundations of the path to truer democracy. A portion of the public sphere comes into being in every conversation in which private individuals assemble to form a public body. They then behave neither like business or professional people transacting private affairs, nor like members of a constitutional order subject to the legal constraints of a state bureaucracy. Citizens behave as a public body when they confer in an unrestricted fashion – that is, with the guarantee of freedom of assembly and association and the freedom to express and publish their opinions – about matters of general interest. (Habermas 1974, 49)

According to Habermas, when citizens deliberate in the public sphere, it is an exchange between equals, which occurs rationally, based on reasonable validity claims.1 Thus, everyday communication is conceived of as an exchange between equals, which occurs rationally. My first objection to Habermas’s conceptualizations stems from his neglect of inequalities embedded in speech acts. It is well known that sometimes “who the speaker is” is more important than “what the speaker says.”

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Michel Foucault’s (1984) “What is an Author?” and Pierre Bourdieu’s (1990b) “Lecture on the Lecture” offer great insights into speaking, as well as writing, with authority, and the discourse-building functions of the activities of speaking and writing. Some individuals are endowed with (a perception of) legitimate authority to speak, not only on their own behalf, but also on others’. For example, in WV programs, when men talk, they talk with the authority derived from the legitimacy that the collectivity – the family, clan, tribe, neighborhood – grants to them. Thus, they use the personal pronoun “we” to refer to the collectivity’s tacit decisions. “We accept her, although she has run away,” a man can assert, and with “we accept,” he refers to a decision that (the men of) the extended family have reached through a common understanding of the situation. Women, on the other hand, draw legitimacy from their emotions, individual decisions and personal circumstances. A woman has no claim to authority, and therefore uses the personal pronoun “I” to refer to her point of view: “I ran away because my husband was physically abusing me.” In turn, her point of view is easily challenged by another “we”: the studio audience. As Pierre Bourdieu (1987) points out, one’s “sense of place” always determines one’s perception of what can and cannot be said in a certain situation. Thus, speech is not as neutral as Habermas sees it. Furthermore, as feminist critics such as Brooke Ackerly argue, a “tyranny of the method” is exercised “by expecting all to deliberate according to the substantive and procedural norms” that are known to some but foreign to others (2000, 35). The “tyranny of the meeting” refers to the inequalities between those who can balance their political participation with their everyday obligations and those who simply do not have the time, resources or education to participate. Moreover, the procedures of argumentation2 often silence certain groups and individuals in the public sphere. Iris Marion Young writes that “the norms of deliberation privilege speech that is formal and general . . . These norms of ‘articulateness,’ however, must be learned; they are culturally specific, and in actual speaking situations in our society exhibiting such speaking styles is a sign of social privilege” (1996, 124). Young argues that the procedures of argumentation upheld in political debate are not universal. They embody norms of reasoning characteristic of those who are white, Western, educated and male. Young proposes that communication forms such as

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greeting, rhetoric and storytelling should be included as acceptable ingredients of deliberative democracy in order for deliberative speech to be more inclusive of others, such as women and racial minorities whose cultural speech patterns tend to be “more excited and embodied, more valuing the expression of emotion, the use of figurative language, modulation in tone of voice, and wide gesture” (ibid.). The examples Young provides are similar to the speech patterns used on WV programs. I argue that this is one reason why the discourse produced on WV is largely ignored by the elite. In her critique of Habermas’s theory of the public sphere, Nancy Fraser (1992) argues that accommodating every citizen in one and the same public sphere might work to privilege the already powerful groups while further weakening the underprivileged strata of the society. She emphasizes that the bourgeois public sphere Habermas idealizes is actually not open and accessible to all. There have historically always been exclusions from the bourgeois public sphere based on gender or property qualifications. Fraser points to the necessity of a plurality of competing publics on the basis that the subordinated publics such as women might not be familiar with the dominant discourse, and therefore might not be able to make their voices heard. Thus, in the absence of a multiplicity of public spheres, members of subordinated groups “would be less likely than otherwise to find the right voice or words to express their thoughts and more likely than otherwise to keep their wants inchoate” (ibid., 123). We must, then, enter into a “dialectical alliance” with Habermas’s theory, as Seyla Benhabib (1992) proposes. While acknowledging the importance of his theory for imagining a public sphere in which issues that concern many will be discussed, we must also bear in mind that the ideal bourgeois public sphere he envisages is far from inclusive. I propose that the inadequacy of Habermas’s conception of power and public sphere also has to do with his restricted notion of the “political.” Theories of deliberative democracy have a bias towards the “general” against the “personal,” as well as towards rational, disembodied and objective language against emotive, figurative, particular speech. This is further reflected in the literature concerning the media and the public sphere. Studies of the media and public sphere inspired by Habermas also primarily discuss the public sphere as the venue of rational-critical

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discussion of issues of “general interest” (Barnett 1997; Kellner 1990). And what they mean by “general” is strictly “political” issues of elections, taxes, international affairs and the like. However, what is generally considered as “politically relevant” needs to be re-evaluated. Joke Hermes argues that “the divide between ‘public knowledge’ and ‘popular culture’ would seem to echo other divisions such as between ‘serious business’ and ‘pleasure,’ between ‘production’ and ‘consumption,’ and thus between what in a highly conservative vocabulary would be seen as man’s business and women’s pastimes” (1997, 66). For example, Tania Modleski (1982) and Charlotte Brunsdon (2000) discuss how femalegendered cultural activities such as soap opera viewing and romance reading were still taboo objects of academic study by the end of the 1970s. Even the groundbreaking Media Group of the (Birmingham) Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was initially uninterested in “female genres”: They impose a clear hierarchy of programmes worthy of serious critical attention, and have little to say about other, more trivial forms of television. There is, of course, a gender dimension to this emphasis. Public affairs are seen as serious and political, while forms such as soap opera or quiz shows, which are widely consumed by women viewers, are seen as trivial and irrelevant to the business of political analysis. (Shiach, quoted by Brunsdon 2000, 2)

In her work on five vanguard female scholars in the field of soap opera, Brunsdon (2000) uncovers how some of these scholars initially tried to distance themselves from the consumers of the genre, and denied viewing soap operas altogether before they became academically engaged in it. Modleski argues that “women’s criticism of popular feminine narratives has generally adopted one of three attributes: dismissiveness; hostility tending unfortunately to be aimed at the consumers of the narratives; or, most frequently, a flippant kind of mockery” (1982, 14). Sujata Moorti also observes that “scholars have tended to dismiss the talk show genre as sensational, lurid and shallow” due to its “feminine” content (1998, 84). As argued in the Introduction, the gulf between the study of femalecoded popular culture and issues of political importance is bridged by the concept of cultural citizenship. First, the cultural citizenship paradigm

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developed by scholars such as Joke Hermes, Toby Miller and Nick Stevenson is concerned with who is represented in mainstream mass media and in what light they are represented. Potentially, the increased public visibility and heightened discourse afforded to women’s issues could be expected both to strengthen the women’s movement by raising awareness of violence against women and to urge social reform. Thus, these cultural artifacts (WV programs) are intrinsically connected to political processes. The programs undeniably show the dire need for women’s shelters and other services, and encourage a more diligent implementation of women’s rights. The second component of cultural citizenship asks: What kind of hopes, utopias and desires does popular culture impose on viewers? What kind of cultural characteristics or consumption patterns appear desirable in the mass media while other perspectives and lifestyles remain outside of mainstream discourse? In Turkey, while modernity and Westernization continue to be an aspiration, violations of STR women’s basic human rights are now more visible than ever before, thanks partly to WV programs’ ability to have women’s voices heard. The third component of the cultural citizenship paradigm posits the WV-style lowbrow, popular culture as a politically relevant field. Theories of media and the public sphere inspired by and deriving from Habermas’s work on the public sphere share a disdain for lowbrow, popular culture as a form of culture that distracts the audience from real political issues. Lowbrow forms of cultural consumption are relegated to the status of the banal, vulgar, low-taste and politically irrelevant. The cultural citizenship approach corrects this incomplete view of the “political.” Thus, I suggest that cultural citizenship is to be considered alongside T.H. Marshall’s (1950) three kinds of citizenship: civil, political and social. The concept of cultural citizenship helps us uncover the fact that, in the Turkish context, the women who appear as guests of WV are excluded from many of the rights afforded by civil, political and social citizenship. The concept “cultural citizenship” points to a more subtle form, that of being visible and having the power to raise one’s issues ¨ in the public sphere. It corrects some of the discrepancies in Jurgen Habermas’s theory of the public sphere, and it helps us understand the intricate relationship between politics and popular culture in our highly mediated contemporary societies.

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The Talk Show Format and Democracy The television talk show offers unique public sphering potentials as a format. I suggest that there are three levels on which talk shows operate. First, they produce a deliberative space on television itself, by creating speech acts between the host, the guests, the studio audience and the experts. On the second level is the relationship between the content of the speech on television and the home audience’s reception of such speech. On this level, the home audience considers their life events and compares them to the events described on the talk show. Finally, the home audience transfers this discourse to their daily life by discussing the issues, events and people they have heard about on the talk show with their immediate circle. Thus, the “public sphere” extends into the viewers’ “private spheres,” and vice versa. While being part of a commercial broadcasting system, daytime talk shows have a number of characteristics that render them potentially democratic and subversive. They constitute a rare venue in which television viewers hear ordinary people’s opinions, and provide visibility to those who have so far been invisible. Livingstone and Lunt argue that, with the upsurge in discussion programs, the mass media shouldered three additional tasks: They [the mass media] can act as spokesmen for the people to both government and experts, conveying opinions, experiences, information and criticism “upwards” to the elite. They can allow the public to hold politicians and experts to account directly, rather than by proxy . . . And they can provide a social space for communication among the lay public itself, both in the form of the studio audience and in the relation between studio and home audiences and thus give everyday experiences and opinions a new and powerful legitimation. (Livingstone and Lunt 1994, 5)

According to Carpignano et al. (1993), the crisis of representational politics consists in the separation of the audience from the production of knowledge and information. As a format potentially challenging this separation, they argue that talk shows call into question the very structure of the separation between production and consumption of cultural products; they problematize the distinction

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between expert and audience, professional authority and layperson. Ultimately, they constitute a “contested space” in which new discursive practices are developed in contrast to the traditional modes of political and ideological presentation. (ibid., 96)

Thus, the opposition between laity and experts is challenged and “ordinary people” take the stage to engage in speech acts. The expert “is treated much like any other speaker, she is interrupted, challenged and frequently silenced . . . The expert voice, deprived of its authority, contributes yet another point-of-view” (Nudelman, quoted in Gamson 1998, 100). Livingstone and Lunt point out that, in audience discussion programs, the “audience is placed directly in the television studio as joint author of the text” (1994, 36). Through ordinary speech, they posit, the exclusive discourse of expertise is challenged, and experts are stripped of the otherwise uncontested legitimacy of their authority. The nature of the format leads to possibilities for alternative discourses because the discourses on the talk shows “do not have to conform to the dictates of civility or the general interest. They can be expressed for what they are: particular, regional, one-sided, and for that reason politically alive. Few other shows today can make that claim” (Carpignano et al. 1993, 116). In talk shows, although experts and hosts attempt to create a discursive authority when they speak, the guests’ narrations dominate the scene. Rather than talking about problems in orphanages or honor killings in abstract terms, the WV programs provide the viewers with a real person who grew up in an orphanage or a potential honor killing victim.3 Awareness is raised on issues that are rarely discussed in the public sphere. For example, the appearance (albeit behind a tinted glass screen) of transgender Bahar – who wanted a male-to-female sex change operation – on Yasemin Bozkurt’s Woman’s Voice constituted a poignant moment of discourse on the problems faced by transgender individuals in Turkey. Oya, Bahar’s mother, told the television audience on 21 November 2005 that Bahar could only continue schooling until 8th grade. At that time, surrendering to her peers’ abuse and their parents’ complaints to the school authorities, the family had to withdraw Bahar from school. Bahar ultimately received her GED. At the time of her appearance on WV, she was 30 years old and lived with her mother. She told the

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audience how she was isolated in school and excluded from her family. Her biggest complaint was unemployment: Bahar: They don’t give me employment in any way. No way! Bozkurt: You know Bahar, this is unfortunate but people like you, I mean people whose bodies do not match their souls, especially when they are ostracized by their families, take to the streets. And unfortunately, on the streets, they’re introduced into prostitution to make money. At least you’re not in that position. You live with your mother. Bahar: Yes, I live with my mother. But I don’t judge the friends who take to the streets. They have to because nobody would give us a job! But I chose my family, I will not take to the streets! We [transvestites] are not all the same. I want all of Turkey to hear: There are those who choose their families, we’re not all the same. Through what Anthony Giddens (1990) calls “time-space distanciation,” communities are formed across distances. Members of disadvantaged groups learn that they are not alone. On WV, Bahar’s mother ¨ interestingly referred to a reality show from the 1990s, Uˇgur Dundar’s Arena, as the program that had educated them about transgendered persons and helped them come to terms with Bahar’s predicament: Oya: At first we thought it would pass. But then we saw a television ¨ program by Uˇgur Dundar on transvestites. When we saw that, we realized that our son was like that too. We took him to doctors. The first doctor said that Mehmet [Bahar’s male name given at birth] was a man. Then we took him to the C ¸ apa Hospital.4 There, we found a professor who specialized in these things. The doctor said that Mehmet was a man physiologically but a woman emotionally. But we suffer a lot in society.

Limits to Talk Shows’ Democratization Potentials However, the representation of those rarely seen on television, such as women from lower socio-economic backgrounds, as well as ethnic, racial, sexual and sexual orientation minorities does not always have a democratizing effect. Talk shows may perpetuate existing prejudices and stereotypes about the minorities they make visible, thus victimizing them

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further. On American talk shows, the emphasis shifted from issues to relationships between the 1970s and the 1990s. The most outrageous example of this transition is the spectacle hosted by Jerry Springer. Talk shows are funded by advertisers, and have to attract large numbers of viewers, which translates into revenues based on ratings. Structurally, producers look for confrontation, emotional outbursts, juicy confessions, and the kind of guests who will provide a combination of these elements. As Gamson (1998) observes, during the production process, events may be staged, segments can be edited, and guests and audience members may be coached. In WV programs, economic and time limitations have to some extent eliminated such issues. In my observations of the production processes, I have found that the guests are briefly interviewed backstage a few hours before the program is aired live, which renders it impossible for the producers to coach the guests. Also, the live airing of the programs makes it impossible for the producers to edit the segments. The guests’ narrations reach the home audience in exactly three seconds, which renders staging and coaching ineffective at best. The biggest problem with WV production techniques is the coverage of stories as individual plights, rather than problems common to many. Often, the social context of the individual stories is ignored and the debate becomes one of “who is right” and “who is wrong.” Hosts’ personalities as members of the republican elite and lack of background in women’s issues exacerbate the situation. Programs are in desperate competition with other shows for ratings, which obliges the producers to emphasize the sensational and scandalous aspects of the stories told. While the WV programs do something unprecedented by allowing the thus far invisible to become not just visible but also vocal, they also reproduce the structures within which the guests are trapped. In order to understand the public sphering potentials of WV adequately, one needs to understand the historical development of mass media in modern Turkey, as well as the specific formation of the WV programs in the 2000s.

Mass Media and the Public Sphere in Turkey The history of the Turkish public sphere varies from that of Western Europe. Since some of the premises in this project are based on Habermas’s (1989) history of the bourgeois public sphere that emerged in

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eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, it is necessary to discuss these differences here. Although modernization in Turkey began as early as the end of the eighteenth century with the military reforms of Selim III, the emergence of the bourgeois public sphere in a Habermasian sense did not occur until the second half of the nineteenth century. Until the 1860s, news, the content of which merely narrated the sultan’s activities, was carried orally by public criers, itinerant preachers and merchants from one locality to another (Lerner 1958). The first printing press was not introduced into the Ottoman Empire until 1728, three centuries after its invention in Europe. Moreover, when it did appear, its spread was impeded by the Muslim clergy (ibid.). A strong entrepreneurial middle class was also missing in the Ottoman Empire, which had constituted the civil society in the West (Heper 1985). A “religious division of labor” (the millet system) reigned, according to which non-Muslim minorities carried out international trade activities. Non-Muslims, however, could not convert this privilege into political power because of the Islamic ¨ nature of the state (Ozbudun 2000). This translated into the absence of a civil society that could potentially counter-balance the powers of the ¨ state (Heper 1985; Ozbudun 2000). In the middle of the nineteenth century, the group known as the “Young Turks” began the first full-scale attempts to modernize the Ottoman Empire. Educated in Europe and infatuated with the nationalist fervor they had witnessed there, the Young Turks began to pursue a modern, nationalist project. Incidentally, the Young Turks also constituted the first generation of journalists of the Ottoman Empire in the 1860s. According to Namık Kemal, a Young Turk and one of the leading progressive thinkers and journalists of the time, “progress depended on free institutions, and free institutions were maintained by an enlightened public opinion; one of the chief media in this process was the press” (Heper and Demirel 1996, 109). The 1860s saw the emergence of newspapers advocating Western anti-monarchist and humanistic values. In 1876, the Ottoman Sultan, weakened by long wars and the loss of vast territory, surrendered to the Young Turks’ pressure and accepted a constitution that would limit his powers. Thus, partly due to the power of the newly emerging mass media, the Ottoman Empire became the first Muslim state to announce a constitution with a partially elected leg¨ islature (Ozbudun 2000). However, the so-called “First Constitutional

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¨ Era” was short-lived, ending in 1878 when Abdulhamit II abolished the constitution. However, by 1911, thanks to the freedom this “Second Constitutionalist Era” offered, nine daily newspapers were circulating in Istanbul and 113 newspapers were being published in the provinces (Weiker 1981). When it finally disintegrated as a result of World War I, the Ottoman Empire left to the Turkish Republic, which was to rise from its ruins in 1923, a legacy of six centuries of absolutist rule and a population of highly subjectified collectivities. One of the main legacies of the Ot¨ toman Empire was a strong and centralized state authority (Ozbudun 1988). The millet system, the predominant social structure in the Ottoman Empire, was characterized by a strictly religious rather than ethnic segregation. Therefore, the individuals who had thus far primarily identified themselves as “Muslims” or “non-Muslims” had to be made aware of their nationality: Turkish. One of the major tasks of the modernizing founders of the Republic was to “citizenize” the subjects by creating a homogeneous national identity in order to mobilize them to fulfill their rights and obligations as citizens. Despite efforts at citizenization, the omnipotence attributed to the state prevailed to a great extent in modern Turkey (Turan 1988). The public sphere was often equated with the state and remained controlled by the state. In citizenization efforts, the founding fathers assigned great importance to language, literacy, culture and communication. A modernist notion of the media as a “mobility multiplier” reigned, as the “modern individual” was conceptualized as a person with broad horizons who was open to new experiences (Lerner 1958). In the 1950s, when this modernist language was commonplace, Daniel Lerner (1958) observed how a combination of urbanization, literacy and exposure to mass media augmented political participation in Turkey and accelerated the process of modernization. Another key step was the “alphabet revolution” – that is, the Latin script’s replacement of the Arabic script, which occurred in 1928, with the aim of increasing literacy and mobilizing the citizenry around nationalism rather than Islam, by separating them from the Ottoman past and the Qur’an, which was written in Arabic. As Benedict Andersen has noted, “to heighten Turkish national consciousness at the ¨ imposed compulsory expense of wider Islamic identification, Ataturk romanisation” (1999, 45).

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The radio also played a great role in nation building. In the 1930s, radio broadcasts under the state monopoly were dominated by programs that emphasized education, the teaching of foreign languages in line with Westernization policies, and citizenship lessons geared towards disseminating the official values of the young republic (Cankaya 2003). The public broadcasting monopoly, TRT, “considered its objective to be the creation of a modernized and western-oriented outlook, and it sought to achieve this through the broadcasting of an uplifting repertoire of informational, educational and cultural materials” (Aksoy and Robins 1997, 1942). One of the tasks of the mass media was to Westernize the Turkish ¨ public by establishing Western tastes and habits. Meral Ozbek (1997) writes that “the official cultural politics of the Turkish republic, especially in its early years, gave priority to Western classical music and – in its visions of populism – Turkish folk music, and it promoted a ‘Westernized’ and ‘modernized’ version of Turkish folk music as well” (ibid., 225). These cultural policies were so extreme that for 15 months in 1934–5 all forms of Turkish music were banned from private radio (ibid.). Private radio broadcasts were officially banned in 1936. “When the state took control of private radio stations, it began broadcasting the products of cultural projects developed by bureaucrats and scholars in their efforts to build and impose a preferred national culture” (ibid., 226). To promote Western classical music, the Presidential Symphony Orchestra was established as early as 1924, one year after the declaration of the Republic. The State Opera was founded in 1949 to promote Western opera. Young Turkish musicians were sent abroad for education, and prominent European musicians were invited to Turkey. TRT’s public broadcasting monopoly went unchallenged until 1990. TRT became officially instituted as a “monopoly” by the 1961 Constitution. Article 121 of the 1961 Constitution set up the TRT as a public body “enjoying autonomy,” as well as carrying out obligations of observing impartiality and promoting culture and education (S¸ahin 1974, 116). The principle of autonomy was borrowed from the BBC model; however, TRT’s autonomy could be restricted in cases of “requirements of national security, public order, foreign relations, and educational developments” (ibid., 136). When the principle of “autonomy” was replaced by the principle of “impartiality” after the military coup of 1971, “what was at

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issue . . . was the denial of independence in a broadcasting system that was fundamentally under the influence of the prevailing government and the state. TRT has operated according to an authoritarian state broadcasting model rather than a public service model” (Aksoy and Robins 1997, 1941). The expression of opinions that diverged from the state line, as well as the portrayal of a habitus that did not fit the ideal of the Western-oriented outlook were carefully edited out of television under TRT’s monopoly. The first television broadcasts began in Turkey in 1968. Haluk S¸ahin ¨ (1974) argues that when the basic principles of Ataturk’s reforms and the constitution were at stake, impartiality was not applied in practice. TRT’s autonomy over time also depended on the ruling party’s commitment to democracy and its willingness to allow oppositional voices to be heard. On TRT, professional newscasters reported the “official” news with great formality, in suits and ties, and in a polite, polished, Western manner. Talk show hosts spoke with perfect diction and presented the programs with a polite smile glued to their faces, asked prewritten questions, and received anticipated answers with no surprises, no scandals, no emotional outbursts, with the inappropriate material carefully ¨ u, ¨ TRT was the main institution where edited out. According to Ays¸e Onc “the official canons of correct and proper speech forms” were defined and through which the national state directly took part in the definition and monitoring of “correct and beautiful Turkish (duzg ¨ un, ¨ guzel ¨ Turkc ¨ ¸ e)” (2000, 301). What the “Woman’s Voice” programs offered in the 2000s was visually and discursively a radical shift from this former norm. I will argue that this radical shift partially accounts for the distance that EUD viewers placed between themselves and the programs. As argued above, the programs became yet another instrument of “boundary work.”

Economic Liberalization and the Transformation of the Media in the 1990s The WV programs need to be situated within the context of the media liberalization of the 1990s. Neither the phenomenon of media liberalization nor the domination of “first-person media” (for example, daytime talk shows) are peculiar to Turkey, however (Dovey 2000). Media deregulation and liberalization have been observed globally since the late

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1970s everywhere from the US to the UK, from the Middle East (Sakr 2002) to India (Mankekar 1999). In the 1990s, Oprah-style daytime talk shows began making formerly invisible people visible and formerly absent voices audible in the public sphere in places as diverse as the US (Gamson 1998), Bolivia (Himpele 2002), Saudi Arabia (Sakr 2004), and Palestine (Somiry-Batrawi 2004). WV fits within this general framework of renegotiations of cultural citizenship occurring all over the world. The field of power went through a major transformation in Turkey in the 1980s due to economic liberalization and globalization. The 1960s and 1970s had been characterized by the “import-substitution industrialization” (ISI) model in Turkey, when the state favored and supported ¨ large-scale industrialists (Buˇgra 1995; Gulalp 2001). In the 1980s, Turkish economic policy shifted from import-substituting endeavors to an open door policy, with the aim of integrating the country into the global economy. Economic liberalization led to the end of TRT’s monopoly in radio and television broadcasting. In 1990, the first privately owned channel, Star 1, started broadcasting from Germany via satellite to Turkey. The channel ¨ was partly owned by the son of Turgut Ozal, who was the country’s ¨ President at the time. Ozal had revealed his support for private television channels by stating that “even though it might be unconstitutional to set up private television stations on Turkish soil, there was nothing illegal in broadcasting into Turkey from abroad” (Aksoy and Robins 1997, 1946). ¨ However, despite Ozal’s personal support, private broadcasting was banned for three months in 1993. The ban was met with a public outcry, since private broadcasts had been embraced as a break from TRT’s uniform state-line broadcasts. Protests were organized around the slogan “I want my radio,” and involved activities such as the tying of black ribbons to car antennas. In July 1993, the clause of the constitution assigning the state a monopoly in broadcasting was abolished (Bay 2007). “The Law on the Establishment and Broadcasting of Radio and Television Stations” was ¨ the Radio Television ratified in 1994. The law also established RTUK, Supreme Board, to monitor observance of “the fundamental values of the ¨ is made up of nine memTurkish Republic” (Poulton 1998, 62). RTUK bers, who are elected by the members of the Turkish National Grand ¨ members are individuals closely linked Assembly. Therefore, RTUK with the majority party in the parliament, establishing a dependence on

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¨ has been given the augovernment reminiscent of TRT. By law, RTUK thority to impose a suspension of up to 30 days in the broadcast of a television or radio station due to the contents of its broadcasts. Moreover, although freedom of the press is upheld as a principle, the law specifies that broadcasts must comply with “national security and general societal principles of morality” (Bay 1997, 219). Between 1994 and ¨ issued 175 closures and 463 warnings to national October 1997, RTUK ¨ and local radio and television stations (Poulton 1998, 62). Today, RTUK is dominated by members affiliated with the ruling “conservative” JDP. The JDP has recently targeted the representation of cross-dressing and homosexuality on television as “inappropriate” based on Clause 4(e) of Law 4756/2 regulating television broadcasting. The clause states that “broadcasts cannot violate the national and moral values of the Turkish family” (Bay 2007, 220). The ambiguity of this clause renders almost any intervention on its grounds justified and legitimate. ¨ and continued government conDespite the establishment of RTUK trol over broadcasting, the impact of media liberalization on the public sphere has been extremely powerful. From 1990 until 1998, 16 national, 15 regional, and 230 local television channels were launched. In the same period, 36 national, 108 regional and hundreds of local radio stations began broadcasting (S¸ahin 1999, 13). The privately owned television and radio networks became places where identities that had been invisible during the TRT era became visible, and topics that had been taboo on TRT were raised and enthusiastically discussed: And what was incredible was how many voices there were, and how they wanted to talk about all manner of things and issues that had been repressed by the official culture. Official “untouchables” – Kurdish leaders, Alevis, religious leaders, veiled women, radical feminists, transvestites, homosexuals, even former secret service agents – paraded through current affairs and talk shows. Films that were banned or heavily censored in previous years were broadcast uncut. Taboo subjects were tackled in uncensored debates and discussion programmes. What had been repressed for a long time came rushing back to the surface of the culture. The new media were instrumental in bringing to consciousness the defining tensions of Turkish society, questions of ethnic origin, religion, language, and group aspirations. (Aksoy and Robins 1997, 1949)

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¨ Despite legal hindrances and political limitations imposed by RTUK, the revitalization of the public sphere that occurred during the four ¨ years prior to RTUK’s consolidation changed the Turkish public sphere forever. Aksoy and Robins write of the early 1990s that “the cultural transformations that have been brought about by the new media cannot be undone” (ibid., 1951). During this period, taboos were shattered. Current affair programs and talk shows thrived; in particular, programs like ATV’s Arena of Politics (“Siyaset Meydanı”) and Kanal D’s Arena5 were successful in generating an environment for the rational-critical debate of taboo issues (ibid. 1997).6 Despite its serious, heavily technical, complex content and extremely long duration (approaching seven hours at times) Arena of Politics attracted a large and diverse audience for many years.7 Media liberalization caused a “problem of enculturation” in Turkey in the post-1980 period. Fuat Keyman (1995) argues that the 1980s are characterized by the inability of Turkish nationalism to reproduce itself in the face of changing economic dynamics, as well as a changing discourse on identity and difference. Arjun Appadurai (1996) argues that problems of enculturation are often by-products of globalization. In stark contrast with the pre-1980 era, there was a fragmentation and multiplication of discourses at the ethnic, social class, religious and gender/sexual levels. These transitions are discussed in detail below. 1. Transitions in the sphere of ethnicity: On the ethnic level, one can argue that the 1980s have been simultaneously more repressive and more liberating than the previous decades. On the one hand, ethnic minorities became more visible in Turkish mainstream media. Their issues became increasingly recognized and discussed. On the other hand, a law in 1983 prohibited the “utilization of any language in the dissemination, printing, and expression of ideas” other than the official language, Turkish (Law 2932, Article 2) (Yavuz 2003). As the same law established Turkish as the “mother tongue” of all Turkish citizens (Article 3), publications and broadcasts in Kurdish, and even the use of Kurdish in the private sphere, were de facto banned. In his efforts to appease the European Community in the hope of acceptance into membership, ¨ President Turgut Ozal repealed Law 2932 in 1991. The use of Kurdish in Turkish mass media took a radical turn in 2009 with

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the establishment of TRT-S¸es¸, the first 24-hour Kurdish language channel in Turkey. The move was in line with the ruling JDP’s “democratic opening” or “Kurdish opening” policies, which aim to grant Kurds cultural rights. 2. Transitions in the sphere of social class: From the 1980s onwards, the Turkish class system could no longer be reproduced along the lines ¨ of republican capital. Haldun Gulalp (2001) argues that the Islamist National Order Party (Milli Nizam Partisi) was established in 1970 as a reaction against the dominance of urban large-scale industrialists over the small- and middle-scale industrialists located on the periphery. As globalized modes of production became predominant on the world stage in the 1980s, the peripheral small-scale entrepreneurs, who did not share the republican habitus of the urban elites, began increasing their capital: A dominant pattern of globalization uses trade-led networks whereby labor-intensive manufacturing takes place in decentralized and smallscale enterprises which are located in the Third World and are linked to large, brand-name retailers based in advanced capitalist countries . . . The global proliferation of these sweatshops undermines trade-union organizations and encourages the rise of “ideologies of entrepreneurialism, paternalism, and privatism.” Political Islam in Turkey has found a particularly fertile ground in this decline of traditional working-class politics and the rise of petty entrepreneurship (ibid., 437).

3. Transitions in the sphere of religion: The emergence and proliferation of Islamist identities and an Islamic discourse in the Turkish public sphere in the post-1980 period is related to a shift in Turkish economic policies. While “Islamists” gained more wealth and political power, they also became more visible in the mass media thanks to the “communication revolution” (which was a by-product of this neoliberal transition). The creation of “Islamist” broadcast media began as early as 1993, just three years after media liberalization. TGRT, the ¨ first 24-hour Islamist cable channel, was owned by Enver Oren, who combined activities in construction, media, health, tourism, mining, education and manufacturing under the umbrella of “Ihlas Holding.”8 ¨ Oren had started his empire with the publication of the daily Turkiye, ¨ ¨ u¨ 2004). Also, Turkey’s first “Islamist” newspaper, in 1970 (Onc

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Zaman newspaper and Samanyolu TV were established by the Islamist Nurcu sect, and have been active since the early 1990s. 4. Transitions in the sphere of gender and sexuality: The 1980s also saw the emergence of a new discourse on women’s rights. In the 1980s, the “independent feminists” began to question the rhetoric that asserted that the republican revolution had liberated women, and was thus owed the devotion of every Turkish woman. Similarly, issues of sexual identity and sexual orientation minorities became increasingly apparent in the new media as well. While representations of these newly visible identities were often highly stereotypical, their mere existence in the mass media opened up a rich discourse about who they were, where they came from, and the problems they faced. The case of Bahar, summarized above, constitutes one such example on WV. Deniz Kandiyoti wrote in 2002: Few social groups can boast the visibility and media attention that male-to-female transsexuals have received in Turkey in recent years. At one point, hardly a month went by without some feature in a popular magazine or a television interview. (Kandiyoti 2002, 277)

Conglomeration and Monopolization While media liberalization led to some degree of democratization, media conglomeration has also been a characteristic of the Turkish media since their inception. Most of the commercial television channels are owned by holding companies that dominate the national economy and aim to survive competition by subsidizing short-term losses in their television operations with revenues from other activities and investments (Aksoy and Robins 1997). They wanted to be active in the media industry for its public and political influence, and they were also horizontally integrated. In 2005, the media world in Turkey was dominated by Doˇgan Holding, Doˇgus¸ Holding, the C ¸ ukurova Group and the C ¸ alık Group. Doˇgan Holding is also active in media distribution, as a news agency, and in energy, finance, manufacturing, trade and tourism (www.doganholding.com.tr). Doˇgus¸ Holding is simultaneously involved in sectors such as media, banking, finance, construction, automotive manufacturing, tourism, real estate, energy and services (www.dogusgrubu.com.tr). The C ¸ ukurova Group is active in industry,

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construction, communication and information technologies, transportation and services, finance, and energy (www.cukurovaholding.com.tr). The C ¸ alık Group is active in textiles, energy, construction, finance, telecommunications, and mining (www.calik.com/en). As is the case across the globe, the Turkish media conglomerates tend to monopolize the market. Since 2005, after Doˇgan Holding’s takeover of Star TV,9 one of the top four TV stations, the Doˇgan Group was estimated to control 45 per cent of all advertising revenue in Turkish television broadcasting (Cumhuriyet, 27 September 2005). Before 2003, Doˇgan’s distribution company Yaysat was distributing 95 per cent of all ¨ publications (Sonmez 2003). In 2009, Yaysat was distributing 63 per cent of all newspapers and 71 per cent of all magazines in Turkey. For a comprehensive list of ownership in the Turkish media in 2005, please see Table 1 below.

The Evolution of “Woman’s Voice” as a Format The WV format should be placed in this context of democratization and the emergence of new discourses as well as fierce competition for ratings, quick profits and low production costs. In our interview, Yasemin Bozkurt narrated her process of “inventing” the “Woman’s Voice” format as follows: I used to do Yasemin’in Penceresi [“Yasemin’s Window”], a show with great ratings. There I told the stories of Turkish celebrities, where they came from, what circumstances they’ve been through, what challenges they experienced and the like.10 I had an e-mail address to which people would send their thoughts about the show. I used to read all of them and some said “why don’t you do our lives too?” “There is so much stuff in our lives that you can cover.” They give examples, “my husband left me with my three kids,” another one says “my wife left me,” another one says “I’m looking for my father.” I used to respond “if I do a show like that, would you come and tell your stories?” Because you know, Turkey is a closed box, people never talk about their familial relationships. I was startled. I thought, how are they going to say things like “my husband cheated on me” “my wife left me” on television? Like that, I corresponded with people for 2–3 years. They all said “you do the show, we’ll come.” That’s how it started, with viewers’ demand.”

Table 1. The Four Media Giants of Turkey and their Media Activities, 2005 Doˇgan Holding Television

Radio

Print

Other Media

Kanal D Star TV

Radyo D ¨ Slow Turk

¨ Hurriyet Milliyet

¨ (with Time CNN Turk Warner)

¨ CNN Turk Radyo Radyo Moda

Radikal Posta

D Productions Yaysat (distribution) D&R (retail)

TNT (with Time Warner)

Referans Vatan

Dogan Online Dogan Book Dogan News Agency

¨ Hurriyet Daily News Fanatik 25 periodicals

Cartoon Network (with Time Warner) Fix TV (interactive) Kanal D Romania Source: www.doganholding.com.tr

Doˇgus¸ Holding Television Radio

Magazine

Other Media

NTV CNBC-e e2 NBA TV Kral TV NTV Spor

Billboard CNBC-e Business Motor Boat &Yachting Vogue Robb Report National Geographic National Geographic Kids

NTV Publishing NTVSPOR.NET ntvmsnbc.com NTV Tarih NTV Bilim oley.com

NTV Radyo Radyo Eksen Radio N101 Kral FM Virgin Radio Radio Voyage NTV Spor Radyo

Source: www.dogusgrubu.com.tr

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Table 1 (continued) C ¸ ukurova Holding Television

Radio

Print

Other Media

Show Show Max Lig TV ¨ Show Turk Sky Turk Show Plus

Lig Radyo Alem FM Eksen

Aksam ¨ Gunes ¨ Tercuman Alem Autocar Stuff

Alem MEPAS (Media Marketing) Totalfilm Superonline Digiturk Zedpas¸ (Media Marketing)

Source: www.cukurovaholding.com.tr

C ¸ alık Holding (Turkuvaz Media Group) Television

Print

Other Media

ATV

Sabah Yeni Asir, S¸amdan Takvim, Sabah Avrupa, Fotomac¸ Para Global Enerji 6 other magazines

Turkuvaz Distribution Turkuvaz News Agency Turkuvaz Production

Source: www.calık.com

The initial version of the “Woman’s Voice” format took off on TGRT in October 2002, and was hosted by Yasemin Bozkurt under the title Kadının Sesi, “Woman’s Voice.” Upon the show’s success at TGRT, Bozkurt accepted an offer from Kanal D (one of the four top channels) ¨ in February 2004, and took the show to this new venue. Serap Ezgu, a veteran newscaster, assumed Bozkurt’s position at TGRT. In March 2005, Serap Ezgu¨ transferred to Show TV (another of the top four channels) from TGRT, and Inci Ertuˇgrul, the weekend news anchor, began hosting the show on TGRT. Ertuˇgrul told me that she took over Your Voice literally overnight:

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¨ went to another channel, I received an offer. When the host [Serap Ezgu] I was a newscaster. It was a very sudden transition actually. I was going to read the news on Sunday, but then we had the negotiation. It was discussed on Sunday. On Monday, I was on the air [with “Your Voice”]. I went into it head-on.

I would like to note that the rapid transfer rates between networks, as well as abrupt cancellations, are characteristics of Turkish television. It seems that there are few binding contracts, and even if there are, they are easily broken. One repercussion of the quick turnover of hosts is that people with little or no preparation or background in social and women’s issues are recruited. As a result, the programs fail to situate the issues in a broader social context, and fail to call for structural rather than individual solutions to these social problems. I will return to this issue in Chapter 5. There were three “Woman’s Voice” programs on national television at the time I was conducting my research. After the cancellation of her show on Kanal D in May 2005, Bozkurt took her program to Flash TV, which represented the purging of the show from one the top four networks to a smaller network with a lower budget and reputation. At the time of my research, two of the WV programs were aired in the afternoon slot (beginning at 1:30 or 3 p.m.) and lasted approximately three hours with commercial breaks.11 The programs were aired live on every week day. Similar versions of the program appeared briefly on other channels as well, but were short-lived for various reasons. Talk show vet¨ un ¨ briefly hosted a similar program on Star TV between eran Ays¸e Ozg 10 October and 14 November 2005, although it was quickly cancelled due to a murder that had occurred in connection with the program.12 Ac¨ tress S¸enay Gurler hosted a show titled Sen Olsaydın (“If It Were You”) between 22 September and 17 December 2004 on Show TV. Yalnız Deˇgilsin (“You Are Not Alone”), hosted by Ays¸enur Yazıcı, aired between 31 January and 3 March 2005 on ATV. Derya Tuna’s Dertler Derya (“Sea of Troubles”), on Star, lasted from 2 February until 29 March 2005. Thanks to the low production costs of the WV programs and the high ratings they receive, WV programs are immensely profitable for the

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television channels. It was found that daytime television targeting women brought total advertising revenue of over $700 million to the eight major national channels between 1 September 2004 and 31 May 2005.13 This study further reports that most advertisements were for consumer products specifically targeting women. It is documented that women have been increasingly responsible for daily expenditure for the home since the 1980s in Turkey, while shopping for the house was formerly ¨ the husband’s or the family elder’s responsibility (Ozbay 1995). Thus, it is no surprise that networks have been in competition to hook the female audience to daytime television. WV programs attract viewers by appealing to their emotions while at the same time gaining access to ¨ 22.3 per cent and Yasemin Bozkurt’s 23.9 their wallets. Serap Ezgu’s per cent14 average shares between 1 January 2005 and 19 September 2005 indicate that the shows are widely watched (AGB Ratings).15 The programs also reach a wide range of viewers abroad, such as Turkish immigrants living in European nations, such as, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands. While “Woman’s Voice” programs did not initiate the talk show format in Turkey, they differ significantly from their predecessors in two major respects: prime time talk show Arena of Politics was the Turkish media’s first attempt at covering taboo political issues with a forum format. This talk show on current affairs was groundbreaking in its introduction of the general public’s participation into televised discussion. However, the “masculinity” of this format, in the form of its male host, predominantly male studio guests and strictly political topics, renders it a distant ancestor. In Arena of Politics, women were rarely “primary signifiers,” and even if they were, that was by virtue of their expert, artistic, academic, or journalistic status (Inal 1994/5, 73). Women rarely gained regular access to Arena of Politics as guests. In contrast, WV provides ordinary women with a space to discuss their “cultural citizenship” in their own voice. Also, the topics covered by Arena of Politics and its later incarnations were confined to issues of politics, corruption, terrorism, and so on. Women’s issues did not take the upper hand in the program. ¨ un–style ¨ The second ancestor to the WV format was the Ays¸e Ozg ¨ ¨ started women’s talk shows of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Ozgun her broadcasting career by hosting an educational program for women

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titled Eˇgrisiyle Doˇgrusuyla (“Right or Wrong”), in 1989 and 1990 on TRT. She hosted S¨oz Sizin (“You Have the Word”) on TRT between 1994 and ¨ un 1995, and her self-titled Ays¸e Ozg ¨ on ATV between 1996 and 2000. With her, for the first time, a “forum” format began to be utilized in the daytime to discuss women’s issues, which allowed the studio audience to express opinions and contribute to the discussion. Topics ¨ un of the Ays¸e Ozg ¨ show were close to WV topics: domestic violence, marriage at a young age, Islam and women, religious orders, divorce ¨ ¨ glu 2000, 120). and children, and so on. (Tufan-Tanrıover and Eyuboˇ ¨ ¨ However, Ays¸e Ozgun’s programs were in other respects significantly different from WV. For example, “topical framing” was utilized – that is, each program was devoted to a pre-selected topic. The show was taped and edited down to 60 minutes in contrast to the WV format, which is aired live and runs approximately for three hours, including commercial ¨ un’s ¨ breaks. Thus, Ozg version was closer to the American, Donahuestyle “issue-oriented talk show.”16 The program relied heavily on experts, and was organized around studio audience participation determined by ¨ un. ¨ Although Tufan-Tanrıover ¨ ¨ glu (2000) refer positively Ozg and Eyuboˇ to the programs’ contribution to women’s visibility, the problematization of women’s victimization and the coverage of women’s employment prob¨ un’s ¨ lems, they have an interesting observation on Ozg general manner: ¨ ¨ “Ays¸e Ozgun’s style is almost completely didactic, in a sense, the style of a republican era elementary school teacher” (ibid., 120–1). The elementary school teacher is a powerful metaphor here, since it refers to a common republican fantasy of elementary school teachers disseminating modernity and enlightenment into the young minds of their students, thus raising the next generations to the “level of contemporary civiliza¨ un ¨ launched her career at TRT, where “education tion.” The fact that Ozg of the public” was the main goal, is consistent with this attitude. Elif S¸afak notes that there is a three-legged formula often used in Turkey, disguised as a modernizing attitude: first, there is a body of “knowledge” to be presented, second, there is a “knowing subject” that presents it, and finally an “asking object” – an “ignorant” subject – as the recipient (2005, xlv). The hope is that the ignorant subject will eventually transform into a “modern,” knowing subject. The WV programs walk a fine line between TRT-style didacticism and condescension towards

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rural–urban guests by republican hosts and a free forum where guests produce discourse on the violence in their lives. I will expand on this argument in Chapter 5.

Turkish Mass Media Since 2005: The Emergence of “Partisan Media” Turkey’s human rights and freedom of expression record under the JDP leaves much to be desired. During its second term, beginning in 2007, the JDP systematically began to weaken those mass media outlets that were critical of its policies, and forged close relations with those were willing to support it, which led to coinage of the term yandas¸ medya (“partisan media”) (Adaklı 2009). For example, it is widely believed that media conglomerate Aydın Doˇgan was punished with a $2.5 million tax fine by the government because some of the Doˇgan-owned media outlets covered government policies critically.17 The government’s influence on the mass media in Turkey has been unequivocally brought to the forefront by the Gezi events of mid-2013. At the beginning of the events, on 31 May 2013, when a major clash between the protestors and police forces was taking place on Istanbul’s ¨ (partially famous Taksim Square, CNN’s Turkish affiliate, CNN Turk owned by Doˇgan Holding), was showing a documentary about penguins, and the other popular news channels, like NTV (owned by Doˇgus¸ Holding) were similarly turning a blind eye. Throughout the summer of 2013, major news and mainstream channels continued to show little interest in the massive anti-government protests surrounding the Gezi movement, while devoting ample live coverage to the prime minister’s public appearances and speeches. As a result, social media outlets Twitter and Facebook, as well as small independent television news networks such as Halk TV, gained the upper hand in informing the public about the events. In retaliation, the JDP government had random young Twitter users arrested, and the prime minister declared social media “the worst menace to society” (Letch 2013). Indicating the kind of reverence paid by newspaper editors to their big bosses’ business interests, veteran jour¨ nalists like Can Dundar, Derya Sazak, and Yavuz Baydar were fired from their jobs on dailies like Milliyet and Sabah for criticizing the govern¨ ment. Milliyet is owned by Demiroren Holding, and Sabah is owned by

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the C ¸ alık Group,18 both close allies and beneficiaries of the JDP government. According to the Turkish Journalists’ Union, 59 journalists were fired from their jobs between 31 May and 22 July 2013, with the majority being “forced to leave directly in connection with their coverage of the protests” (Zalewski 2013). The allegation of a “partisan media” was essentially confirmed when seven different Turkish newspapers used the same exact headline “Demokratik Taleplere Canımız Feda” (“We Shall Devote Our Lives to Democratic Demands”), on 7 June 2013, taken from a speech the prime minister had given in response to the Gezi events. Online publication Bianet reported the event with the headline, “Seven Newspapers, One Editor,” indicating the prime minister’s control of the mass media.19 According to the Associated Press, out of 35,000 people convicted of terrorism in the world in the last ten years, 12,897 were convicted in Turkey. Many of those “terrorists” are journalists, about 500 of whom are university students who have protested against the government (Buˇglalılar 2011). Turkey’s deteriorating freedom of speech record under the JDP can also be discerned from the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index. The Index consistently placed Turkey at around position 100 (among about 170 countries) from 2002 until 2009. In 2009, Turkey’s position dropped to 122nd, in 2010 to 138th and in 2011–12 to 148th.20

3 “Woman’s Voice” as Text: Stories and Structures Underneath

Guests come to us with a missing person case, but underneath it all, other stories are revealed. (Inci Ertugrul, host of Inci Ertugrul, Your Voice on program aired 30 November 2005)

“Woman’s Voice” programs (WV) reveal the private lives of a certain segment of the Turkish population in a way that the Turkish media have never done before. The issues discussed on WV arise from guest narrations and impromptu host or audience questions, and are aired live to a national audience. As I will show in Chapter 5, the guests are loosely coached and post-production editing is virtually impossible due to live broadcasting. Thus, all excerpts below exemplify things said on live television by those implicated in the events talked about. A considerable amount of time was spent with each guest, and thus a rich discourse emerged. In my sample, the number of guests per program ranged between five and nine, with an average of seven. The amount of time spent with each guest ranged between 5 and 45 minutes. On average, approximately 20 minutes were spent with each guest. As argued above, WV allows a previously invisible and silent segment of society to appear on television and speak in its own voice. Most guests of WV are residents of Istanbul’s squatter towns. Some travel to Istanbul from rural areas or other small Turkish cities. What is common to almost all WV guests is their low republican capital. Discursively, visually, 78

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audibly and in terms of their life style, these men and women represent elements that have rarely been seen or heard from previously in the public sphere. Guests’ unscripted speech and narration constitute the most subversive elements of WV. Therefore, this chapter consists of quotations from the sampled programs. However, it needs to be emphasized from the outset that I in no way presume that these narrations reach the home audience completely unfiltered. Hosts’ attitudes, production techniques, studio dynamics unseen by the home audience, reactions of the studio audience, as well as producers’ explicit and implicit missions and ideologies, constitute thick filters and frames through which the stories reach the home audience. I will discuss these filters in Chapter 5, when I report on the interviews conducted with hosts, producers and network executives, as well as my observations of studio dynamics. I argue here that the stories told on WV are manifestations of deeper social structures that underlie the lives of a certain segment of Turkish society. However, they are often presented on WV as individual problems that need immediate resolution. Guests’ pleas on WV are treated by the hosts as acute instances of individual problems rather than chronic symptoms of systemic inequalities. In contrast, as Max Weber suggested social science should do, this analysis is an attempt to consider the “individual” as a “‘document,’ ‘manifestation’ or an ‘expression’ of a larger morphological unit” (Gerth and Mills 1973, 56). Whereas Weber’s notion of Verstehen refers not only to the social scientist’s comprehension of the meaning of individual action but also to the individual’s understanding of his or her action as arising from a conscious and rational choice, I suggest following as a methodological guide Pierre Bourdieu’s attempt at going beyond individual consciousness. His notion of “being in the game,” illusio, suggests that individuals act with a “feel for the game” without explicitly being moved by “conscious decisions” (Bourdieu 1998a, 77). Scrutinizing Weber’s understanding of rationality and Marx’s notion of false consciousness, Bourdieu posits that agents do not act out of rational interest or the lack thereof, but out of the sense in which they understand the “practical logic” of social structures. Thus, neither the behavior of the individuals nor the structures in which they act is primary to social analysis alone. Not only the field (social game) in which one operates (together with the history and future of the field), but also the individual’s moves in the game according to her or his understanding of the game

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(illusio), his or her individual background (habitus) and future (trajectory) determine the outcome. I draw on Bourdieu’s understanding of the dichotomy between agency and structure as a “false opposition” (Bourdieu 1987, 2). That is, I hold that agents are both structured and structuring, and that they occupy social space according to classifications they make and how they are classified by others. Using Erving Goffman’s concept of the “sense of one’s place,” Bourdieu explains how “social distances inscribed in the body” contribute to the reproduction of social conditions in accordance with agents’ expectations of themselves, and others’ expectations of them, constructing the end-result that is commonly termed the “product of one’s environment.” Bourdieu shows that agents contribute by their own choices to the reproduction of structures, while their choices are determined by the fact that the agents are, themselves, structured (Bourdieu 1987). Their trajectory in social space is influenced by the “evolution in time of the volume and composition of their capital” (Bourdieu 1987, 4). Bourdieu studies a number of forms of capital, such as economic, cultural, social, political, religious, scientific and symbolic. The combination of different forms of capital that agents display determines not only their position in the field of power but also a sense of what to aspire to and what to expect as a “possibility” in their lives. I propose that it is helpful to keep this interpretation in mind when we embark upon this analysis of utterances and attitudes. In this way, when a divorced woman appears on WV and complains about the abduction of her child by his or her father, one must first consider her situation in the social structure as a divorced woman, with all that such a position implies. One must then evaluate her decision to appear on the program as a sign of her agency or belief that she is entitled to her child even though customs dictate otherwise. If we use this approach, she appears as an individual who operates within the confines of a given structure but at the same time slightly changes the structure through her action. By the same token, Bourdieu (1990a) suggests that the sociologist comes close to understanding social reality only if she can reconcile an “objectivist” (or structuralist) approach with a “phenomenological” one. The phenomenological approach risks excluding “conditions of possibility,” and only sees lived experience as it happens. Objectivism, on the other hand, by studying structures, rules, and laws, risks losing sight of the practical reality. The withdrawn and distant objectivist anthropologist

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who studies the genealogical charts of a village, rather than observing the way marriage occurs in practice, misses the ways in which agents reproduce (or slightly change) the system through each and every “choice” they make. Thus, logical categories are understood as universal and eternal, and embedded in the agents’ unconscious, directing their behavior. Subjectivism, on the other hand, denies the existence of structures and considers every action unique, unprecedented, voluntary, autonomous, and random. Subjectivism favors the conscious act over the unconscious automation of behavior by the structure. Thus, while reading this chapter, I suggest that the reader keeps in mind structures as well as individual choices. WV can be read as a parade of ignorant individuals making nonsensical decisions and engaging in irrational actions. However, I argue here that understanding the structures they operate in is key to understanding the practical reason underlying their behavior. Once structures are understood, the second step is to recognize in what way an individual slightly changes or reproduces the structure through the choices he or she has made. Only in this way are we able to see the nuanced variations between different forms of action without reducing them to modern, transitional or traditional modes of behavior. Rather than classifying families and individuals in Turkey as modern, transitional or traditional, I posit that we should recognize that ¨ 2002). Expecting many forms of “modernities” co-exist in Turkey (Gole a loosely defined “modern” form of behavior and centrally imposed “modern” laws to magically dissolve gender inequalities would be unrealistic, as the endurance of many inequalities in the highly modern Western world shows. From a feminist perspective, it will be much more fruitful to tackle gender inequalities at their root, which is the “gender honor code” in the Turkish case, rather than simply suggesting that women should somehow be enlightened and claim their rights with no regard to the honor code’s internally logical demands on women as well as on men. I posit that the key to understanding the structure of gender inequalities in Turkey lies in understanding the “honor system.” As a continuation of the habit of “looking at the self with a foreigner’s eye,” the Turkish elite has often interpreted the behavior of the peasants and rural–urban migrants as traditional and therefore nonsensical, irrational and unaware of their interests (in other words, victims of false consciousness) (Kahraman 2000, 36). While the republican elite tries to “educate,” “illuminate,” and

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“elevate” its “Others,” it loses sight of the “objective” aspect of people’s circumstances, and dwells solely on the individual, the phenomenological. Therefore, the “ignorant” seems doomed to remain ignorant since, she or he appears to “choose” to act as such and not in the way approved and expected by the “knowing subject” (S¸afak 2005). The elite believes that, if given a chance, the “rational man or woman” will behave in a modern way and not succumb to the codes of honor. This attitude was especially obvious in the women’s rights field, where the republican elite failed to understand why women could not be enlightened and emancipated from above, with education, rights to employment and greater participation in public and political life. However, what they overlooked is that the “honor code” constitutes a barrier to all these liberal forms of emancipation. It should be noted that when I talk about the “honor code,” I do not imply a gender structure stemming strictly from the teachings of Islam. A growing literature on women and Islam suggests that practices concerning women differ between Muslim countries and have sociopolitical and historical events, rather than the Qur’an, at their basis. Brooke Ackerly notes that what are usually considered “Muslim laws and practices” are often based on the customs that were already in place before the adoption of Islam, “for example, the practice of female genital mutilation in parts of Africa. They are laws and practices that come from colonial rule; for example, in South Asia, British colonial laws deprived Muslim women of their religiously sanctioned right to own and inherit property” (Ackerly 2000, 163). In Turkey, unjust practices are legitimated with the claim that they are dictated by Islam, and are used to maintain the existing power structure between the sexes to collectively control female sexuality (Ilkkaracan 2003; Kandiyoti 1987). If analyzed in the way suggested above, the television programs in question allow one to observe the structures of marriage and divorce, patriarchal domination, rights over children, marriage prospects and strategies, and male–female roles through the protagonists’ narratives and the lens of the camera. The narrations on the programs derive from individual situations and circumstances, and prompt individual responses. That is, the narrations will also allow us to glance into the ways agents contribute to the reproduction of structures (which structured them), but also transform their realities by the choices they make.

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What Do They Talk About? Topics, Guests and Structures It is startling to watch the “Woman’s Voice” genre. The first few times I watched it, I was shocked by the assumptions that went unquestioned, the events described, the approaches of hosts and the comments of studio audience. It was almost like sitting in a sociology class, learning through real-life examples about the deeply embedded structures of a rural/newly urban part of the society. Questions began to arise: How was it that I was entirely clueless about these structures that confined people’s lives? Or was I entirely clueless? Did I, rather, choose to ignore these structures that I was always aware of, thinking that they did not apply to me? Weren’t my choices in dress, movement, speech, profession and marriage also confined to some extent by these very structures that I tried to ignore? Attempting to portray the great cultural diversity of family life in Turkey through its manifestations in the media through the “Woman’s Voice” shows seemed relevant, even crucial all of a sudden. As a member of the republican elite, my habitus involves a critical and distanced view of the society I was raised in. This is not just the sociologist’s distance, but also the distance of the Turkish republican elite, which is, time and time again, forced to look at society through the eyes of outsiders. Thus, this is also a personal attempt to look at the society I grew up in from a wider perspective, beyond the social circle of which I was a part. A wide diversity can be observed in family life in Turkey. While the analysis presented in this study paints a bleak picture of gender equality, marriage and divorce practices and family life, the republican elite of Turkey lives according to rules and practices closer to its Western counterparts. Many daughters of established urban dwellers (EUDs) have access to education opportunities equal to those of men, engage in employment without concerns for their “honor,” retain custody of their children in the case of divorce or their husband’s death, receive alimony and child support from their ex-husbands, inherit a share equal to that of their brothers – in short, enjoy the equal rights given to them by Turkish law. Many young people, including squatter town residents (STRs), choose their own spouses after some months or years of courtship. “Dating” is tolerated in many circles, although even the most liberal of parents expect a long, consistent and public courtship to end in marriage. Therefore, some young women keep boyfriends as secrets, or only confide in

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their mothers (who are usually more permissive than fathers) if they do not want to be pressured about marriage. A double standard is applied to boys and girls, however. Whereas young men publicly boast about their many girlfriends (and sexual conquests), girls limit the publicity about their premarital sexual experiences to a trusted circle of close friends. Brothers and fathers are often very strict about the premarital sexual relations in which their young daughters engage. It should be stressed that what is most important is the publicity and notoriety of the sexual relation. If it is being gossiped about, the father and/or brothers feel obliged to do something about it. Thus, premarital sex or an extramarital pregnancy may have dire consequences even for a young girl from a republican background, such as forced marriage or exclusion from the family. In such a case, the young republican woman may chose abortion as an option. A republican woman usually receives relatively fair and equal treatment from her husband and his family. Her wish to work will be respected, although her employment will continue to be regarded as complementary. Her employment may also be easily discarded if necessary and financially possible. For example, when the woman gives birth, if the family can afford it, she might be expected to give up her job, or her insistence on continuing to work might be regarded as an unnecessary luxury or a manifestation of competitiveness. When a republican woman gets a divorce, it is very likely that she will be given custody of her children (since many judges prefer to leave small children in particular in their mother’s care), and her motherhood rights will not be contested by her ex-husband’s family.1 However, unless they are willing to remarry, ´ tend to lead ascetic lives. Divorced women often choose to divorcees keep their dating activities private, since publicizing them would place them in an awkward position in their families, in the face of their children, and in society. Even in upper-class neighborhoods, neighbors can be nosy about late-night visitors, and may gossip about unusual behavior, as a result of which children can be affected psychologically and families can be offended. However, despite the need for constant care and attention, examples of sexual nonconformity do exist. Cohabitation of unmarried couples occurs, especially among the highly educated republican elite, sometimes even with families’ knowledge and support. Same-sex couples may

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also cohabit, although often they disguise their relationship as friendship or cohabitation as roommates. Bohemian neighborhoods such as the areas surrounding Beyoˇglu, or upper-class areas such as Nis¸antas¸ı, Etiler, Moda and Baˇgdat Street in Istanbul, are neighborhoods where single women, unmarried couples or other unusual domestic units live in relative peace and security.2 Otherwise, neighbors may find it in their power to scrutinize the legitimacy of the unit through gossip, marginalization of the person or couple, harassment, and other methods. Students living with same-sex roommates might be harassed, especially if they are women who are believed to “allow men in the house” or engage in any other type of “obscene” behavior. Also, since the above-mentioned neighborhoods are expensive to live in, living in an unusual domestic unit necessitates economic power, and is a class-based luxury. As mentioned above, the guests who appear on WV are mostly residents of Istanbul’s squatter towns. STRs in Istanbul have easy access to WV because of geographical proximity. Some guests also come from rural areas or small towns in Turkey, in which case their travel expenses are covered by the network. They receive bus tickets and cheap hotel rooms, and a chance to see Istanbul. Often, WV is their last resort for finding a missing family member. Some are after their “15 minutes of fame.” Some are looking for charity or a job. Below we will see examples of some of these categories. What is being talked about? What is at stake? Who speaks? What do they say? Table 2 shows a distribution of “cases” by topic and program, classified by the author. The categories may seem haphazard and are not necessarily mutually exclusive – for example, all missing person categories could be placed in one category. However, for my purposes it is important to show the different categories of missing men, women, children and others, because the values, expectations, prejudices and dangers in place in some categories are in contrast to others. In order to analyze the programs, I taped five random episodes of each program. Wherever possible, I preferred to tape episodes aired consecutively because of the continuity of some topics. In some cases, the same guest would be invited two or three days in a row. By taping episodes on consecutive days, I was able to follow the end-result, if any, of these multiple appearances on WV.

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The episodes I taped were aired live on the following dates: 1. Woman’s Voice hosted by Yasemin Bozkurt on Flash TV: 21, 22, 23, 29 and 30 November 2005 at 6:30–8:00 p.m. and 9:00–10:00 p.m.3 2. Among Ourselves with Serap Ezgu¨ hosted by Serap Ezgu¨ on Show TV: 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 October 2005 at 1:30–4:30 p.m. 3. Inci Ertuˇgrul, Your Voice, hosted by Inci Ertuˇgrul on TGRT: 7, 8, 11, 29, 30 November 2005 at 1:30–4:30 p.m. All 15 taped episodes were transcribed. Further, I employed discourse analysis based on the “discourse-historical approach” suggested by Reisigl and Wodak (2001). They developed a sociodiagnostic critique, where by the analyst “makes use of her or his background and contextual knowledge and embeds the communicative or interactional structures of a discursive event in a wider frame of social and political relations, processes and circumstances” (2001, 33). In their agenda for discourse analysis, Reisigl and Wodak identify several “fields of action” in which a discourse is constructed: texts of state officials’ speeches, ministerial reports, popular petitions, party programs, alehouse conversations, talk shows, interviews, conferences, books, articles, newspaper editorials and the like.4 In their discourse-historical approach, they identify four types of contexts: 1. immediate text or text-internal co-text (connotations, speech acts . . . ); 2. intertextuality (relationship between texts); 3. extralinguistic social variables (situation, place, time, occasion . . . ); and 4. broader sociopolitical and historical context (ibid., 41). Although my analysis is primarily concerned with the discourse produced on WV, these “contexts” will also be taken into consideration. Words used and connotations made (Context I), references to other similar programs and texts (C II), the format of the program (C III) and the broader context of what was going on at the time (C IV) will all constitute subjects of analysis.

1. Mother’s Plea to see their Children or “Children as Property of Men” Fatma appeared on an episode of Inci Ertuˇgrul, Your Voice on 7 November 2005. Her goal was to make a plea to see her three children, who

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“woman’s voice” as text: stories and structures underneath Table 2 “Woman’s Voice” Cases by Topic and Program

1. Mother’s plea to see children 2. Missing woman/woman left 3. Missing man 4. Missing/eloped child 5. The orphanage scandal 6. Other missing loved ones 7. Father’s plea to see children 8. Plea for divorce 9. Celebrities 10. Matchmaking 11. Confessions 12. Makeover 13. People in need 14. Other Total a b

c

YBa

SEb

IEc

Total

2 5 0 6 0 3 0 1 6 11 3 2 4 2 45

2 5 1 3 1 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 15

4 5 5 6 0 5 1 3 0 0 0 0 1 0 30

8 15 6 15 1 10 2 4 6 11 3 2 5 2 90

YB stands for Yasemin Bozkurt, the host of Woman’s Voice on Flash TV. ¨ the host of Among Ourselves with Serap Ezgu¨ on SE stands for Serap Ezgu, Show TV. IE stands for Inci Ertuˇgrul, the host of Inci Ertuˇgrul, Your Voice on TGRT .

were being kept away from her by their father, from whom she was separated. Fatma was initially reluctant to tell the audience why her marriage had ended after 15 years. Ultimately, host Inci Ertuˇgrul, prompted her: I.E.: After 15 years, what happened? We have to say it here. Fatma: I had this thing. I.E.: What was that thing? Fatma: I mean, something wrong. I.E.: You made a big mistake. Fatma: Yes, I made a mistake. We learn that the “big mistake” was to fall in love with another man after 15 years of marriage. Not much information is given as to the nature of Fatma’s relationship with this “other man”; nevertheless, the studio audience shows no mercy:

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Audience 1 (female): Sister, weren’t you happy with your husband? Fatma: His family . . . A1: Why do you care about his family, what about your husband? I have fights with my husband about my in-laws all the time but I’m happy with my husband. Why did you do it? You have three kids. Didn’t you think of your children? Don’t you know this is not going to end well? Fatma: His family provoked him. Every day he’d beat me up. A1: It’s wrong [that you did this]. ... Fatma: He didn’t take care of me and the children. We lived through the help of neighbors, social agencies . . . A1: You made a big mistake, and it’s shameful. Fatma: I’m aware that I made a mistake. I know. A1: I condemn you. You have disgraced your husband. You deserve all this. Your husband is right not to let you see your kids. He should not let you see them, OK? Fatma (sarcastically): If you say so . . . Audience 2 (female): If I were him, I would not let you see them either. You go and love somebody while under your husband’s wedlock. Then you say “my children.” That doesn’t work, my dear. You destroy women’s honor! Audience 3 (male): Now, my daughter, God says, “I do not want any harm to come to you, you do your own ill-doing.” You’ve created your own condition. Therefore, you should say, “my children shall be safe,” they shall live there, and you stay alone with your fate. Don’t wait for your children. Host Inci Ertuˇgrul (interjecting): Are you saying that she should not see her children? A3: She should not because it’s her own fault. Audience 4 (male): I want to ask her: You were legally married. For 15 years, he has fed you, cared for you. And you were with someone else while you were married? This doesn’t make sense, a human being cannot do this. How can you still ask for your children? You have dishonored your children! Fatma: You misunderstand sir! I want to see my children. It’s my natural right!

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A4: How dare you ask for your children? Those kids have friends, acquaintances, they have pride. When his friend tells him “you have a mother like this,” how will he answer his friend?5 While no developments occur on the subject of Fatma’s children during the course of the program, she is reunited with her father through an on-air telephone call: Fatma’s father: She should come to my house. Every subject of God can make mistakes. I forgive her. She should come to me before she falls into another swamp.6 Because neighbors tell me to claim my daughter. Fatma, please don’t disappoint me. In Fatma’s case, a woman who has fallen in love with another man while married is denied her motherhood rights not just by her husband and his family, but also by the studio audience during a WV program. Fatma is considered to have disgraced her family by this dishonorable act. Moreover, her violation of the honor code and appearance on WV also cost her a job and an apartment: Fatma: The people at my workplace heard about my appearance here; they fired me today. Also, the landlord’s wife saw me on the program the other day; they said I should leave by the end of the month. Fatma’s appearance is one out of eight cases of mothers pleading to see their children. The prevalence of the honor code within a certain segment of society can be observed through these examples. According to the honor code, if a woman wants to leave her husband, she must go back to her father’s house so as not to disgrace her family. If she chooses not to, the collectivity might declare her “dishonorable.” One instrument of punishment would be to deny her the right of motherhood, although the law dictates otherwise. However, Fatma’s appearance on WV must also be considered a subversive act. After all, she is willing to face public humiliation to gain her children back, which she sees as her right. As her exclamation “You misunderstand sir! I want to see my children. It’s my natural right!” suggests, she is unwilling to accept her fate and ready to put up a fight against this injustice. However, the collectivity, made up by the audience and

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Fatma’s father, whose neighbors tell him to claim his daughter, speaks louder than her and challenges her claim to a natural and legal right. Her personal point of view is also easily challenged by the studio audience. WV reveals that the “space of possibles”7 for a single or divorced woman is so narrow that she is often trapped in a trajectory of either marriage or social disappearance. The next example illustrates divorced women’s limitations. On the Woman’s Voice episode aired live on 21 November 2005, Dilek pleads to see her two children, from whom she has been estranged for five years. She recounts that during the divorce trial, although the court gave her custody, she let her husband take the children because she was concerned that she could not take care of them. After Yasemin Bozkurt (YB), the host, inquires about why she could not take care of her children, Dilek explains: I was going to take them but my mother said, “If you come with your children, you can’t live with me.”8 I’m unemployed, I can’t do anything, I don’t want to be bad either.9 What can I do outside? I go to my sister’s, it doesn’t work; I go to my mother’s, she says I should find a job. Where will I find money? I mean where!?

It seems that Dilek did the “right thing” and went back to her natal home upon separating from her husband. However, her mother, who possibly did not want the financial responsibility of Dilek and her two children, did not accept her. Dilek seems to think that it is impossible for a woman to take up employment, to live on her own with her children and take care of them. She clearly upholds the patriarchal idea that it is not “normal” for a woman to work. However, instead of inquiring into the reasons why Dilek thinks employment is not a viable option for her, Bozkurt makes another suggestion: “But wait a minute. Haven’t you considered remarrying?” Dilek immediately picks up on that: Dilek: That’s what I was going to say. I want to get married. If there is a candidate, I want to get married, even today, I’ll get married, make a home! Part of Yasemin Bozkurt’s Woman’s Voice is dedicated to men and women searching for partners through television. It seems as if here Bozkurt is trying to recruit Dilek for that segment as well, and Dilek is making an open call to potential candidates. Dilek’s apparent belief that she cannot

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lead a decent life unless she is married limits her space of possibles to utter impossibility, rendering remarriage her only chance at a life together with her children. This belief is closely connected with divorced women’s stigmatization in all segments of society. In Turkish, the word dul, used to indicate both a widow and a divorced woman, has derogatory connotations. A dul woman is associated with promiscuity, since, not being a virgin any more, her active sexuality is perceived as an invitation to various sexual encounters. Since she is not under the “control” of a man, this is considered a danger to the sanctity of the family, and a threat to other women, whose husbands might be lured by this sexually active “loose” woman. Therefore, being dul curbs women’s space of possibles and locks them in a carefully delineated web of social relationships for the sake of their “honorable name.” The best thing to do, it seems to many widowed women, is to remarry and enter another man’s authority, in which case her “honor” is no longer as carefully scrutinized as it would be if she were a widow. Another illustration of the stigmatization of divorced or widowed women comes from my field research. During an interview, middle-aged STR Selma was complaining about her husband, explaining how she did not love him and that he was abusive. However, suddenly realizing that she was in the presence of two widows, Halime and Serap, Selma quickly abandoned her critical tone and began comparing her situation to that of a widow. Selma: Actually, my husband is not so bad. God shall not take him away from us. As long as we’re not called “widows.” (Turning to Halime and Serap) Isn’t widowhood difficult? Both of you suffer from it. When you’re a widow, if you wear something nice, they gossip, if you go to the same place twice, they gossip.” Halime (nodding): That’s why we don’t go anywhere much. It is also a curious phenomenon that, in circles with low republican capital, children are considered properties of their fathers and are sometimes taken away from their mothers in the case of divorce or the father’s death. While Turkish civil law does not stipulate any special custody rights to the father and it is common for judges to grant custody to mothers in the case of divorce, especially if the child is young, there are many examples, such as Dilek’s and Fatma’s, in which children are either retained against

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the court’s decision or forcefully taken away from their mother. Meral’s case shows how the mother’s marriage to a man other than her child’s father may play a role in whether or not the father will let the mother care for the child. On 11 November 2005, Meral, a 27-year-old woman seeking her 6-year-old daughter, Ilayda, appeared on Inci Ertuˇgrul, Your Voice. Meral and her husband had divorced in 2003. Although Meral had custody, her daughter was retained by her ex-husband’s family in 2005 during a pre-arranged visit. Meral’s sister-in-law (ex-husband’s sister), Canan, explained during an on-air telephone conversation why her brother decided to keep little Ilayda two years after the divorce: Canan: My brother didn’t want to give the child back to Meral after she got married. I.E.: Because she got remarried? Canan: Yes, because she got married, my brother did not want to give her back. In the meantime, Meral seems to have internalized the notion that she may not have Ilayda back for good because she is now remarried: Meral: I don’t want my daughter permanently, because I remarried. But I want to hear her voice, at least know that she’s alive. I don’t even know if she’s alive! Meral also explained the reasons behind her remarriage. Once again, we see how divorced women’s choices are limited. A young woman, as Meral indicates, will not be left alone in a small town and, will eventually have to get married: Meral: My parents helped me out after I divorced and I’m so grateful to them. But that’s only up to a point. I am young. You cannot stay unmarried in a place like the rural areas of the Black Sea region. An explanation for the “traditional” practice of keeping children in their father’s family in the case of divorce or the father’s death despite legal ordinance might be found in Carol Delaney’s thesis of the “seed.” Delaney argues that the function of the “honor” system is to guarantee “the legitimacy of the man’s seed” – that is, that the woman must guarantee the child born is from her husband’s seed, and not another’s, ensuring the exclusiveness of the family lineage (1991, 40). Thus, the thought

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of a child raised by a man other than his or her father in the case of the mother’s remarriage is against the notion of the “seed” belonging to the father, and by extension to his family. Kandiyoti finds the roots of classic patriarchy in the “patrilocally extended household, which is also commonly associated with the reproduction of the peasantry in agrarian societies” (1988, 278). This system requires the bride to be incorporated into her husband’s household, headed by her husband’s father. With marriage, the bride becomes part of her husband’s lineage, a position strengthened by the birth of their first male child, ensuring the continuation of the patrilineage (Delaney 1991). In the case of her husband’s death, the woman remains under the care of her in-laws, together with her children. Delaney observes a similar practice in village customs: “Because of the meaning of paternity, a woman contemplating divorce or a widow contemplating remarriage must face leaving her children behind. If she is divorced, they are, according to village custom, the man’s by right; if she is widowed, the children will stay with their dead father’s parents or relatives” (ibid., 53). ¨ Gulseren’s story is one where the woman is expected to remain in her husband’s household with her mother-in-law even when her husband has a second family abroad and has not seen his wife and child in four ¨ years. Gulseren married at a young age in the hope of moving abroad; however, she was quickly left behind with her mother-in-law and baby ¨ boy. Gulseren had not seen her son in six years (Your Voice, 29 November 2005). ¨ Gulseren: I married my husband through an arranged marriage [g¨oruc ¨ u¨ usulu]. ¨ My uncle knew a friend of his [my husband’s]. I lost my father at a young age; my mother raised me and my four brothers. I was the only girl. My mother became our father, I became the mother. When I turned 20, my mother said “Your life will be saved, you’ll marry and go abroad; you’ll go to Denmark.” She said “You won’t suffer like I did.” That’s what she told me. Inci Ertuˇgrul: This prospective candidate was a worker in Denmark. ¨ Gulseren: Yes, he’d been there for 12 years. They [he and his family] saw me, liked me. At first I said I couldn’t get married. I didn’t feel ready. But they said I would get used to it. We got married within three days of meeting each other. Afterwards, he said he’d have to

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go to Denmark, have the immigration documents prepared for me. He said it was difficult. After we got married, he took me to Konya from Bursa as a bride.10 It was a different world. A place I didn’t know. The rules of the west and the rules of the east are different. It seemed very different to me. Even their language is different.11 I.E.: The traditions are different. ¨ Gulseren: Yes. I got married. For a month, everything was great. I got pregnant in the meantime. Then he left for Denmark and I didn’t see him for four years. ... I.E.: Was he calling you often? ¨ Gulseren: He would speak with my mother-in-law. Their traditions are so different, he would call his mother. He would ask her how I was doing. In the meantime, I had our son. I.E.: He never talked to you on the phone for four years? ¨ Gulseren: Never. ... ¨ Gulseren: Then I learned that he got married in Denmark, he had two children. I was so upset, but I couldn’t do anything. I said this must be fate. His mother said “You’re my daughter, you’ll stay here, you’ll raise your son here.” I said to my mother-in-law, “I didn’t come here to live with you and raise my kid. I came here to have a husband, have a home.” She knew about his [other] marriage. She said she couldn’t tell me. I.E.: She wanted to have some support in Turkey. ¨ Gulseren: Yes, of course, they wanted to use me like a maid. My father-in-law was deceased. They thought I’d give my mother-inlaw many grandchildren, we’d all live together. I.E.: Then you got a divorce. ¨ Gulseren: Yes. I took my son and came to my mother’s house. But this time my mother said, “I don’t want a dul [divorced] woman in my household.” I don’t blame her. My brothers were young. But that’s what she said. I thought I’d get remarried, but I wanted somebody who would take care of my son. Then they married me to a man with three children . . . After a year it became clear that he was an alcoholic. Alcohol, beating, battering . . . He would get jealous of me even when I stepped outside in front of the house.

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He would get mad when I took care of my son . . . I had a daughter and another son with him. But he was beating his daughters, me, my sons . . . He would especially beat his stepson. My son turned nine like this. Finally, I told my mother, “You wouldn’t take me, at least take care of my son, he’s being beaten.” They said they would. A week later a phone call came, “This kid is running away from home.” My brother called his father in Denmark. His father picked him up. I only saw him once after that. They didn’t let him talk to me on the phone. I.E.: Are you still with your husband? ¨ Gulseren: No, I left him. I.E.: You’re working? ¨ Gulseren: I’m working. I have a good life. I live on my own. My son and daughter live with my mother, they go to school. But I haven’t heard from Oˇguz in six years. In a happy turn of events, Oˇguz called the program and reunited with ¨ his mother. Gulseren’s story of pain, suffering, injustice and violence hopefully concluded with this happy ending. Her story is an inspiring ex¨ ample for women in similar situations. Gulseren is a strong and confident woman who clearly does not believe that she deserved all those injustices. She was left behind with a traditional mother-in-law and a young child, forced to remarry by her own mother after her first marriage ended, and was beaten and humiliated in her second marriage. However, she managed to rescue herself from all these unfavorable conditions, found ¨ employment, and now lived “honorably” on her own. Gulseren’s was an encouraging case showing viewers that it was possible to leave an abusive spouse. ¨ Gulseren’s story also reveals two common events in many young women’s lives: becoming a stranger-bride and the role of a mother-in-law in a young woman’s life. Kandiyoti explains that, “in classic patriarchy, girls are given away in marriage at a very young age into households headed by their husband’s father. There, they are subordinate not only to all the men but also to the more senior women, especially their motherin-law. The extent to which this presents a total break with their own kin group varies in relation to the degree of endogamy in marriage practices and different conceptions of honor” (1988, 278, emphasis mine).

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Kandiyoti further observes that “a Turkish woman’s traditional position more closely resembles the status of the ‘stranger-bride’ typical of prerevolutionary China than that of an Arab woman whose position in the patriarchal household may be somewhat attenuated by endogamy and recourse to her natal kin” (ibid., 279). Thus, young women, when they are married and move out of their home town, become cast out of all the support they would potentially receive from their natal family: “The young bride enters her husband’s household as an effectively dispossessed individual who can establish her place in the patriliny only by producing a male offspring” (ibid.). She is expected to serve and take care of members of her husband’s family and, especially, to be subservient to her mother-in-law, kaynana: Woman’s life cycle in the patriarchally extended family is such that the deprivation and hardship she experiences as a young bride is eventually superseded by the control and authority she will have over her own subservient daughters-in-law. The cyclical nature of women’s power in the household and their anticipation of inheriting the authority of senior women encourages a thorough internalization of this form of patriarchy by the women themselves. In classic patriarchy, subordination to men is offset by the control older women attain over younger women. However, women have access to the only type of labor power they can control, and to old-age security, through their married sons. Since sons are a woman’s most critical resource, ensuring their life-long loyalty is an enduring preoccupation. Older women have a vested interest in the suppression of romantic love between youngsters to keep the conjugal bond secondary and to claim sons’ primary allegiance. Young women have an interest in circumventing and possibly evading their mother-in-law’s control. (ibid., 279)

Women suffer at the hands of other women almost as much as they do at the hands of men. This may explain why many women are incapable of seeing the similarities between their own suffering and the suffering of other women, and so form bonds of female solidarity. In cases of divorce or the husband’s death, mothers- and sisters-in-law play an important ¨ role in depriving women of their children. Gulseren’s story is a case in point. Let us now consider my interviewee Didem’s narration, which follows; she had not seen her daughter from her first marriage in 16 years:

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Didem: My first husband died when my daughter was two months old. I stayed in my father’s house for two years. But of course, you don’t fit anywhere. You go to your sister-in-law’s [brother’s] house, she doesn’t want you, you go to your other sister-in-law’s house, she doesn’t want you either. Then my current husband asked again – he said he would accept my child too. I thought about it for a year. Then I said to myself: you don’t have an income, no salary, you don’t have anything. Everywhere you’re like a refugee. It was destiny, we got married. Didem’s references to her sisters-in-law when talking about her brothers’ homes indicate the animosity she must have received from these women. A stigma is attached to an unmarried woman. The sisters-in-law must have wanted to distance themselves from such stigma. Women protect the honor code as much as men do. In another example, we learn about the women’s active role in the children’s removal from their ¨ mothers. In the following example, Gulzade remembers the moment of her separation from her five children, whom she has not seen in six years: ¨ Gulzade: My mother-in-law stood in front of me with her legs separated like this (shows with her hands), took the kids to her side; my sisters-in-law stood in my way. They kicked me out. It was snowing. (Woman’s Voice, 30 November 2005) In contrast to the belief that the falsely conscious, ignorant villager is not ¨ aware of her rights, Didem, Gulzade and Fatma were all aware of their rights in regard to their children. Didem said: But at least they take good care of her. If she was in a bad condition, I would go to court and take her. But by God, they take good care of her.

¨ In Gulseren’s case, the-mother-in-law kept her son’s marriage a secret from her daughter-in-law, in an attempt to secure care, service and subservience in her old age, especially since her husband was deceased and her son lived abroad. Kandiyoti (1988) argues that, as a result of rapid urbanization and capital penetration in rural areas, men are now more likely to separate from their households at an earlier age and head their own families. Thus, women are, to some extent, freed from the control of

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their mothers-in-law. However, Kandiyoti argues that, “for the generation of women caught in between, this transformation may represent genuine personal tragedy, since they have paid the heavy price of an earlier patriarchal bargain, but are not able to cash in on its promised benefits” (ibid., 282). That is, women who have served their own mothers-in-law are not able to expect and secure the same kind of subservience from their own daughters-in-law. But the loosening of the patriarchal bargain – that is, the practice of men providing protection and economic security to women “in exchange for submissiveness and propriety” however – does not necessarily lead to women’s emancipation, since, according to Kandiyoti, no empowering alternatives have appeared to replace the old system (ibid., 283). Now that economic necessity makes every household member’s contribution to the household budget obligatory, or at least desirable, men’s economic protection of women has become only notional. However, women may resist the processes of transition because they may feel that their short-term interests are threatened by the demise of the old system. In a context where the possibility of women’s work for wages is jeopardized by both economic hindrances (i.e. systemic unemployment or undesirable forms of employment) and symbolic processes (i.e. honor), women have not yet found a feasible alternative to the patriarchal bargain. Although structures are in transition, women as well as men will hold on to the conventions of the old order as long as they do not see any other means of ensuring economic security and symbolic propriety. Thus, the cases seen on WV are manifestations of how the system of patrilineage can be conserved despite the laws granting custody rights to mothers. However, the appearances of these eight women in my sample on WV indicate that women are demanding their maternity rights and are no longer willing to accept this fate silently. After listening to the ¨ story of Gulzade, who has not seen her children in ten years, Yasemin Bozkurt addressed the authorities with the following words: One day, hopefully, Turkey will be a country where being a woman will equal being human. With these programs, we call out to authorities. We say, women are human too, women are mothers too . . . (Woman’s Voice, 30 November 2005)

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Although individual improvements may be made, most calls made on WV, and most stories heard, fall on deaf ears. No common, general conclusions are drawn. The structural sources for this injustice remain uninvestigated and unmentioned. I will discuss this point in depth in Chapter 5.

2. Missing Woman/Woman Abandoning her Family: The Fine Line Between “Honor” and “Prostitution” Some of the 15 cases of missing women are very ambiguous and complicated. Often, guests provide inconsistent descriptions of the events preceding or following the woman’s vanishing, and beg for the return of the missing. In some cases, interested parties or the so-called “missing persons” call in and challenge or confirm the stories told, or various parties begin arguing, blaming, accepting, apologizing, crying, screaming, pleading or reconciling differences. Some stories reach no conclusion at all. It is not easy to tell who is lying and who is telling the truth; sometimes the story does not make any sense; sometimes it is difficult to determine whether the woman is hiding from a potentially violent, even life-threatening encounter with her family, whether she left willingly or if she has been abducted, perhaps even held hostage or killed. However, there are a number of common threads between all stories told about these married adult women who have been missing for a while. The discourse about missing women is indicative of the implications of a situation in which a woman’s whereabouts are unknown. It is interesting to see the repercussions of an unexplained disappearance for the woman’s honor, and by extension for that of her family. It is no coincidence that, in all 15 cases, the woman is being sought by at least one of these men: father, brother or husband. In the honor code, these men are responsible for a woman’s honor. In one instance, the case of Ilknur, the group in the studio included her husband, father and father-in-law, as well as her mother and sister. Ilknur’s case is interesting because there was disagreement between these family members about the circumstances of her vanishing. The in-laws blamed Ilknur for having escaped with a man who they thought was her lover, Sedat, who she indeed eventually turned

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out to be with. Sedat, on the other hand, claimed that he gave Ilknur refuge from her husband and in-laws, who, according to Ilknur, battered her. Ilknur’s parents, based on this story, argued that her husband and her in-laws tortured Ilknur and made it look as if she was abducted when in fact Ilknur ran away from them. However, it was not clear to either party why Ilknur did not do the “right” thing of going back to her parents’ home: Cambaz (Ilknur’s father-in-law): Whose house was she supposed to go to? To her father’s house or to the house of that dishonorable guy, whoever he is? All missing women’s cases in my sample are implicitly scandalous, because the woman left her husband’s home but did not show up on the doorstep of her parents’ house the minute she did so. Therefore, as in Ilknur’s case, in-laws argued over whether she ran away with another man, which is dishonorable behavior, or if she ran away because she was being battered, which is to some extent forgivable. Nevertheless, it seems as if women are also scared of their own parents in cases of dishonorable behavior. Therefore, they do not notify their parents or other loved ones of their whereabouts. Fatma (see above), for example, confessed that she did not notify her parents of her address because she was scared: I didn’t give my address to them because I was scared. They said, “You made this mistake, don’t call us anymore.” I hung up and couldn’t call again. I would call secretly to hear their voices, but I could not speak.

A common strategy that WV hosts use to convince the missing women to establish contact is to reassure them that they will suffer no consequences upon their return. Often, the reassurance comes from the mouth of the bearer of her honor: Yasemin Bozkurt: If your wife comes back, will you continue your marriage? Cengiz: Definitely. She’s my honor, I have to look after her. I took12 her knowingly anyway.13 (Woman’s Voice, 30 November 2005) ¨ uye, ¨ Osman sent a similar reassuring message to his sister Dond who had been missing for a month, on Woman’s Voice, aired on 30 November 2005:

“woman’s voice” as text: stories and structures underneath 101 I’m telling my sister this: Sister, if you’re scared of your husband, if he does not want you anymore, come to me, I will accept you in any way.

¨ uye’s ¨ Dond husband reassured that her there would be no consequences through a live on-air telephone connection with Yasemin Bozkurt: Y.B.: Please call out to your wife here. And please be calm. When she comes back, will you be able to go back to your old days with her? Mesut: I told her the second time she ran away. I said, “Don’t be afraid, I won’t even raise my hand. If you run away, come back.” The promise of acceptance extended to missing wives, sisters and daughters is considered a great act of mercy, often applauded by the studio audience and always appreciated by the host. To me, what is striking is the assumption as soon as a woman goes missing of dishonorable behavior. Thus, rather than a missing person’s case, a woman’s disappearance is treated as an inquiry into what may have driven her to escape. It is an act that can be “forgiven” if the woman willingly appears and has a good explanation for where she was. As Kardam (2005) finds in her study of honor killings, the severity of punishment for dishonorable behavior depends on how “public” the event is and whether people are gossiping about it.14 Ismet and Zuhal’s case illustrates the power that gossip has on a man’s perception of his own wife. On 11 November 2005, Ismet appeared on Your Voice. His wife Zuhal left home with their two children 50 days before. Ismet’s wife was suspected to be with another man. She was said to have called her parents’ house after she left home, informing them that she was alive and well, but did not give them her address, which enhanced the suspicion. Ismet told host Inci Ertuˇgrul why their marriage started falling apart in the first place: Ismet: People started to gossip about her in the neighborhood. She could not take it. She started having psychological problems. She even attempted suicide once. Ismet was blamed by a member of Zuhal’s family for not providing for his family, which was explained by him thus:

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Ismet: If a man thinks about the home all the time, if he thinks about why his wife is cold to him, then one can’t concentrate on one’s work. One source of contention, we learned from the same family member who called in, was Zuhal’s employment: Zuhal’s cousin: We heard from the neighborhood that she comes home late at night. We told Ismet, If you want to save your marriage, don’t let your wife work. We told him we’d help him out. But he said “I want to live in better conditions” – he insisted on that. I.E.: I don’t understand. There are many women who work. Does that constitute some sort of danger? Although Ertuˇgrul protested the assumption that women’s employment commonly leads to suspicions about her chastity, she later commented on the commonly held belief that women should take refuge in their parents’ house in cases where they leave their home: I.E.: If a woman disappears because she has a problem in her marriage, she should go to her mother’s house or her sister’s house. Ertuˇgrul later advised Zuhal’s family to continue to support her on the basis that, “this way, Zuhal will perhaps avoid another mistake.” A typical presentation of a missing woman’s case opens with the enumeration of how many children she has and their ages, often accompanied by photos of her with her children in their “happy days.” That is, of course, functional for the purposes of potential witnesses identifying the missing, especially if she took her children with her. However, this long introduction is also typical of cases where she left her children behind. Music, photos and close-ups on the woman’s face are used extensively, creating a melodramatic effect. Often, the woman’s motherhood role is emphasized, and mercy is begged of those who are holding her in the name of her children, who miss her and are suffering in her absence. For example, missing Berivan’s case opened with a short slideshow of photos with the following captions, accompanied by a sad, popular song with lyrics chanting “come back”:15 Latif is 3 years old. Azra is 2 years old. Latif and Azra have been missing their mother’s scent for the last three weeks. Where is Berivan? She argued

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¨ host of Among Ourselves with Serap Ezgu, Then, Serap Ezgu, ¨ listed the possible misfortunes that might have befallen Berivan: Berivan disappeared mysteriously. Where did she go? Where is she now? Is she in a position where she can’t even call her children whom she is devoted to? Is she in a difficult position? Is she alive? Did she fall victim to people with bad intentions? Was she abducted? Is she being kept somewhere by force? Is she under so much pressure that she can’t even call and hear her children’s voices?

After such an introduction, typically, the interrogation of the studio guests begins. First, an inquiry is made about the circumstances of her disappearance, especially whether or not there were any problems in her marriage, which is usually dismissed by the family member pleading for her return. After listening to Berivan’s husband and mother, Ezgu¨ dismissed the possibility of a marriage problem with the following statement: ¨ Ozhan is a handsome husband, a father, who has a job, who takes care of his family and does not have an apparent problem at home.

Ezgu¨ was equally confident that Berivan could not have left home to lead a dishonorable life: ¨ What Ozhan and Berivan’s mother are telling us indicates that Berivan would not have left home, that she didn’t have a life like that.

¨ Ozhan, Berivan’s husband, firmly believed that Berivan must have been abducted. He said that, otherwise, his wife would have called him, because they had a relationship based on trust and sincerity: There is such sincerity between me and Berivan that she should have the courage to call me and say “I’ve done something wrong, I’m in a bad place.” I want to tell her: Whatever happened, you’re my wife, and that’s how we’ll die. No matter what the situation is, I will save you, God willing.

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Ultimately, to reassure Berivan that she should not be scared of any ¨ social embarrassment, Ozhan informed the audience that they would move away as soon as she came back: We planned to move away. Everything’s ready. God willing, the day she comes back, we’re leaving Istanbul.

Although it is unclear why the promise of moving away would ease Berivan’s fears of going back to her husband, it can be explained by the understanding that a woman, once she runs away and is apart from her husband, may have engaged in “dishonorable” activities, such as being with another man or even taking up prostitution. When such a suspicion is in place, a woman might be harassed by her neighbors, acquaintances and extended family members when she comes back. Kardam (2005), in her study on honor killings, explains how families choose to uproot themselves and move in case of a dishonorable act in the family, especially if they do not want to inflict a severe punishment on the woman who is implicated by the dishonorable act. The family is under pressure to do something to regain its prestige . . . When the family doesn’t want to act exactly according to the ways and means infused from the people around, then the only alternative remaining is to move to another place. Sometimes migration to other places and getting away from relatives and close friends may enable the family to end up with comparatively milder penalties regarding the case. (ibid., 43)

The repetitive use of certain expressions by both studio guests and hosts is also telling. Expressions such as doing something wrong and being in a bad place refer to a woman being with a man she is not related or married to, or entering a life of prostitution. If a woman leaves her conjugal home and somehow cannot take refuge in her parent’s home, it is believed that she will inevitably fall onto a bad path, which is code for “prostituting herself.” There might be some truth in the expectation that there is no other alternative than prostitution for a vanished woman. It is believed that she will not be able to start working and rent a place on her own, since it is not conceivable to STRs that it is possible for a woman to do so. Having a life like that is code for leading a dishonorable life, such as having extramarital relations. The fact that these expressions are used without clarification suggests that it is clear to both the hosts

“woman’s voice” as text: stories and structures underneath 105 and the guests what they imply. It also shows that the hosts expect the audience readily to know what these expressions mean. There is a sense in which these expectations are matter-of-fact and cannot be debated or challenged. As we shall see, no such expressions are used when cases of vanished men are covered. ¨ However, not all husbands are as understanding as Ozhan. For example, missing Saniye was sought by her mother, sister and brother-inlaw (sister’s husband) on Among Ourselves, aired on 25 October 2005. Saniye had allegedly become a member of a cell-phone chat group16 eight months previously, and dated some men she met through cell-chat. One of those men contacted the program through an on-air phone call and testified that he had had a date with Saniye in a park. Saniye’s disappearance was connected by her family to her friendship with a widowed woman in the neighborhood, whom she had befriended around the same time as she became a cell-chat member. As mentioned above, single or widowed women are considered threats to the neighborhood’s honor. In Saniye’s case, this woman was repeatedly contacted by the family regarding Saniye’s disappearance, and she claimed to have nothing to do with it. Saniye’s brother-in-law described the woman with the following words: Serdar: The woman [we blame for having a connection to Saniye’s disappearance] uses four different names. She sells perfumes, pots and pans in the neighborhood. That’s how she finds women with problems. She gets into contact with them and then they’re never heard from again. S.E.: What does she do after she gets in contact with these women? Does she lead them onto a bad path? Serdar: Probably. This conversation refers to a widely held myth that some evil women lead unsuspecting women to the “bad path” – that is, prostitution. Suspicions that Saniye fell onto a bad path apparently bothered her in-laws so profoundly that they decided not to have anything to do with her anymore. Ezgu¨ inquired why Saniye’s husband was not in the studio looking for his wife. Serdar, the brother-in-law (sister’s husband), responded: Serdar: Saniye’s husband came here before, to appear on your program to look for her. But his family told him that they would disown

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him if he went on the program. Therefore, he returned to Ankara without appearing on your program. S.E.: So, they told him, “We’ll disown you if you go on the program,” meaning, “Don’t look for your wife”? Serdar: Yes. S.E.: Do they want him to give up on his wife? Serdar: Currently, yes. Families continue to play a large role in married adults’ lives. There are many criteria according to which “good marriages” or “good spousal candidates” are measured. Families have a say in those choices because a bad choice in a wife may cast doubt on the whole family’s honor. A woman’s “value” automatically diminishes if she has had intercourse before marriage. As Delaney puts it, “the slightest shadow of doubt about a girl’s sexual activity diminishes if not negates her marriage value because it casts doubt on the potential security of her husband’s seed” (1991, 41). Having been raped or having been married before (both indicating that the woman is not a virgin) are highly stigmatized. Consider Cengiz’s following comment: She said she was raped by a teacher from Sivas. She said “we have t¨ore, as¸iret (honour killings),17 I came to build a nest with you.” I said to myself, Allah has struck her already; I shall not strike her too. I said I’d marry her. (Woman’s Voice, 30 November 2005)

Thus, Cengiz marries his wife despite the fact that she was raped. He saves her from a potential t¨ore or honor killing at her family’s hands. Cengiz, a father of a seven-year-old from a previous marriage, has an interesting reason to think of his wife as a good candidate for marriage: I had to get married, because I had a child. I had friends who had married women from the East before. They said women from the East take good care of children; therefore, I chose one from the East too.

Thus, Cengiz’s individual circumstances and his “obligation” to marry to have his son taken care of led him to make the “unusual” choice of marrying a woman who had been raped.

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3. Missing Men: Financial Problems or Another Woman? While the girl’s chastity is often the most important criterion in marriage prospects, the most important determinant of a man’s marriage prospects is his or his family’s financial situation. Drawing on data from fieldwork in two Kayseri villages in 1986, Incirlioˇglu reports: When the boy’s family evaluate girls as gelin18 candidates, they focus mainly on the individual. But when the girl’s family evaluate boys as sonin-law candidates, they focus on both the individual and his household. The evaluation of girls as good gelins, the evaluation of boys as good husbands for daughters, and the evaluation of boys’ families and households as good places for their daughters to live, are all, actually, the evaluation of the means of production, and of reproduction. In deciding whom their children will marry, the families decide about the way in which they will be reproduced, the way their social life will be reproduced, and the way the two – or rather three – generations will continue, or transform, general living conditions and relations. (Incirlioˇglu 1993, 117, italics in original)

Pierre Bourdieu argues that a “fine marriage” is aimed at by both families as part of their strategies to “maximize the economic and symbolic profits associated with setting up a new relationship” (1990a, 148).19 Thus, in the missing man cases two themes take the upper hand: economic problems and extramarital relationships. In all of these cases “economic problems” are blamed for the man’s disappearance, and the hand of “another woman” is looked for as a possible reason for the man to have abandoned his family. In contrast to the somber atmosphere in which missing women’s cases are covered, a calm and methodical tone is maintained in the coverage of missing men’s cases. The drama of missing women’s cases is virtually absent from the missing men’s cases. Kasım’s mother and sister attribute his disappearance to his chronic unemployment (Your Voice, 7 November 2005). Levent, on the other hand, is believed to have left after the economic crisis of 2001 drained his resources. Eventually, he became unemployed, got into credit card debt and started to have problems at home with his wife because of a combination of these factors (Your Voice, 29 November 2005). Fuat, according to his wife, became sick with “lung disease,” and could not run his coffeehouse during the time he had to stay in the hospital. When he

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could not pay his taxes afterwards, he is speculated to have succumbed to depression (Your Voice, 30 November 2005). These are stories of men who became depressed because they are not able to take care of their families. Since it is considered to be the man’s duty to provide for the family, the impression is given that these “honorable” men could not deal with this humiliation and decided to disappear. During Inci Ertuˇgrul’s interview with Aynur, Fuat’s wife, it became clear that the couple was childless. Although no problems were mentioned in relation to problems with conception and fertility, one audience member speculated on whether Fuat possibly might have left his home because they could not conceive a child: “I was wondering if he used to pressure [Aynur] because she can’t have children,” a female audience member asked. Aynur dismissed this question, and replied: “No, that wasn’t a problem.” It is interesting that when no such problem is even implied, a perceptive audience member can make a connection between a man’s disappearance (and hence his “unhappiness” in his marriage) and his childlessness. Her observation indicates a customary belief. Delaney observes that “unmarried men or married men who have not yet produced children are hardly considered full adults and have little to say in village affairs” (1991, 36, emphasis mine). Since the purpose of marriage is considered to be procreation, a childless marriage can be perceived as strange and pointless. The case of Pembe looking for her husband Mehmet aired on 27 October 2005 on Among Ourselves. This case differs from the ones mentioned above, since the issue of the “other woman” comes up during the coverage of this case. The lightheartedness with which this case was covered is indicative of the relaxed attitude towards a man’s disappearance and alleged infidelity, in stark contrast to the tense atmosphere a woman’s disappearance creates: S.E.: How did Mehmet Bey20 leave you? Was there another woman or something? Pembe: No, he used to buy and sell cars, but then he went bankrupt. He got into a lot of debt, so he wanted to sell the house. I didn’t ¨ want him to sell the house; I told him to work. But after the Duzce earthquake, he couldn’t find a job.21 S.E.: So, economic reasons played a role in his disappearance?

“woman’s voice” as text: stories and structures underneath 109 Pembe: Yes, yes, mainly, completely. He asked for help from his family, my family.22 When they didn’t help much and when I didn’t let him sell the house, he left. S.E.: And three years passed by. I’m asking the audience, do you think a woman entered his life during these three years? Pembe: A woman named Nefise left the neighborhood. Fifteen days after she left, my mother-in-law said she kicked my husband out. I ¨ don’t know, that was the information I received in Duzce. S.E.: So there could be a woman in his life. Pembe: There could be. So, I don’t want to spend my life waiting for him. If he’s coming back then he should, but if he’s not then he should say “Pembe, I don’t want you.” But he should take responsibility for his children. Although there was no hard evidence to suggest the existence of “another woman” in Mehmet’s life, Ezgu¨ started a poll among the audience surveying them on the question of whether or not a man would stay loyal to his wife even though they might be physically apart. S.E.: There are some men among the audience, too. I want to ask: Would a man stay well-behaved [uslu] without having a woman in his life, when he’s away from his wife for three years like this? The cameras showed a middle-aged man (audience member #1) shaking his head, indicating “No, he wouldn’t.” A woman sitting next to him also mouthed, “He won’t.” S.E.: Gentlemen, what do you say? He wouldn’t, right? (To a man who says “He would stay well-behaved” – audience member #2:) Is your wife with you? She is, that’s why you’re saying that. (To audience member #1 who said “He wouldn’t.”) Is your wife with you? She isn’t. I could tell. One of them doesn’t have his wife next to him – he said he wouldn’t behave. The other one said, “It depends on the man,” because his wife is with him. What would you do? (She gives audience member #2 a microphone.) Audience member #2: It depends on the man. Some men are loyal to their wives, even if he stays away from her five, ten years, he would stay loyal. Some men can’t wait three days (audience laughs). I, for example, have been married for 40 years.

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S.E.: You say you’re still waiting? (Laughter). Audience member #3 (male): A man would only wait up to a point. A similar discourse on men’s infidelity (c¸apkınlık), broke out unexpectedly on Woman’s Voice on 23 November 2005, in relation to a missing woman’s case. Erdal proclaimed that he loved his missing wife and would wait for her until he died if he had to. In response, Tanyeli, the celebrity guest in the studio, exclaimed: “No offense, but I don’t believe you.” Tanyeli, a famous belly dancer, who was one of the few celebrity guests encountered in my sample, explained why she did not believe him: I’m raising two boys. If you permit me, I know from my boys the psychology of men. From birth, men are inherently womanizers, c¸apkın. (Raising her voice.) Do not lie here now!

In the Turkish public sphere, there is a widespread discourse on c¸apkınlık, womanizing, as something to be proud of. Even when it implies a man’s infidelity in marriage, it is preached that it should be forgiven. Tanyeli commented on the case of a woman, Ays¸e, who wanted her husband to divorce her because he had eloped with a young woman: When you have children, you need to make sacrifices in your marriage. Maybe we should be brave. I definitely agree with that. I’m in favor of following our traditions, mores, family structures . . . According to that, the female bird makes the nest but destroys the nest too.23 You should have ignored it [his extra-marital relationship] for a while. But it seems like he crossed the line a little bit. So, get a divorce, you’re right.

Later, when Bozkurt interviewed Tanyeli about her marriage, Tanyeli confessed to her own marital problems: Tanyeli: I’ve been married for nine years. Don’t misunderstand, but I’m not going to tell some young girl, “Here, take my husband,” and leave just because he cheated on me for two months. This is who I am. I’m being frank . . . My husband lives in Australia for six, seven months out of the year. Ultimately, he’s a man. (To the audience, which is invisible to the home viewer.) Do you not agree? You may not think so. I’m not trying to seem sympathetic to men or anything, but this is the truth. I’m sorry but any woman who says she’s not being cheated on is stupid. Maybe 10 per cent are not deceived, but

“woman’s voice” as text: stories and structures underneath 111 those might be emotional men. But men and women are different anyway. We women value love and compassion. Y.B.: Is it better if he’s cheating on you for sex or if he’s in love with another woman? Nowadays, this is being talked about: [Women say] if there’s sex but no love, I can forgive that. Tanyeli: Look, I’ll forgive that, but consider this too. If he lived here and we lived together and he cheated on me, I wouldn’t forgive that. But for seven months he’s in Australia, he’s handsome, like a lion [aslan gibi].24 Every man needs a woman. He has my blessing whatever he does! Y.B. (to the audience): Does anyone agree with Tanyeli? Audience 1 (female): Yes, I agree. She’s right. They’re apart for six, seven months. Y.B.: But Tanyeli, you are also away from him for seven months. A man has needs, but doesn’t a woman have needs too? Tanyeli: I grew up in my paternal grandmother’s patriarchal household. Y.B.: Can you suppress your feelings? Tanyeli: I believe that women have a will, that they’re very strong and they cannot live without emotions. Y.B.: OK, so you’re saying, “If a man does it, I’ll look the other way.” Who else wants to say something? Audience 2 (female, older): It’s wrong. Tanyeli (sarcastically): Okay, with your help, I’ll get a divorce today. A2: I think it’s objectionable that he does this, even though he’s far away. I mean, how do you know that he doesn’t cheat when he’s with you too? Tanyeli: I wouldn’t forgive that. A2: But you wouldn’t know it even if he does it. Y.B.: Does it not hurt your feelings? Tanyeli: It used to, it doesn’t anymore. Y.B.: Maybe you love him less. Tanyeli: No, it’s not that. I feel sorry for him too. He’s a man like a lion [aslan gibi adam]. He’s trying to make a living over there. We’re raising two kids. Y.B.: But you’re also trying to make a living here.

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Despite Bozkurt’s efforts to moderate Tanyeli’s favorable discourse on male infidelity, this section pinpoints Tanyeli’s expression of the widespread notion that men’s infidelity can be overlooked, and that men are considered as womanizing libertines by nature, whereas women value emotions more and can therefore suppress their sexuality. Tanyeli’s candor, the vehemence with which she defended herself and her situation, and her efforts at justification of her position are striking. It is indicative, in my opinion, of how much she was struggling with this.25 Tanyeli’s discourse also relates to the “honorable housewife” versus the “free celebrity” discourse. Tanyeli later referred to this dichotomy: I married for love. I left my life, my career, behind. Without looking back, I left “Tanyeli” at the door and became a housewife.26

The debate on whether women should forgive men who cheat is a ubiquitous one in women’s journals, paparazzi magazines and mainstream ¨ media. For years, Hulya Avs¸ar, a famous singer and actress, made headlines by announcing that she forgave her cheating husband, after pictures of him with other women appeared numerous times on TV and in magazines. She also repeatedly argued that every woman was cheated on, and that those who believed otherwise were simply na¨ıve. It may be that these famous women believe that by displaying their beauty to men, they break the “honor” contract specifying that the display of a woman’s sexuality is reserved to her husband’s eyes only. Since they breach this contract, perhaps they consider overlooking their husbands’ infidelity as a price to pay in exchange for fame and money. In contrast to cases of missing women, in which even the implication of “another man” is a source for extreme discomfort and tension for the family, and which are therefore covered very carefully, cases of missing men are treated lightheartedly, with references made to “other women” even when there is no evidence for it.

4. Missing or Eloped Children: Marriages, Honor and Children The majority of this category is constituted by missing children’s cases. These children are sought by their parents or siblings. Usually, the circumstances around their disappearance are recounted, their pictures are

“woman’s voice” as text: stories and structures underneath 113 shown, and calls are made for their return. There are, however, three cases in my sample belonging to this category in which it turns out that a young unmarried woman has eloped with a man of whom her parents do not approve. These cases deserve special attention since they are indicative of the ways in which a young girl’s impromptu “marriage” to an unwanted son-in-law is viewed by her parents, and how such an event is covered on WV. The first case is interesting in its treatment of the topic of intersecterian marriage (between a Sunni and an Alevi) and the taboos surrounding it. This constitutes one of the most unexpectedly subversive moments on WV. This topic clearly made host Yasemin Bozkurt very uneasy, since discourse on intersecterian marriage is virtually absent from Turkish mainstream television, and is something of a taboo. Twentyyear-old C ¸ iˇgdem was believed to have eloped with her boyfriend. While in Bozkurt’s interview with C ¸ iˇgdem no references were made to religious sect, the issue came up during her father’s plea to effect her return: C ¸ iˇgdem’s father: These people may be conservative. They may be religious. I come from the Alevi culture. These people may be Sunni, but this is not my problem. Y.B.: You’re right. C ¸ .F.: Religion is just a way of worship; it’s a way of belief. I’m not against that. I will not put his religion, his sect, into my pocket and carry it home. Y.B.: Bravo. Very nice. C ¸ .F.: He can go worship in the mosque, I’ll do it in the Cemevi, another one will do it in the church. Nobody can challenge this. If my daughter comes and says, “I love this person, I’ll marry him,” I’m not against that. This unexpected discourse on marriage and sect was abruptly interrupted by Bozkurt, who announced that they should conclude to allow the news hour to begin on time. Such issues are still to some extent taboo on mainstream television because the Turkish state chooses to ignore the divisions of sect and ethnicity in order to perpetuate the myth of a single nation, 99 per cent of which is supposedly ethnically Turkish and religiously Sunni. However, it is well known that the Alevis constitute a sizable religious and cultural group in Turkey27 (Van Bruinessen 1999).

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Although no data exist on exogamy between members of Alevi and Sunni sects, it can be expected that they tend to marry within their own group. In fact, one of my respondents, Barıs¸, also referred to an Alevi girlfriend he had who he had to stop seeing because her mother did not want them to date. The second case reveals other values around “honor.” Esen’s 16-year ¨ old daughter Gozde had been missing for the previous three and a half years. Esen recounted on Your Voice, aired on 29 November 2005, that ¨ Gozde had probably been abducted by their landlord’s son, with whom she had attempted to elope once before. While the police could not find ¨ evidence that Gozde was indeed with the said man, the family strongly believed that she was. At one point Esen told the audience: They [the man’s family] lived in the adjacent building; therefore, when my daughter disappeared like that, of course we had to find another place and moved right away. We could not live in the same building because then we would have to face them all the time.

Although it seems strange that the family had to move, it can be explained by the social embarrassment they must have felt from their daughter’s disappearance. Especially when no conclusion could be drawn that their daughter was with the landlord’s son, the family must have felt further embarrassed to have blamed their landlord’s family and, with that embarrassment exacerbated by the dishonorable behavior of their daughter, must have had to leave their neighborhood so that they could start with a clean slate. As explained above, this is a common way of escaping social sanctions such as “honor killings.” ¨ The missing Gozde was located when she called the program and announced that she had “gotten married.” Because she was 16 and Turkish law does not allow minors under 17 to marry without their ¨ parents’ consent, Gozde could not be legally married.28 However, she considered herself, and was considered by her family, to be “married.” Although this was not explicitly said, as soon as it became clear that she had been with the suspected man, sexual relations were assumed and ¨ ¨ Gozde was indeed considered to be “his wife.” It seems as if Gozde had been married in a religious ceremony. In Turkey, when legal marriage is not an option, or is inconvenient, a religious wedding presided over by

“woman’s voice” as text: stories and structures underneath 115 an imam is conducted.29 The religious marriage is sufficient to legitimize a couple’s union in the eyes of the collectivity: Sometimes . . . it is not possible to have a civil marriage. Because the mother of one bride was not “legally” married, the bride had no birth certificate; without a birth certificate she could not have a civil nikah, but only the religious one. In village eyes, she was quite definitely married. (Delaney 1991, 134)

¨ Inci Ertuˇgrul problematized Gozde’s “unmarried status” on the grounds that she was not legally married. In fact, religious marriage is condemned every time it is mentioned on all three programs by all three hosts as “no marriage at all.” However, instead of listing its disadvantages for women, hosts usually only concentrate on its illegality. It is not mentioned that women who are not married legally simply cannot benefit from the rights accorded to them by law, such as inheritance and child custody. Another major disadvantage of a religious marriage is that, until recently, children born out of this officially unrecognized conjugal union could not obtain birth certificates (or identity cards) because they could not claim “clear parentage.”30 An interesting aspect of the category of eloped single girls is that, unlike in the cases of married missing women, the family’s honor is not considered to have been irrevocably destroyed by this act. Therefore, the families are quite happy with recovering their daughters even though they turn out to be with a man they originally did not approve of. Kardam (2005) reports a similar finding from her study of honor killings, where only five of 29 cases in her sample involving young unmarried girls running away with a man ended in murder, while the ratio is considerably higher if a married woman is involved. Kardam explains that the reason for the relative tolerance for unmarried girls eloping is that “that position prepares the ground for a bargain to marry the couple” (ibid., 35). However, when young women rebel to avoid an arranged marriage with someone they do not know and marry people outside of their parents’ pool of desirable candidates, they might ultimately break all ties with their families, who are potentially the only people they can turn to when problems appear in the marriage. Emine, for example, who appeared on Among Ourselves on 28 October 2005, told the audience that she

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could not turn to her family for help even when she was tortured by her husband because her family had been against the marriage in the first place: I was the one who wanted to marry him. My family was against it. I thought to myself, “I wanted this.” I hoped that maybe it would get better. I said, “I made this yuva, nest, so I’ll try to hold it up as long as I can.”

Thus, young women may lose their family’s support with their decision to marry someone their family does not approve of, which in turn puts them in a vulnerable position in the case of problems such as domestic violence.31 In the eyes of the men, on the other hand, eloping might be an indication of the woman’s future potential dishonorable behavior. Kardam gives the example of a man in their study who “was practicing intense violence against the woman which he rationalized by saying ‘since you ran away with me, you would also do it with others’” (2005, 36).

5. The Orphanage Scandal: Orphans or Abandoned Children? In order to make sense of the next section, I have to explain here the orphanage scandal covered on Among Ourselves in October 2005. On 25 October the mistreatment of children in orphanages at the hands of their caretakers was covered in a current affairs program, Des¸ifre. During the next few weeks, the Turkish media was obsessively occupied with this scandal. Among Ourselves talked about this issue on three consecutive days, starting on 26 October. As we will see, their coverage included as studio guests adults who had grown up in orphanages and experienced abuse firsthand. ¨ Mehmet Ali Onel, the producer of Des¸ifre, explained to Serap Ezgu¨ on 27 October 2005 in an on-air telephone conversation that, upon receiving a tip regarding suspected abuse, they placed some hidden cameras in a Malatya32 orphanage. The gruesome footage obtained shows female caretakers beating up the children with shoes, washing them with excessively hot water, and hitting and humiliating them as they cry and protest. The children seen are approximately six or seven years old. This disturbing footage was shown repeatedly on Among Ourselves on

“woman’s voice” as text: stories and structures underneath 117 that day. The audience was informed that many Malatya residents had been protesting in front of the orphanage, outraged by the footage of abuse. Ezgu¨ notes that, although complaints had previously been filed alleging abuse at this orphanage, nothing had been done until the media took up the issue. It was reported on Among Ourselves that, after Des¸ifre aired the footage on 25 October, an investigation was initiated by the Office for Social and Child Protective Services, and the suspects were taken into custody. In response to the studio audience’s comments blaming the sus¨ pected caretakers as “inhuman,” Onel as well as the program psychologist ¨ Tanju Surmeli told the audience that these women were state employees who worked on a minimum wage salary and did not know better than to discipline the kids with violence. It was mentioned that the parties accountable for the abuse were the state officials who had hired these unqualified people as caretakers. Other systemic problems were identified, such as the overpopulation of the orphanages and the caretaker-to-child ratio. This was confirmed by a member of the studio audience, who told Ezgu¨ that she used to work as a caretaker in an orphanage, and that on some days one caretaker would be responsible for 20 children at a time. It was mentioned that the parents and relatives of the children staying at the orphanages were among those who were most outraged by the footage showing the abuse. Thus, it became clear that many children in the orphanages were not “orphans,” but children left by their parents or relatives at the orphanage. Ezgu¨ warned the people who might consider sending their children to an orphanage with these words: If you can’t give your own child love, compassion and commitment at home, do you think a few caretakers will be able to do that in a place where hundreds of children live? That is not possible. The footage you’re about to see will make many families rethink, who are considering giving their children up to the orphanage. Please, if you can’t give love, compassion, care to your children, don’t bring them to life. Use birth control methods, there’s so many of them around.

The next section will talk about some of the circumstances in which children may be left in orphanages even though they have a living parent. As we will see, “honor codes” also have something to do with this practice.

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6. Other Missing Loved Ones Most of the ten cases of “other missing loved ones” consist of stories of adults who grew up not knowing their fathers, mothers or siblings. The cases of individuals looking for their mothers allow the audience to consider the cases of “mothers who cannot see their children” from the perspective of the children they have been separated from. One story is that of a man who was separated from his mother by his paternal aunt, and ultimately left in an orphanage. His case was treated in relation to the “orphanage scandal” mentioned above. Erkan was separated from his mother by his paternal relatives after his father died and his mother remarried. He grew up in an orphanage from the age of seven. He appeared on Among Ourselves on 28 October 2005, two days after the “orphanage scandal” was uncovered. It seemed as if the decision to include him as a studio guest was related to the producers’ intentions to have adults who had grown up in orphanages tell their individual stories to the public, and thus provide real-life examples of mistreatment there. Erkan was looking for his sister, with whom he had lost contact. This happened after Erkan has been removed from his mother by his paternal aunt and dropped off at an orphanage. Erkan told the audience that he blamed his paternal aunt for the fate that befell him: She destroyed my life. Her name appears in the “mother’s name” section of my identity card. If they were not going to be able to take care of me, why did they remove me from my mother?

The aunt, who connected to the program over the telephone, was appalled by this allegation: Look, I was a young woman back then. My late parents took Fatma and Erkan and brought them to our home after my brother passed away. I was working then. The kids didn’t have identity cards, and their mother had gotten married. My parents got them identity cards.33 My parents later gave Erkan to the orphanage so that he would have a future. We couldn’t get by on one salary. Those were our living conditions then. An acquaintance of ours wanted to pay for Fatma’s education, so she got a good education. Then she married an Englishman and moved to England. This is to the best of my knowledge.

“woman’s voice” as text: stories and structures underneath 119 Erkan claimed that his aunt gave his sister up for adoption, although the aunt denied the adoption part and insisted that an “acquaintance” simply paid for her education. Erkan related that his sister had been three years old when he last saw her. Erkan’s case reveals that children can be taken away from their mothers in the case of their father’s death even when the paternal relatives do not have the means to take care of them. Orphanages, which are loosely monitored by the state, are places where beatings and abuse occur frequently, and can be terrible places for children to grow up in. However, they are still preferred to their mother’s care. In Erkan’s case, we learn that his paternal aunt had actually known about the beatings at the orphanage that Erkan was subject to. Later, Erkan’s mother also connected to the program by phone. While crying, she repeatedly announced that she was happy to be reunited to her son, and she wanted to see her daughter as well. Ezgu¨ interviewed her using the informal you form, sen (although she sometimes addressed her guests with the formal, siz), and blamed her for not having contacted her children. After all, this woman had a thick rural accent and sounded uneducated. She was apparently the ultimate cahil, “ignorant other,” ¨ eyes, and therefore she deserved the informal “you,” and no in Ezgu’s sympathy for her pain: S.E.: Why aren’t you here looking for your daughter? You left them 30 years ago and now you say “I want my daughter”! Erkan’s mother (crying): She took them away from me! S.E.: Who did? The paternal aunt? E.M.: Yes, she did. S.E.: Didn’t you ever call them to see your children? E.M.: I had no [inaudible] . . . S.E.: You didn’t have what? Erkan: She says she had no idea. She’s an ignorant person. She’s illiterate. Later, when Erkan told Ezgu¨ that he was only able to find his mother 27 years after he had been separated from her, and even then only saw her on religious holidays, Ezgu¨ made the following comment: “Why is she crying, then? She’s obviously not devoted to her children.” As I will illustrate in Chapter 5, this is a manifestation of the inability or

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unwillingness of Ezgu¨ (and of other WV hosts) to place the issue of children being taken away from their mothers after divorce or father’s death in a general context. This is curious, considering that the hosts hear many stories involving the same problem, day in and day out. Each case is covered individually, and individuals are criticized with expressions such as “This is wrong, don’t do this,” as if their decisions are made outside of the social structure. A more general social critique of such practices is lacking. So the discourse remains at the level of “who’s right and who’s wrong,” as in Erkan’s case. Erkan is not the only example of someone who was given to the orphanage as a child. So was Burcu’s sister. Burcu appeared on Among Ourselves on 24 October 2005 to look for her half-sister, whom she had never met before. We learned that the half-sister was born as a result of rape, 28 years before. One thing to note in the coverage of this case is the avoidance of the mention of “rape,” and the various other names given to it before it is referred to as what it is. The caption introducing Burcu read: An extramarital relationship 28 years ago . . . A child is born . . . A mother in grief . . . A young woman who learns she has a sister 28 years later . . . Will Burcu meet her sister who was born from her mother’s extramarital relationship?

Serap Ezgu¨ introduced Burcu’s story with the following words: The way Burcu learned she had a sister was when her husband told her: I heard your mother had a child from a forced relationship.

When Burcu entered the studio with large sunglasses covering half of her face, Ezgu¨ explained: Burcu wanted to wear sunglasses, and the cameras won’t zoom in on her. She doesn’t want to reveal herself too much. That’s understandable, because this [the sister she is looking for] wasn’t a baby that came to life through a normal relationship. This pregnancy happened as a result of an unfortunate event.

Note that, so far, the word “rape” has not been uttered. Rape has been called an extramarital relationship, a forced relationship, an abnormal relationship and an unfortunate event. Finally, Burcu was the one who

“woman’s voice” as text: stories and structures underneath 121 uttered it, albeit not without a clarification: “My mother was raped”; and then she added, “involuntarily, when she was 12 or 13.” Even when the act is called rape, the word has to be clarified as involuntary, and “rape so to speak” as seen below. The caption that called the rape an “extramarital relationship” was never changed – not even the next day, when Burcu reappeared on the program. Later, we learned what had happened to the baby through Burcu’s narration: My mother didn’t know she was pregnant. She was very young. Then her belly started swelling and her uncles noticed. They pressed charges; the guy was put in jail. The child that was born was given to the orphanage. From there she was adopted, as far as we know.

The uncle who gave the child to the orphanage was later connected to the program. However, he refused to disclose their family name, which Burcu had not disclosed either. “I gave that information to the producers backstage. If I give the last name, everything will be revealed!” he exclaimed in a frustrated tone. Eventually, Ezgu¨ grew weary of this withholding of information: Burcu’s mom had no fault in whatever happened 28 years ago! It happened forcefully! This was a rape so to speak. Burcu’s mom has nothing to be ashamed of, especially after 28 years! You [family members] have to share information with us if Burcu wants to find her sister.

This segment shows that even rape might be considered to be a woman’s fault, and that the family honor is considered to have been destroyed through this “dishonorable” act. Research shows that rape is considered a dishonorable act, which may warrant an honor killing of the victim, the perpetrator, or both (Kardam 2005). The fact that rape is considered to be the victim’s fault can be explained in light of Fatima Mernissi’s (1987) theory regarding Islam’s view of women’s sexuality. Drawing on Imam Gazali’s twelfth-century interpretation of both the Qur’an and hadith, Mernissi argues that Islam views women’s sexuality as active and consequently destructive. If not harnessed in the right way through marriage at an early age, woman’s sexuality may cause fitna, or chaos. Thus, in the case of rape, since the woman must have been the temptress, the man is only believed to have failed to resist the seduction, rather than being an initiator or perpetrator. Accordingly, being raped is predominantly the

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woman’s fault, because she must have done something to attract sexual desire, rather than modestly hiding her sexual prowess. In Burcu’s sister’s case, an honor killing did not occur. Instead, to cleanse their honor, the family refused any connections to the baby born as a result of the rape. The family gave the baby up to the orphanage, married off Burcu’s mother immediately at the age of 14, and tried to distance themselves from the event as much as possible. The distancing still continued after 28 years, as was manifested by Burcu’s appearance on the program with sunglasses and the family’s reluctance to reveal their last name. To make matters worse, the producers were insensitive enough to call a rape an extramarital relationship. On the other hand, rape, a taboo topic, was talked about. I argue that Burcu’s appearance on WV subverts the silence about this atrocious act in the public sphere. In the discursive space that WV provides, a young woman had a chance to claim a child of rape as her sister and announce her love for her, even though she may have been born “dishonorably.” Although the statistics are not known, it is believed that rape and incest are very common in Turkish society. Public silence about it may, however, discourage victims from reporting the crime. Being a victim of rape and having to live with it silently may lead to mental problems, or even suicide. Television may be argued to open up a space through which women might find the courage to talk about such difficult topics and come to terms with them.

7. Father’s Pleas to See Their Children In contrast to eight cases of mothers pleading to see their children, only three fathers were identified in my sample as requesting to see their children who were being kept away from them by their mothers. However, through these cases, other prejudices and views were revealed. Veysel was a 39-year-old man who grew up in an orphanage. Like Erkan’s story above, his case was also handled with reference to the “orphanage scandal” that was covered the day before. Serap Ezgu¨ summarized Veysel’s case as follows (Among Ourselves, 27 October 2005): Veysel was unlucky from birth. He had three other siblings. When his parents divorced, his father gave two of his siblings to his mother. They

“woman’s voice” as text: stories and structures underneath 123 gave the other one up for adoption. Veysel, on the other hand, was a little frail, a little neglected, so they said “this one won’t survive,” and put him in the orphanage.

After Veysel was released from the orphanage at the age of 18 (as the law stipulates), he had a difficult time (like many orphans) pulling himself together. He slept on the streets for 10 years, unable to hold down a job. In the meantime, he fell in love with a woman, and they eloped and married. But, his luck did not change: Veysel: I got married but her parents kept saying “He grew up in an orphanage, he grew up on the streets, this one will sell you, market you, this and that . . . ”34 S.E.: They thought you would not appreciate family life? Veysel: Yes, I was excluded, sidelined by her family. Ultimately, they took my wife away from me. After me, she changed three husbands. We don’t know where she is. She had a child with each husband, that’s the gossip we hear. I mean, I may be bad, I may just be trying to justify myself, but she has three children after me. Right now, I have an 11-year-old son, but I haven’t even seen his face. Two issues come up in Veysel’s discourse. The first one is the way in which one’s family is a bargaining chip in the game of marriage. As shown above, one of the most important criteria in choosing a suitable son-in-law is the candidate’s family, as well as his individual characteristics (such as his economic prospects). “K¨ok as root or origin . . . refers to the ata (fatherancestor) or dede (grandfather) from whom one traces one’s descent” (Delaney 1991, 150). The patriline continues through men, and without belonging to a legitimate lineage, Veysel is unable to prove that his roots are honorable. Second, Veysel’s references to his ex-wife’s subsequent marriages once again indicate that a woman who has divorced and married many times can be viewed with suspicion as well. Here, Veysel was trying to argue that, even though he was suspected of being “dishonorable” since he had grown up in an orphanage (away from his legitimate lineage), ultimately, his wife turned out to be the “dishonorable one,” as was indicated by her three marriages after Veysel.

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Nuri, who was also pleading to see his children, made a similar reference to his ex-wife’s “widow” status when he married her. However, he was abruptly interrupted by Inci Ertuˇgrul who noticed that he was going to allege some dishonorable behavior (Your Voice, 30 November 2005): Nuri: I’ll tell you something. My wife was a widow when I married her. I.E.: That’s irrelevant. Nuri: I’ll tell you this. She has a child from her first marriage. Her kid came to me 1.5 years ago and said this . . . If a kid can say that about his own mother . . . I.E. (quickly interrupting): Please don’t say anything ugly or hurtful. Our subject here isn’t your ex-wife’s old mistakes. However, Ertuˇgrul sided with Nuri when he told the audience that his ex-wife had introduced her new husband to her child as his real father. Nuri alleged that his child thought Nuri was his maternal uncle (dayı). Later, Nuri’s ex-wife connected to the program by phone and alleged that she had left Nuri because he battered both her and her child, then six months old. She explained that she intended to tell her son that Nuri was his biological father, but she wanted to do that in the presence of psychologists, so that the child was not emotionally affected. As we have seen, whose “seed” a child comes from and whether or not he or she can claim legitimate descent from a lineage play a great role in the child’s future life. A child of rape is the most disadvantaged of all. Children whose fathers die or whose mothers remarry after divorcing their fathers can be taken away from their mothers, even though that means that they will be left in an orphanage. The state fails to maintain orphanages as safe havens for children, free from abuse and violence. Watching WV provides an insight into the phenomenology of action, into why social agents do what they do.

8. Pleas for Divorce Among the four individuals who pleaded for divorce in my sample, one was male and three were female. Fahri’s case indicates how marrying ´ dul woman is filled with “dangers.” Men who have married a divorcee,

“woman’s voice” as text: stories and structures underneath 125 a dul woman knowingly (sometimes women hide a previous marriage) and then have problems face the criticism: “You asked for it when you married a dul woman.” Fahri, who appeared on live episodes of Your Voice on 7 and 8 November 2005, was a 30-year-old man making a plea for a divorce from his wife, who had left their home a month before. We learned that Fahri’s wife had been married twice before, which had been kept a secret from Fahri: Fahri: I can’t call her my wife anymore. She went back to her previous husband with whom she had a religious marriage. Audience (female): You’ve made a mistake from the beginning. You took a woman a stranger has left. She went back to him, you made the mistake. ... Fahri: My lawyer told me, “Son, you can’t make a wife out of this woman, you should divorce her immediately.” ... A: You did a legal marriage? Fahri: Yes, I did the legal marriage. Now she wants alimony from me. A: She’ll spend that with the other guy. Fahri: Yes, she will. What kind of justice is this? What kind of a country is this? I don’t know how many husbands she’ll have . . . Ays¸e, on the other hand, was a woman pleading for a divorce from her husband, who had “eloped” with an 18-year-old girl. When Ays¸e appeared on Woman’s Voice on 23 November 2005, Yasemin Bozkurt was pleasantly surprised by her courage and candor: Ays¸e: I heard the girl [he eloped with] is four months pregnant. He should come out and divorce me. Y.B.: What’s that you said? Ays¸e: He should come out and divorce me. Y.B.: Didn’t you come here to ask him to return? Ays¸e: No no, I definitely don’t want that person anymore. Y.B. (giving a thumbs up): Braveheart (says in English). I thought you were going to call out to him, say, “Come save your nest [yuva].”

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Ays¸e: No, I don’t want that. I’ll take care of my children as well as I can. But I won’t surrender my children to anybody in his family. I can’t. I opened up an alimony trial. He tells me, “I can’t get a divorce, I don’t have money, I don’t have anything.” But he should divorce me so I can marry somebody else! Y.B. (laughter): That’s it! (Applause) Later, an audience member lauded Ays¸e with these words: I praise you from my heart. You’ve been a great example for women. I say “victory.” I wish you happiness in your new life.

Ays¸e’s declaration of no longer wanting her husband back, her refusal to surrender her children to her husband’s family, her belief in her ability to take care of her children “as best as she can,” and her request for a divorce and alimony created a subversive discourse on WV. Ays¸e carried some visible signs of an “ignorant peasant woman,” with her baggy trousers (s¸alvar) and headscarf, which rendered her message even more effective. Yasemin Bozkurt clearly did not expect this much courage from her. The sympathy that Ays¸e received from Bozkurt and the audience was probably also due to the fact that her husband had committed adultery with a young girl. This is usually seen as legitimate grounds for divorce on WV programs.35 We have seen in this section that many WV guests live according to some rules and laws considered legitimate by them and in their surroundings. Prejudices are held against women who have been married before; rape is considered partly the victim’s fault; and both men and women need to establish a legitimate lineage in order to enjoy high regard in society. Different criteria apply to men and women with respect to marriage. Whereas a woman’s chastity is the biggest factor determining her marriage prospects, men are valued in terms of their family’s symbolic (honor) and economic status. When a woman wants to leave her husband, she has to go back to her parents’ house, otherwise her dignity will be questioned. In the case of a divorce or the husband’s death, the woman will have to leave her children in her in-laws’ care, especially if she wants to remarry. A woman’s disappearance implies an offense to her and her family’s honor. That is partly because, when a woman disappears and does

“woman’s voice” as text: stories and structures underneath 127 not seek the protection of one of the bearers of her honor, she is considered “open” to the dangers of falling onto a bad path. As we saw, a single, divorced or widowed woman living without a man to protect her honor is viewed suspiciously by the collectivity, and is imagined to have the potential to lure the other women she comes in contact with into a mistake. Next, I would like to look at some of the reasons why it is so difficult for single or divorced women to start new lives. It is a societal bias that is reinforced by the media (including WV) that an unmarried woman’s only chance at an honorable life is marriage. Employment is not considered an option because of prejudices surrounding women’s employment, as well as other national economic factors discussed in Chapter 1. The next section will illuminate some of these social prejudices underlying women’s supposed reluctance to work, and their systemic exclusion from the workforce.

Women’s Work, Materialism, and Matchmaking Sessions Women are often blamed for being “materialistic” by guests and hosts on WV. In the process, it is overlooked that women’s access to employment is filled with hindrances, dangers and preconceptions. In “missing woman” cases, some men allege that their wives left them because of financial problems. It seems as if blaming financial problems provides a psychological relief for men who cannot accept the fact they have been abandoned. Hasan is one of those men who blamed financial problems for his wife leaving him (Among Ourselves, 24 October 2005). Ays¸e, Hasan’s wife, connected to the program through the telephone and explained: Ays¸e: First of all, I didn’t leave unexpectedly. I left after talking to him, explaining to him, sharing my thoughts with him. I prevented a marriage from going on that wasn’t going to last. S.E.: But what was the problem between you two? Was it just financial problems? Ays¸e: No, I’m over the financial matters. It was personality. I stopped being able to understand him. I don’t understand the things he does, what he thinks. And he can’t deny that I tried to make it work.

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¨ who rarely gives up until she sucUpon Ays¸e’s statement, even Ezgu, cessfully reconciles marriages, advised Hasan to let her go in a “civilized manner”: S.E.: The same woman who married you with her free will 1.5 years ago wants a divorce today with her own free will. What needs to be done is to end this in a civilized manner. Okay? Since it is the man’s principal responsibility to provide for his wife, divorce initiated by a woman is only acceptable if the man is not providing for his family. Delaney makes a similar observation when she analyzes ¨ one of the very few instances of divorce in the village of Gokler, where she conducted field research: What troubled people was not that Murat beat her, but that he beat her because there was no food – an ayıp36 thing to do since providing food was his responsibility, not hers. Although most men and some women felt that she was wrong to leave because “yuva yıkıldı” (the nest is destroyed), they also blame Murat because he did not provide for his aile.37 (Delaney 1991, 180)

Although men are supposed to be the primary breadwinners and employment is not expected from women, women who “left their husband because he was unemployed” are not treated with sympathy on WV. Women are expected to endure existing hardships and support their husbands because “the man took care of her” in the past. During these conversations, the difficulties of women taking up employment are neither mentioned nor implied.38 Yasemin Bozkurt had the following con¨ versation with Munevver on 22 November 2005 when she telephoned ¨ into the program. Munevver was alleged to have left her husband on grounds of his unemployment. ¨ Y.B.: I’m curious about something. Munevver Hanım.39 You’ve been married for 14 years to your husband. Your husband has been unemployed for the last two years. But for the 12 years before that, he worked, labored. Why don’t you want this man anymore? Is it because he’s unemployed? He took care of you for 12 years. I mean, I’m not on his side or anything, but I was curious. What can he do? There’s an unemployment problem in Turkey. What can the man do? Are there any other problems? Would a woman divorce her

“woman’s voice” as text: stories and structures underneath 129 husband just because he’s unemployed? I don’t know, that doesn’t seem right to me. As a woman, I don’t think I would do it. ¨ Munevver: I don’t want to get into all that, Yasemin Hanım. I don’t want him to be humiliated, and I don’t want my children to be humiliated either. Therefore, I don’t want to talk about this. He knows the reasons. ¨ Munevver, like Ays¸e, did not seem to be interested in reconciliation. However, both Ezgu¨ and Bozkurt relentlessly try for a reconciliation, since they feel that the success of their programs depends on these happy endings. Sometimes, they take the reconciliation attempts to such extremes that they do not realize how their comments border on misogyny. ¨ Bozkurt ultimately said to Munevver: Y.B.: The number one problem in Turkey is unemployment. Since in Turkey employment falls on the men’s shoulders, as a man, he felt nervous and anxious. I think you should give him another chance. The only case of an employed woman that was covered somewhat positively was that of Nebahat. Nebahat is a female night-time taxi driver. Bozkurt apparently was her customer one night, and later invited her to the program as an interesting and affirmative example for women (Woman’s Voice, 30 November 2005). Bozkurt introduced Nebahat to the audience with these words: Imagine that you have established your life, you’re married and happy. You have children. This is your plan A. But imagine that one day your husband dies, or you get divorced, you’re left alone with your children, and you don’t have a profession, a job. If you don’t have a plan B, you’re really in a difficult situation. I saw her at the wheel one night. She was driving a taxi on the streets of Istanbul just like the “driver Nebahat”40 from the movies. I slowly sneaked into her life story. I will tell you the story of a woman who changed her life after the age of 45, who survived with plan B.

As Bozkurt’s introduction suggests, marriage and children are considered plan A, the master plan. Employment is part of plan B, which should be resorted to if plan A fails. Bozkurt seems to intend to warn her female audience that the master plans do fail sometimes, and in that case one must be prepared to take up plan B, employment. While Nebahat’s

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matter-of-fact narration of her “unusual job” is refreshingly progressive, Bozkurt undermines it repeatedly with her emphasis on employment as a secondary, complementary, last-resort endeavor. Despite Bozkurt’s repetitive emphasis on the dangers of being a female night-time taxi driver in a big city like Istanbul, Nebahat minimizes these negative factors. Her son, who telephoned in to the program, strengthened this almost empowering discourse: I am proud of my mother. She is the kind of woman who can compete with men under equal conditions and win the struggle of making a living.

Also, Nebahat’s co-workers call the program to express their respect and support for her: We support her. She manages to do a difficult thing. She occupies a very difficult profession as a woman. We would like to congratulate her.

Matchmaking This segment only appears in Yasemin Bozkurt’s Woman’s Voice. Compared with the gloom and tension of other sections, the atmosphere of the “matchmaking” segments is rather lighthearted and entertaining. It seems as if Bozkurt includes these sections in her program because they provide the show with a different pace and mood. Despite their cheerfulness, three main themes come up during these sections: the emphasis placed on marriage; women’s “materialism”; and the importance placed on a man’s ability to provide for the woman and how that determines his marriage prospects. The general tone of these segments is playful, with the audience applauding, commenting among themselves about the candidates, and the host playing the role of a proper “matchmaker” who asks the necessary questions. The guests, especially women, seem embarrassed to be looking for marriage on television (or act that way in order not to look desperate to get married, as a certain amount of bashfulness is expected). The most important criterion for a man’s prospects for marriage seems to be his wealth and/or occupation. With a female candidate, on the other hand, the emphasis is on physical properties. While men receive questions about their income or accumulated wealth, women receive

“woman’s voice” as text: stories and structures underneath 131 questions concerning their age, weight, height, whether or not they have been married before, number of children, where their children live (with her or separately), and so on. In my sample, there is even one instance where the female guest in the studio was asked to get up and turn around in front of the camera upon a request from a prospective candidate. The request was fulfilled by the bashful guest upon Bozkurt’s enthusiastic cheer. Most of the men in my sample who call or appear on Woman’s Voice to be matched for marriage are middle-aged and older individuals who have been married before. Some of the women are in their late 20s or early 30s, and have never been married before.41 For previously married individuals, the reasons for the end of their marriages are dwelt on. ¨ Huseyin was one of those older men (60 years old) looking for a “life partner,” as the caption read. He appeared on two consecutive days (21 and 22 November 2005) on Woman’s Voice. He had been married three times before. Bozkurt inquired into the reasons for the end of his marriages: ¨ Huseyin: I was married to my first wife for 26 years. We had six children. ¨ Y.B.: After 26 years, what happened Huseyin Bey? ¨ Huseyin: What happened? The “unsayable” happened. Y.B. (hesitant): . . . I see. OK, we got it. ¨ Huseyin: My second marriage lasted for 22 months. My last one was over in three or five months. Y.B.: Alas, now the ladies are wondering, what was the problem? Why didn’t his marriages last? ¨ Huseyin: I’ll tell you. Y.B.: Are you sure it wasn’t a problem stemming from you? ¨ Huseyin: No, no. If you called them [my ex-wives] now, all three of them would come here [and confirm my story]. Because I sent them away. If they had left, I would be here looking for them. I sent them away because they deserved it. Everyone shall hear this. Y.B.: I guess they upset you. ¨ Huseyin: That’s it. Y.B.: We understand why a man would get upset. Okay, you’re saying (reading from the cue card), “I own 12 apartments, two stores, plus I

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have my pension.” You have a monthly income of about five billion lira.42 You have six kids from your first wife. Any other children from your other wives? ¨ Huseyin: No. Y.B.: Are all your children adults? ¨ Huseyin: Yes. Y.B.: You live on your own. And you’re saying (continues to read from her cue card) you want someone between the ages of 45 and 55, 165 cm tall, 65 kg . . . I’d never seen anybody writing down the exact weight before! (Laughter) So you don’t want anyone that’s 60 years old, for example? ¨ Huseyin: She could be 60, 67, around there. Y.B.: I see (continues reading). There shouldn’t be any hindrances due to children.43 She should be well groomed and beautiful for her age. She should be loyal and honest. Listen ladies, this “loyal” part is important! ¨ Huseyin: [My previous marriages didn’t work] because of disloyalty. Y.B. (playfully): Okay, we got that, sir. ¨ The next day, when Huseyin reappeared on the program, Bozkurt announced that two women were in the studio to meet him. Again, throughout the program, numerous references were made to his wealth and how a woman would enjoy spending the rest of her life with this self-proclaimed generous and wealthy man. ¨ Y.B.: Huseyin Bey, the ladies are mesmerized by you. I wonder if that has something to do with your wealth and property. You need to accept that your wealth probably is a factor. However, something happened on this day that significantly diminished ¨ ¨ ¨ Huseyin’s credibility. His first wife, Gulistan, called alleging that Huseyin had not properly divorced the women he had married, his jealousy was at the level of a mental illness, and that he saw all women as disloyal and dishonorable. Finally, she alleged that he did not give her all the property she deserved at the end of their marriage: ¨ Gulistan: Did he accumulate all that wealth by himself? We did it together. But he didn’t give me anything. Now I depend on my

“woman’s voice” as text: stories and structures underneath 133 children to take care of me. Why is he giving my share to his new wives? He should give everyone their share, including our children. Upon hearing this, Meliha, one of the contenders to be matched with ¨ ¨ Huseyin, told Bozkurt that her opinion about Huseyin had changed, and she would no longer consider marrying him. Bozkurt admitted that she did not know whether or not to call the second contender into the ¨ ¨ studio and introduce her to Huseyin. Huseyin was unimpressed with this change in the wind. He was sure that he would find someone who would like to marry him: ¨ Huseyin: Now, Meliha Hanım can use her head. If she surrenders to the other side [my ex-wife’s side], she’ll lose and it will be over. I’ll find someone in the Republic of Turkey and I’ll get married again. Someone will come and sit in one of my houses eating, drinking, [enjoying the luxuries I have to offer]. That’s what I’m looking for. Bozkurt, however, is too much of a “feminist” to have accepted this derogatory statement about women: Y.B.: Sir, that’s not what women are looking for. Women are looking for a man they can trust. First comes trust, then money and marriage. She has to trust you first. There are no women here who would sit in your home, eat and drink, without trusting you. ¨ Bozkurt could no longer tolerate Huseyin’s spiteful attitude towards his ex-wife, and made the following statement before she concluded this ¨ segment with no successful match for Huseyin: Y.B.: Look, this program is called Woman’s Voice. This is a first for women’s problems. We’re trying to heal women’s wounds. This program is in its fourth year, and all the women in Turkey know that Yasemin Bozkurt is behind every woman who is right. I’m not in favor of women, I’m in favor of women who are right. Bozkurt uses this ambiguous discourse on women throughout her programs. On the one hand, she seems to be a relentless defender of women’s rights. On the other, she does not refrain from making sexist comments or succumbing to patriarchal beliefs and norms. For example, she asked a young man who wanted to get married if he would let his

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¨ u, ¨ wife work, but did not do so critically. On the other, she criticized Ulk a 47-year-old woman who wanted to get married, for stating that, “at her age, any marriage she gets into must promise her some financial stabil¨ u¨ decided that “she can’t engage in a ity.” Based on this expectation, Ulk ¨ love marriage” with Mucahit, a contender who called in (Woman’s Voice, ¨ u¨ with the following words: 30 November 2005). Bozkurt criticized Ulk Y.B.: Okay, you’re saying that economic conditions are important. And I always say that the woman has to work, produce. You should be saying “yes” to a man for the partnership of the heart and pillow, not just because of his money.44 ¨ u¨ for being “materialistic” because she was cautious Bozkurt blamed Ulk about engaging in an arrangement that did not promise her the economic security she desired. Thus, women’s “materialistic” tendencies are established uncritically. Similarly, Ays¸e S., a 45-year-old woman who rejected ¨ the same man, Mucahit, on the basis that he did not own his own home and had a very low monthly income, was reprimanded by Zekeriya Beyaz, the celebrity guest – a controversial, popular and outspoken professor of Islamic theology: One should not fly too high. This is the biggest mistake you ladies, young girls, make. They’re looking for a rich prince or someone with cars, houses, etc. They don’t take the conditions of Turkey into consideration. Our Turkey is not a super-developed nation [he uses the English word “super”]. We have millions of people living in squatter towns. Our shopkeepers, workers, peasants, we have many people living in miserable conditions. But these are also our fellow citizens, brothers. Please, let’s consider the general structure of the society and don’t look for super-powerful, superrich people. Let’s remember that modesty is the biggest wealth.

Apparently, a woman’s search for material comfort is as contemptible as is her desire for employment. A woman is labeled “materialistic” if she seeks financial comfort or if she becomes discontent if her husband is unemployed, while at the same time the prospects for her own employment are very limited. Neither patriarchal prejudices against women’s work outside the home nor the economic factors curbing women’s entry into the job market are recognized by either Bozkurt or Beyaz.

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Conclusion In this chapter, by reading between the lines, I have hoped to show how societal values and prejudices are reproduced on WV, while, on the other hand, structures are reshaped and challenged. The “honor code” operates as a socially inculcated belief that orchestrates social agents’ behaviors. In that sense, acts committed in the name of the “honor code” constitute examples of symbolic violence as an unrecognized yet effective source of power and domination. Through a discussion of cases that appeared on WV programs, I have attempted to show some of the injustices that women face in contemporary Turkish society. I acknowledge that production techniques and the hosts play a large role in framing and filtering the discourse produced on WV. In the next chapter, I would like to look at the ways in which the home audience talks about their television viewing habits in general and WV in particular. In Chapter 5, I will analyze production techniques.

4 The Audience: Watching Woman’s Voice

They said such a society does not exist. Such a society does exist, this was dust swept under the carpet. I startled some circles when I revealed the dust. (Yasemin Bozkurt, creator and host of Woman’s Voice, private interview, 10 November 2005)

In this chapter, the squatter town residents (STRs) and established urban dwellers (EUDs) are compared in terms of the emphasis they place on television and other cultural activities in general and their opinions of WV in particular. The most important finding is that, while STRs were ardent viewers of WV, EUDs reported no such interest. I will argue that the lack of interest EUDs show towards WV is one reason why women’s issues are not taken up in the public sphere with the urgency they deserve. I will connect the EUDs’ distancing from WV (either their true lack of interest or their insincere reporting of it) to their efforts at class distinction. I will show that the STRs identify with the issues that WV brings up, and argue that WV is an instrument through which female STR viewers develop a sense of cultural citizenship. Eleven respondents who were identified as established urban dwellers and 28 residents of squatter areas were interviewed with the in-depth interview method. The respondents included ten men and 29 women. (See Appendix 1 for a list of respondents and their backgrounds.) Respondents were reached through the snowball method, and by contacting the gated community’s e-mail group. I had five main research areas: two 136

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squatter town, gecekondu areas, Gebze and Dudullu; two established ¨ ¸ ukyalı; ¨ urban areas, Suadiye and Kuc and a gated community in Dudullu. As James Lull argues, “television programs do not simply arrive uniformly in the homes of their audiences. Programs and commercials are received, interpreted, and acted upon in many different ways by individuals and families” (1990, 49). Against the simple “communication model” that reduces the media’s messages to the linearity of the sender – message – receiver circuit, theories such as Stuart Hall’s (1980) “encoding/decoding” model have established that audiences tend to interpret the same programs differently based on their age, gender race, social class, and so on. According to Hall, audiences actively interpret television’s messages on a scale ranging between dominant, negotiated and oppositional readings. Ethnographic studies based on these models, such as David Morley’s Nationwide study, have confirmed Hall’s theoretical model (Morley and Brunsdon 1999). Studies supporting the “active audience” view also include Katz and Liebes’s (1993) study on cross-cultural readings of Dallas; Ang’s (1996) post-modern revision of the “active audience” debate; Heide’s (1995) ethnographic study of audience reception of the show Thirtysomething; Press’s (1991) study of interpretations of prefeminist, feminist and postfeminist television by women of different generations; and Gamson’s (1994) reception study of celebrity stories in the post-modern age.1 Viewed from the perspective of the public sphere, television strengthens that sphere by eliminating barriers of literacy and ensuring that news is regularly updated, and provides citizens with “regular political information which they are able to place within a broad framework of national, and international, political understanding” (Corner 1995, 45). Drawing on some of these ideas, I will argue that television is one of the major instruments for connecting the private sphere of the family to the public sphere of state, politics and citizenship. In that sense, the media are “extensions of man” (and woman) into the public sphere, to use Marshall McLuhan’s (1964) famous phrase. This chapter explores some of the ways women come together in the private sphere to discuss issues of their “cultural and political citizenship,” accompanied and prompted by the “Woman’s Voice” (WV) programs. The home is thus considered a venue for critical reflection and discussion for women. I will then turn to a critique of WV originating from EUD viewers, and argue that their

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lack of interest in and critiques of WV are examples of boundary work in a changing society, stemming from a particular relationship with cultural production that republicans enjoyed throughout the previous decades.

Households in Turkey: Squatters and Urbanites As Lull (1990) and Morley (1992) posit, the unit of television consumption is the household rather than the isolated individual. In Turkey, children live with their families until they are married, and families tend to spend a considerable amount of time together. According to a 2006 survey, 89 per cent of respondents reported getting together with a household member at dinner, and 90 per cent reported spending the weekend ¨ 2006). Close relationships with relatives are maintained together (TUIK through informal daytime visits, usually among women, as well as prearranged house visits in the evening that men and children also attend. Among STRs, going to dinner, movies, concerts or the theatre is not commonplace (mainly because most families lack the necessary economic and cultural capital). Thus, these house visits constitute an important context of socialization. In terms of living arrangements, the squatter-town, gecekondu areas I studied showed differences from the more established middle¨ ¸ ukyalı. ¨ class neighborhoods of Suadiye and Kuc During my fieldwork in Gebze and Dudullu, I observed that married sons tended to live in semiindependent units adjacent to or above their family’s domicile in the squatter areas. If the family could not afford to build a separate unit, the young couple lived with the extended family, and only had a separate room to themselves. Some families added another level to the existing building, as need arose. Since girls are married out and typically live with their in-laws, the family is only responsible for providing a dwelling for their son, his bride and their children. This arrangement has to do with the tradition of not partitioning the father’s estate until his death (Duben 2002). In traditional rural settings, with the death of the father, it is up to the eldest son either to take over the same household and become the new patriarch, while taking care of his surviving mother and unmarried siblings, or establish his own separate household. This traditional pattern is continued in squatter areas of the city, with the adjustments that city life requires.

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In middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods, households are more likely to contain the “nuclear” family, since married children usually receive their own dwelling. Only those who attend college in another city leave the house before they are married, even in highly educated, upper-middle-class households. However, some of these households include the mother or father of either the wife or the husband (sometimes widowed mothers of both). Families of higher socioeconomic status usually live in apartments with two or three bedrooms; a salon, where misafir (“formal guests”) are entertained, and an informal living room where television is watched among intimate family members.

Who Has the Remote Control? Power in the Household and Television Viewing Practices David Morley argues that “programme-selection decisions often are complicated interpersonal communication activities involving inter-familial status relations, temporal context, the number of sets available, and rulebased communications conventions” (1992, 141). He goes on to propose that the central question is that of power. I found that power relations in the family can be fairly complicated. Sometimes a working 18-year-old son might control the set, which he purchased, especially if the father is not working or is unable to provide the family with a television set. Employment status is a strong factor in determining status in the family. Age is another factor. Since elders are highly revered in Turkish culture, seniority provides mothers, fathers and in-laws with privileged positions of power in the household. Gender is yet another important factor. My interviews reveal that in most families the “man of the house” has special privileges in television viewing. If the man is watching something he likes, the woman watches on her smaller television set.2 Tolga (married, male): We have two TV sets – she [my wife] has a small one, I have a big one. With one television set there tends to be disagreement. [This way] she watches something, I watch something else. ¨ Gulay (married, female): I have a small set. I decide what I watch. When there is a soccer game, I watch my series in the kitchen.

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¨ and Ertan (aged An EUD couple from the gated community, Ruya 56 and 60), told me that they watch some adventure series Ertan likes ¨ together in the evenings, while Ruya’s favorite dramas are video-recorded so she can watch them later on her own time, since Ertan does not like ¨ compromises and defers the pleasure she attains from them. Thus, Ruya her favorite series while Ertan enjoys his pleasure in the company of his wife and with unquestioned legitimacy. Also, both 28-year-old Dursun and 46-year-old Ibrahim (both male STRs) indicated that they selected programs on behalf of their families on the basis of “how suitable they were for the Turkish family structure” (Dursun) and “what kind of lifestyle the programs encourage young people to aspire to” (Ibrahim). Despite that, Ibrahim’s family reported watching the programs he does not approve of. Barıs¸, an 18-year-old hairdresser, recounted a rather complicated family television-viewing pattern between himself, his father, his mother and his older brother: My father usually watches the news. When I arrive home, if my father is at home, he does not let us watch anything else – he watches the news. He’s obsessed with the news.3 We immediately retreat to the other room . . . After my father leaves, I listen to football [soccer] commentaries. I like football. The days I’m not working I stay at home until 4 or 5 p.m., then I leave. Until then I listen to music, watch television . . . My father always decides what is to be watched, but after he retreats to rest, we get down in front of the TV. There are no problems between me and my brothers. I ask my older brother; even if he doesn’t like a program he still turns it on. He can’t turn me down because he loves me, because I’m younger than him . . . My mom says to us, “Watch whatever you like” – she even fights with my father because of that. She says, “Let the boys watch what they want.” She’s also obsessed with the news. But, for example, last night was a holy day, Mirac¸ Kandili.4 She listened to the hoca5 on television all night long. Of course, we listened too.

Here, Barıs¸’s power is relative to his father’s, older brother’s and mother’s. The older brother “lets” Barıs¸ watch whatever he likes in the absence of the father, and Barıs¸ explains this by reference to his love for his younger brother, and the fact that he does not want to hurt his feelings. It is only in the absence of both that Barıs¸ controls the set on days he does not work. The mother, on the other hand, is the mediator who challenges the

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authority figure, the father, so that conflict does not arise between her sons and their father. However, nobody can apparently object when she follows a broadcast that has to do with the religious obligation of praying on a holy day. Hence, as Barıs¸’s “Of course, we listened too” indicates, both sons not only respect her wishes to watch a religious broadcast and let her watch, but join her too. I will further argue that there might be a different kind of investment in television between men and women. Women seemed more invested in the dramas shown at prime-time. Indeed, my interviews with television executives indicated that women were the primary target audience of most television series. Women follow the story-lines ardently and identify with the characters. Almost every female respondent had at least three or four series she reported following every week, indicating that she watched one series almost every weeknight. Given the long duration of prime-time series in Turkey (between 2 and 2.5 hours with commercials) it can be argued that women spend a considerable amount of time every week watching series. In contrast, men were either unwilling or unable to name many series they liked and followed. The only series men cited as ones they followed were ones concerned with “masculine topics” such as Kurtlar Vadisi (“Valley of Wolves” – an action adventure series about the mafia), Emret Komutanım (“Order Commander” – a sit-com in a military setting), and Hırsız Polis (“Thief and Police” – an action adventure about a network of thieves). Both STRs and EUDs claimed with pride that they only watched news in the evening. However, STR women were not as interested in news. STR S¸ermin explained: I don’t watch news much. I mean, I watch, but very little. When my husband watches, I also sit beside him a little bit, but I don’t watch the news. But when it comes to series, give me the remote, you go to the kahve [coffeehouse]! [laughs]

STR women predominantly remain at home in the evenings (as well as during the day), while their husbands and sons are free to roam outside and go to the kahve. The kahve is a strictly male locale where coffee, tea and soft drinks are served, games such as backgammon and cards are played, and, in a Habermasian manner, men engage in political discussions, accompanied by newspaper reading and television viewing

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(Karpat 1976; White 2002). STR men socialize and connect to the outside world of economics and politics through their employment, as well as their relations with other men in settings such as the kahve. STR women’s connection to the outside world, on the other hand, is limited to their circle of close relatives and friends, as well as television. It has been widely written that the house is the woman’s workplace, while it is a place for relaxation, rest and leisure for the man (Modleski ¨ 1997; Morley 1992; Tanrıover 2003). My respondents referred to similar conventions. Nur, from Gebze, told me: We don’t fight [about television]. He can turn on and watch anything he likes, I don’t [mind]. Because the man is right – he comes home from work all tired, he’ll listen, watch [television]. Usually he goes to the kahve anyway; he doesn’t stay at home much. When he gets bored, he goes to the kahve. Then I can sit down and watch my series. Therefore, I don’t have much of a problem. Once in a while, when he’s at home, then I do [have problems watching my shows] . . .

¨ Tanrıover (2002) found that most families watch evening news at the dinner table, and after dinner move to the living room to enjoy primetime series accompanied by tea, coffee, fruit or mixed nuts (kuruyemis¸).6 When her family members are around, the woman is once again moving about the house, preparing these pleasurable items for the family. Perhaps women’s interest in the evening news is limited (or women are rarely able to watch the news) because the preparation of dinner or picking up and cleaning afterwards are women’s tasks in the evening. Hatice, from Gebze, put this relationship between housework and television viewing aptly: I mean, I’m not addicted. For example, I would have brewed the tea, washed the dishes. I mean, when it’s time for keyif [pleasure], when everybody’s looking [at television], I look too.

Most working men and women reported not being able to watch television much in the evenings since they arrive home late, at around 8 or 9 p.m., and are too tired to watch television at that time. Work can extend to late hours of the evening with no compensation, since workplaces are loosely regulated in Turkey in terms of overtime pay.

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Who controls the television set and what is watched depend on many factors, such as age, gender, the number of people in the household, the status in the family (including employment status), the number of television sets in the household, and the degree of interest in television. While men have the upper hand in selecting programs to be watched, their power is not absolute, and can be challenged by a working son or an elder. Women and men seem to prefer different kinds of programs, or at least report doing so. Women seem to have some degree of freedom to watch their favorite series even though they need to compromise at times. Videotaping, watching in the kitchen or waiting for their husbands to leave to go to the coffeehouse are some of the conditions under which they can enjoy this “guilty” pleasure.

Gender and Taste: Women’s “Weepies” vs Men’s News and Sports An STR husband was critical of his wife for watching so much TV that she occasionally forgets to cook dinner for him: Ibrahim: I mean, I think women are literally being brainwashed. If there were a robbery in my house, or a fire . . . I don’t think much of those programs. I think they’re harmful to women . . . I mean, when she watches 2 or 3 series, she concentrates on that. For example, let’s say she forgot to close the house door, she just leaves the door open. Somebody could come in, take everything. That happens, you know . . . I mean, when you let yourself go like this, you would be late preparing my dinner. You’d be late sending your kid to school. Same thing if there’s a break-in. A fire. Research it. I’m sure these things happen . . . You’re already in a bottleneck financially; you’re looking for a provocation [from your wife]. It’s a reason; it causes things to grow out of proportion [leading to fights]. Janice Radway points to a similar reaction from the husbands of romance readers. She writes that “the husbands object to the simple fact that reading draws their wives’ attention away from the immediate familial context and from themselves specifically” (1991, 101). It is interesting to ask why men feel that their wives’ attention always needs to be with their children, husbands and housework. It seems as if they are threatened by

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their wives’ indulgence. The women in my fieldwork were also critical of each other for being “addicted” to television – especially the reality series: Nuray: Some programs, it’s called “I want to get married”7 or something, during daytime home visits everybody watches them together. That bothers me a lot. The other day, they made me switch it on, and I said “Did you come to visit me or to watch television?” They said, “well, we follow it, how events unfold.” ¨ Meltem: That reminds me of Aunt Sema. When Caner and Tulin [popular contestants from reality show Will You Marry Me?] first started, my aunt used to visit. All she ever talked about was “what ¨ happened to Caner and Tulin? Go get me the newspaper. Turn it on – it started. Oh, they’re on Aydın’s show!” She would come to stay, but instead of chatting with us, [she would be concerned with] ¨ day and night. Caner and Tulin Ays¸e: They were fighting to watch it. Nuray: She doesn’t care if the food burns. Remziye: She doesn’t care if it burns badly – it’s an addiction. Ayse: Very bad. Remziye: She doesn’t sleep at night, she looks at that. ¨ is famous, Meltem: After the reality show was over, now that Tulin ¨ will come on, she’ll she waits for the paparazzi shows, at 11; Tulin watch. That’s how it was. This is not the only type of criticism that women receive from their husbands, friends or relatives for watching “too much TV.” I noticed that in my respondents a certain kind of embarrassment was attached to the activity of watching reality shows, series or WV programs – that is, programs “gendered” as feminine. Programs considered “lowbrow” also received similar scorn and criticism, both from STRs and EUDs, which I will discuss further below. Social and educational value was sought in television programs. The respondents tried to explain to me, to each other, to their husbands, perhaps even to themselves, that they acknowledged the fact that what they watched on television was distasteful, merely entertaining, and therefore useless. They argued that they watched such “garbage” since nothing “educational” was on, and since nothing educational, enlightening and uplifting was on, they would have

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no choice but to watch “garbage.” Many women were critical of television’s role in that sense. Zehra’s statement indicates a sense of helplessness and lack of options: Zehra: We don’t have anything else to do. We don’t do any work. Until the evening we look at this. We don’t have anything else to create. I mean, out of obligation, [we look at the television]. Zehra blamed television for keeping women from “creating anything else.” Therefore, television was viewed as a scourge, keeping women from being creative and active. It is the housewife’s only means of occupying herself. STR viewers blamed the television executives for feeding such “garbage” to them and keeping them ignorant. The roots of such beliefs about what one should be watching, and the expectation that television should be an educational tool, lie at least partially in the history of broadcasting in Turkey, where people were being “educated” by the carefully designed programming of TRT, which provided not too much light entertainment and not too little education. Janice Radway finds a similar effort at justification and legitimization on the part of romance readers in Reading the Romance. Radway reports that the romance readers insisted on the “instructive” function of romance novels in face-to-face interviews. They cited “learning about faraway places and times” as a primary reason for their romance reading. This finding was contested by the fact that, in the written questionnaire, only a few selected “instruction” as a primary reason for reading. Radway concludes that this was a strategy of justification, “to convince skeptical husbands, friends and interviewers that the novels are not merely frothy, purposeless entertainment but possess a certain intrinsic value that can be transferred to the reader” (1991, 107). What is curious is why they feel the need to justify an activity that is pleasurable to them. An analysis of the ridicule, embarrassment, contempt, and scorn women face from men and other women (such as feminists) for their indulgence in “female” forms of culture can be found in the literature on female gendered cultural activities such as soap opera viewing (Modleski 1982) and romance reading (Radway 1991). In the 1980s, scholars such as Radway began to show that a seemingly trivial “female” activity like romance reading can be a means of “escape” for their readers, in the sense that “their reading was a way of temporarily refusing the demands

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associated with their social role as mothers and wives” (ibid., 11) – an escape from “the psychologically demanding and emotionally draining task of attending to the physical and affective needs of their families, a task that is solely and peculiarly theirs” (ibid., 92). In her analysis of Dorothy Dot, a fan and self-made critic of romances, Radway observes: Dot encourages her customers to feel proud of their regular reading and provides them with a model of indignant response that they can draw upon when challenged by men who claim superior taste. By questioning them rhetorically about whether their romance reading is any different from their husbands’ endless attention to televised sports, she demonstrates an effective rejoinder that can be used in the battle to defend the leisure pursuit they enjoy so much but which the larger culture condemns as frivolous and vaguely, if not explicitly, pornographic. (ibid., 54)

Indeed, none of my male interviewees denied watching sports, especially soccer. That was considered to be a legitimate activity and not a waste of time. While men’s desire in watching sports, news or other masculine-gendered programming such as criminal series is considered essentially justified and legitimate, women are ridiculed and scorned by their husbands for watching weepy, light shows: Ertan (EUD): I watch only a few series together [with my wife]. We watch the [criminal series] together, she watches the emotional, watery-eyed series on her own (laughter). I don’t watch those. For example, she watches Aliye.8 I don’t watch that. Or Melekler Adası – I don’t watch that either. I don’t watch series about family tragedies. The family tragedies belong to her. [Women] are, I don’t know, touchy-feely, maybe they cry or something there. Maybe they rejuvenate themselves, so to speak. They get a release. She doesn’t think of anything else, maybe, she just looks at that. ¨ Ruya, Ertan’s wife, confirms this in a manner that internalizes Ertan’s opinion of the weepies. She justifies her engagement with such entertainment by reference to her increased levels of stress in the last few years. As mentioned above, since Ertan would not watch certain series, ¨ videotaped them to watch them later: Ruya I have my “stupid series” as Ertan calls them. For the last three years, I’ve been too stressed out. Those series help me relax. But I videotape them,

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watch them after 11 p.m. or so – I mean, when I’m alone. Right now there are only 2 or 3 series I watch with Ertan.

As Modleski argues, women seem to have “internalized the male spy” (1982, 14) – that is, they have become so accustomed to seeing themselves through the eyes of the patriarchal society that they may try to conceal or downplay their viewing of female-gendered entertainment, which in their mental structures they categorize as inferior. David Morley wonders whether men and women simply report watching programming that they find appropriate to report: Even if it could be demonstrated that my respondents had systematically misrepresented their behavior to me (offering classic masculine and feminine stereotypes which conceal the complexity of their actual behavior), it would remain as a social fact of considerable interest that these were the particular forms of misrepresentation that respondents felt constrained to offer of themselves. (1992, 156–7)

The motivation to misrepresent has to do with men’s attempt at “distinction” from women, for the purposes of upholding the myth of the “rational and reliable male” versus the “emotional and flaky” female. Next, I will argue that the reporting of television viewing can also constitute an attempt to maintain upper-class positions, an attempt at boundary work.

“We Watch Documentaries”: Television and Self-Representation The republican habitus was formed through allegiance to nationalism, secularism and republicanism, and necessitated a significant level of cultural capital. Given the emphasis of the republican revolution on cultural competencies, someone with a republican habitus would show a strong preference for Western forms of art, culture and entertainment, such as ballet, Western classical music, Western literature, Western cinema, opera, theater and fine arts. While the publicly owned opera, ballet, theatre and museums subsidized ticket prices and made attendance accessible to even the lower segments of the income bracket, attendance was nevertheless highly restricted to teachers, students, intelligentsia, professionals and public servants – that is, groups with high republican capital. In the present decade, those with high cultural capital continue

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to uphold lifestyles and habits that stress theater and concert-going, keeping abreast of new releases in literature and in Western (especially European) cinema, and following exhibitions in the newly emerging and expanding private cultural centers (such as Istanbul Modern, Sabancı Museum, Yapı Kredi Cultural Center). Many of my EUD respondents reported engaging in cultural activities outside the home regularly, which was an indication of their high republican and economic capital: Ertan (EUD): We go to the movies. We see things that are pop¨ follows them very ular, written about by critics and such. Ruya well . . . We go at least once or twice a week. We go to the theater and concerts too, once a week or so. Right now because of Ramadan our schedule is not so busy.9 But after Ramadan, it’s already reserved, the 10th, 11th, 15th . . . It’s all scheduled, tickets are reserved. ¨ Gulin (EUD): I read the “culture and arts” section [of the newspaper]. I follow the new movies coming to the movie theatres. For [movie reviews] I read Sungu C ¸ apan [movie critic]. From the “arts schedule” in the newspaper, I follow the [classical music] concerts and operas. The concert season has started. Now they also give ads in the paper. I also follow through the ads. STR respondents, on the other hand, were critical of the fact that television was their only entertainment. Dursun (STR): I used to go to soccer games, but after military service10 we didn’t have much opportunity. After getting married, after we started the construction,11 when we poured everything we had into this [house], other things, social activities became very rare . . . We became imprisoned at home, life conditions overwhelm you.12 Nuray (STR): Sometimes we go to visit the relatives [misafirliˇge gideriz]. In the evenings, on weekends, we go on visits. In the evenings we’re at home – our only luxury is to watch television predominantly. STRs differed among themselves in terms of their interactions with the city proper. While the young residents of the Dudullu area reported being more mobile in the city, visiting many different neighborhoods and

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entertainment centers, Gebze residents were much more limited in their outside activities.13 Even when they did travel daily to the city proper, that was for employment purposes and did not include any cultural activities. Some STRs said they did not feel the need to go out for cinema and theater “because they watched those things on television anyway” (Nuray). The only cultural activity that STRs would partake in in Istanbul proper was one that I heard of from Halime. It involved mosque visits organized solely for groups of women. In the literature on the sociology of culture, the cultural consumption patterns of different socioeconomic groups have been extensively studied. In Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1984), Pierre Bourdieu argues that taste is not as self-evident and natural as it is often considered. Instead, taste is inherited from the family and consolidated through education, and classifies individuals into status groups by their consumption patterns. With this insight, Bourdieu also undermines the common understanding of “high culture” as intrinsically superior and “low culture” as a priori inferior and corrupting. In contrast to Adorno and Horkheimer (1972), who assign emancipatory potential to forms of high art, Bourdieu argues that the higher and lower statuses assigned to forms of culture are due to their social uses and social meaning, not their intrinsic value. Richard Peterson (1997) showed how arts appreciation became a status marker in the USA in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, following the status significations of “family name” and later “etiquette” in the previous decades. Peterson notes that high art’s elevation to the position of a status marker had to do with the consideration of the high arts as embodying the “highest values of civilization.” “If the fine arts were civilizing, fine art appreciation came to be seen as a sign of virtuous character” (1997, 82). The upholding of high culture as civilizing was accompanied by the stigmatization of the “popular” as high culture’s antithesis. Thus, social groups began to be stratified according to their tastes into “highbrows” and “lowbrows.” While maintaining the civilizing influences of the fine arts, an increasing number of the cultural entrepreneurs suggested that not all were equally capable of appreciating them. The differential capacity for appreciation was buttressed by the then popular “scientific” theories of phrenology, which contrasted the “highbrowed” Caucasian from Northern

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Europe personified . . . by William Shakespeare with the “lowbrowed” nonCaucasian, personified, for example, in a “Cannibal New Zealand Chief, deficient in all the Intellectual Organs.” (ibid., 83)

Thus, high art appreciation became one measure for distinguishing “highbrow” Anglo-Saxons from “lowbrow” immigrants. The EUD viewers I interviewed displayed highbrow inclinations in television viewing. They predominantly watched cable and satellite television, with an emphasis on imported programs from the West. They preferred watching news ¨ Kanalturk ¨ and NTV, on relatively marginal networks such as Haberturk, which were considered to be less commercial and more serious in their approach. In contrast, the STRs seemed to be consuming mainstream cultural products aired on the four main national channels. This was partly due to the fact that, for economic reasons, STRs did not always have access to cable and satellite broadcasting. In Turkey, production for television was carried out single-handedly by TRT until 1990. As I argued in Chapter 2, TRT’s public service broadcasting patterns were based on a “civilizing” repertoire and excluded certain “popular” forms, such as arabesk, as forms of corrupting low culture. TRT programming was based on imported products as well as material produced single-handedly by TRT, which displayed high “taste.” In the absence of competition, the publicly owned TRT was able to maintain this format until the 1990s. However, since the 1990s, the emerging private channels engaged in fierce competition for a slice of the already limited advertising cake. Through conglomeration and monopolization, television came increasingly to be owned by a handful of holding companies. A “mass production” logic began to take hold, rendering programs uniform and profit-oriented. Many EUDs I talked with pointed critically to television’s degeneration and corrupting influence on society. They thereby attempted to distinguish themselves carefully from the masses, who they believed enjoyed and demanded such low-taste programming. For example, confessing to me that he used to watch Bir Istanbul Masalı (“An Istanbul Fairytale”), an immensely popular series, 39-year-old male EUD Tuncay was surprised that “something that appealed to the masses could also appeal to me.” In the Turkish context, television consumption is a major cultural arena through which distinction is sought.

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I have argued above that, since the 1980s, with the rise of an Islamist capitalist class as well as the “invasion” of the urban landscape by rural migrants, it has become increasingly difficult for republican members of the middle classes with greater access to older, albeit declining, power positions (such as civil service jobs) to distinguish themselves from the newly visible stigmatized groups, and thus to maintain the cultural and political legitimacy and dominance that their habitus denotes. Competition over the cultural field is fierce, and is reflected in the field of television production and consumption. Thus, the upper-class viewers’ denial of “Woman’s Voice” consumption (whether real or not) can arguably be explained by this need for “distinction.” Most of the EUD cohort indicated that they did not watch any daytime television at all, and were very critical of daytime broadcasting and the quality of daytime shows. In contrast to the STR viewers, they reported following television scheduling from newspapers, and only watching things they deliberately selected and liked: ¨ Gulin (EUD): I used to watch 3 or 4 series last year. This year I only watch Avrupa Yakası [“European Side”]. I used to watch evening news on NTV at 7 but I don’t like the new anchor, so I switched ¨ this year. I like their 7 o’clock news; it’s called Edit¨or to CNN Turk [“Editor”]. I watch foreign movies on CNBC or TRT. I follow films from the television page of the newspaper. There are descriptions, reviews there. ¨ opened with a cheerful disclaimer as a response The interview with Ruya to my question: “What do you watch on television?”: ¨ (laughing): Ooohh, very bad – nobody must hear this! Ruya ¨ later explained to me that she never watched daytime TV, and that Ruya she was also very critical of her friends who did: I never turn on the TV during the day, not even for a second. I get mad at my friends too. I mean, [how can they watch] such empty [programs]? If I had the authority, I would cancel them. The ones about marriage, mothers-in-law and stuff, I don’t even know their names. My friends sit down and seriously watch them and then they defend them. I mean, these are all university graduates, cultured people, very good friends of mine. I

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argue about it with them. I mean, yes, it’s a matter of taste, I wouldn’t argue about the color of your pants with you; but if you watch this for 5 minutes, fine, but if you look at it for 55 minutes, then I’ll argue with you. I mean, what do they get from it? They say this is a reality show. But these people are fighting to get ratings. Then watch them going to the bathroom. Is there any more reality than this? But I don’t have the authority; I can’t cancel those programs . . . This is all the result of a cultural degeneration. When we were first married, there were all those quiz shows – Ertan and I used to compete with each other. Very few of those things remain.

Roger Kern argues that the interview setting is problematic in the study of cultural consumption since it provides the danger of “prompting respondents to accentuate some criteria and ignore others” (1997, 178). As mentioned above, David Morley (1992) also finds that, in audience reception studies, people sometimes invest in misrepresenting themselves. I agree that the personality and social standing of the researcher plays a crucial role, especially in interview settings. But once the social researcher moves beyond the attempt at determining what the television audience actually consumes, other opportunities open up. One such opportunity is to observe what types of programs people report watching with confidence and which consumption patterns demand legitimizing. As proposed above, television consumption in Turkey is an arena of status negotiation; therefore, conversations about television viewing offer a unique opportunity to untangle some of the intricacies of the Turkish social structure. Using this rather liberal approach, I found that there was a perceived hierarchy between cultural activities: watching documentaries, news and educational programs, reading newspapers and books, attending concerts, theater and cinema was coded high on the cultural scale. On the other hand, watching too much television, and especially watching series, tabloid shows, and reality television, was considered an activity with lower status. Watching soccer was considered legitimate beyond question across all levels. In the case of lower-level cultural activities, when an educational value was attached to a program, its consumption would be justified. For example, a series such as Yabancı Damat (“The Foreign Groom”) was deemed by some STR respondents to be “educational” for its emphasis on tolerance between Turkish and Greek cultures. On the

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other hand, Kurtlar Vadisi (“Valley of Wolves”) was considered “harmful,” especially for children, for its violent scenes.14 Reporting of “documentary viewing” is another case in point. With almost no exceptions, all respondents, EUD and STR alike, referred to their preference for documentaries. This phenomenon was so pervasive that it was not lost on the media executives either. Kayhan H., programming director of Show TV, pointed out the following in our interview: Everybody says they watch documentaries. When you ask which documentaries they watch, they can’t answer. It’s just a way of distinguishing oneself. I’m sure there are people who watch documentaries but you can pick them out in a crowd. Maybe they watch for a half-hour here and there, but I don’t think that there’s a mass audience in Turkey who follows the Discovery Channel or National Geographic.

¨ In fact, documentaries are so unpopular in Turkey that, when RTUK (Radio Television Supreme Board) fines a television network, the pun¨ ishment is the mandatory airing of documentaries. That is, when RTUK ¨ bans a popular, rating-generating program (which has violated RTUK’s regulations), it obliges the channel to air a documentary in its place, depriving the channel of the revenue that would have been generated by that program on that day at that time. In the interviews, my first question was always “What do you watch on television?” – to open up a conservation and ease the respondents’ anxieties about the interview. Often, the first answer was: “We watch documentaries” or “I don’t watch that much television.” To help respondents remember, I then went down a list of genres with them, such as series, talk shows, magazine programs, game shows, and so on, and asked them if they watched any programs that would fit into each category. Sometimes a respondent would at first deny watching series, only to talk about her five favorite series a few minutes later. Or, in the case of group interviews, daughters, relatives or friends who were present would remind them:“But you watch this and this as well.”15 While these omissions could be explained by a simple lapse of memory, I argue that they were also attempts at favorable self-presentation based on collective mental classifications of cultural products and respondents’ perceptions of me. In this hierarchy, documentaries occupied first place, probably

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because of their pedagogical nature. This is in line with the symbolic importance of teaching and education in Turkish modernization, discussed previously. EUDs also made repeated references to the distinction between “us” ¨ wondered what percentage of the Turkand “others.” For example, Ruya ish population “they” made up. Criticizing the absence of current affairs ¨ told me the following: programs on prime-time television, Ruya When I get upset, [my husband] Ertan asks me “what percentage of Turkey do we make up?” It’s true. Clearly, we don’t make up that much of Turkey’s population and that’s why these [current affairs] programs start after midnight.

¨ was making references to her sense of “minority status” Here, Ruya and alienation from society. This is related to EUDs’ perceptions of their declining status and numbers. They consider themselves a “dying breed,” outnumbered by the rural peasants and urban Islamists. Now that TRT is no longer single-handedly presenting the polished, civilized version ¨ also implicitly of society, their sense of extinction is exacerbated. Ruya assumed that the majority of viewers wanted to see other things on television than she did. She criticized the absence of theater and quality talk shows from television with the following words. Note her distinction of herself from the “people” and her description of what the “people” like as “disgusting”: I hate the [prime-time] talk shows, I think they’re disgusting. All they [the talk show hosts] want to know is, “Who dated whom, when?” I don’t want to listen to that. But we return to the same thing: The “people” are curious about these things.

As Bourdieu notes, tastes (i.e. manifested preferences) are the practical affirmation of an inevitable difference. It is no accident that, when they have to be justified, they are asserted purely negatively, by the refusal of other tastes. In matters of taste, more than anywhere else, all determination is negation, and tastes are perhaps first and foremost distastes, disgust provoked by horror or visceral intolerance (“sick-making”) of the tastes of others. (1984, 56)

I further suggest that the EUDs feel nostalgia towards the past, the good old days when television consisted of one channel, which represented

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their highbrow taste. In those days, Istanbul had not been “invaded” by migrants either, and Islamists were not as visible as they are today. In ¨ the following quote, Ruya’s reference to “black-and-white” television is a sign of her nostalgia: There is no more theater on television. There used to be, before you were even born, when television was black-and-white. But of course, now, because the “people” halk don’t like these types of programs, they don’t show them anymore.

In fact, in the eyes of the EUDs, even good old TRT has today been “invaded” by Islamists. Since the TRT’s general manager is appointed by the government, the current general manager is affiliated with the ruling ¨ made the following comment. conservative JDP. Referring to that, Ruya Note how she was able to foresee the future by looking at this man’s picture in the newspaper, indicating the perceived strong visual aspect of an Islamist habitus: The new general manager of TRT is JDP affiliated. When I saw his picture in the newspaper I could tell that he could not give much to us. And indeed, the programs on TRT are, I don’t know . . . there’s an emphasis on religion, like children should be respectful to their parents, stuff like that.

The perception of the “people” wanting certain things was also present in the program directors’ discourse. Hatice S.K., the program director of Kanal D to me: The viewers want simple things. They don’t want to rack their brains while watching television. They want very “simple” [spoken in English] stuff, like poor people are poor, bad people are bad, good people are good. They like intriguing plots, but simple intrigues. I mean so simple that it would sound funny to you and me.

Thus, a strong division between “us” and “them” was established, in which Hatice S.K. automatically placed me in the same category as herself. Also, a higher intellectual level was readily assigned to “us,” whereas “they,” the “people,” were perceived as incapable of understanding anything but simple plots. However, the “Others” – that is, the STRs in my research – also had elaborate criticisms of the media and what it has to offer them.

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It was clear that many respondents, especially the young ones, felt a strong sense of disenfranchisement, and believed that television did not reflect their problems adequately. Since I was perceived as someone who could “convey their messages to authorities,” they opened up to me on social problems that concerned them the most.16 Some STRs used the interview as an opportunity to voice their opinions, and maybe even to convey messages to media executives. During one of my visits, a woman ran over to her friend Fatma’s house upon hearing about my presence there. She was out of breath when she arrived, and explained that she was in the middle of housework when she heard that someone was at Fatma’s house talking about television. She told me that she could only stay for 10 to 15 minutes, during which time she took the opportunity to express her criticism of many features of television programming. She was clearly disappointed when she realized that I was not a representative of a television channel. In another group, I was explicitly asked to “write” that the viewers want more educational programs (Zehra and Buket). Many STRs were critical that the television networks’ ultimate interest was in profits and believed that their greed was in turn harmful to society (Reyhan). Some criticized television for airing “inappropriate” material, especially for children. Some things on television are appropriate, educational programs but some things are inappropriate. They’re especially harmful after midnight for the young ones. I made my son turn off the TV the other night. It was senseless . . . He’s a single boy, he shouldn’t be watching those things. (S¸ermin, 40, STR)

The critique of obscene material was ubiquitous, especially for devout respondents. Another pervasive criticism was directed at the paparazzi programs for creating envy in young children, and an aspiration for the fabulous lives of rich celebrities seen on television. STR Dursun commented in the following way: “From morning till night, Turkey’s most important issue is fashion models. The agenda is occupied with glitzy views from holiday resorts.” Another STR respondent complained: “One of my daughters is married now. But the other one stays up until midnight waiting for those shows to start. She’s young. Her brain envies what she sees.”

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As a result of the corrupting effects of paparazzi programs, many STRs felt that their children were seeking an easy way to “make it.” Thus, they informed me that many young girls were eloping with men who promised them riches, as portrayed in the WV programs. Another way to “turn the corner”17 easily was to enter and win a reality show competition. “Marriage reality shows” similar to the bachelor/bachelorette format, such as Would You Be My Daughter-in-Law? and Can I Call You Mother? were extremely popular during the 2004–5 TV season in Turkey. In these programs, pairs of mothers and sons selected prospective daughters-inlaw from single female contestants. The couple that decided to marry with the man’s mother’s approval won the competition. At the end of Can I Call You Mother? the winning couple was awarded an apartment worth $100,000 and a brand new Hyundai. In addition, the groom (but not the bride) was awarded a one-year contract with the sponsoring company with a five-figure monthly salary (in new Turkish lira). The finale of the program, in April 2005, lasted for seven hours and received a 70 per cent audience share, earning Kanal D a record amount of revenue (Milliyet, 4 April 2005). However, as my fieldwork was continuing, on 18 September 2005, the most popular contestant in the previous season ¨ was found overdosed in of Would You Be My Daughter-in-Law?, Ata Turk, a hotel room in Adana. As daily Hurriyet put it succinctly in its headline, ¨ “Even His Funeral Received High Ratings,” as it aired live on all major television channels (Hurriyet, 21 September 2005). Ata’s fame stemmed ¨ mostly from his mother Semra Hanım’s relentless attitude towards her son and prospective daughters-in-law during the show. Semra Hanım also became a celebrity in her own right. In the interviews I conducted at the end of September, the topic of Ata’s tragic end at the age of 24 came up repeatedly. Many viewed Ata as a victim of his fame and blamed the media for his death. Meltem, a 20-year-old STR, made the following observation: They [the media] enter the dreams of young girls and boys. I mean, it’s very dangerous. They [young people] interrupt their education, and then what happens? They get carried away by these dreams, and then they remain uneducated. They destroy their lives with dreams of fame. The best example is Ata. He was a victim of his own fame. There are many other examples like this.

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Zehra, a 40-year-old STR respondent, pointed to a similar kind of fascination with reality shows: Even I am influenced by this thinking “he won, he didn’t win, got this, got that . . . ” I mean, although I’m a married woman . . . This fame that comes [suddenly], you start thinking, I wish I had this money, these apartments, yachts . . . A new car in three months! Here, we see the results. The media kept following him [after the competition] and killed him.

Many of the STR respondents reported their unhappiness with the marriage reality shows, and protested the new season of Can I Call You Mother? A few weeks later, the new season of the program was cancelled by Kanal D, due to low ratings. One question that intrigued me throughout my research was that of supply and demand. All viewers seemed to be critical of what television had to offer, albeit for different reasons. However, despite the viewers’ demands for “educational programs,” television companies continued their business as usual, airing a large number of series, tabloid programs, and reality shows. When asked, network executives charged viewers with dishonesty. Kanal D program director, Hatice S.K. commented: They say, (imitating a high voice) “I watch documentaries. Why don’t you air more documentaries, socially responsible programs?” When we make these programs, why don’t you watch them? It’s because as a society, we like gossip and voyeurism.

¨ who has worked in the In our interview, feminist filmmaker Melek O., media industry for many years, argued that the supply of programs determined demand. This supply was based on a certain kind of populism where by the viewers were perceived as uneducated and programs were ¨ argued that a fictive notion of “the adjusted to that level. Melek O. people” (halk) had been created by news anchors such as Reha Muhtar in the 1990s. Muhtar often warned expert guests on prime-time news ¨ reto “speak a language that the people will understand.” Melek O. lated that, when she is invited as an expert to appear on programs, she always receives a warning from her host not to speak in “theoretical, intellectual terms.”

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The divisions between “knowing subjects” and “ignorant others” render dialogue between rural–urban migrants and established urban dwellers unlikely. The disenfranchised, instead, find consolation in the Islamist groups’ populist discourses that successfully tap into their feelings of alienation and isolation. As argued above, the varos¸ has in the last two decades been “othered” not just as culturally inferior but also as either violent or politically radical. The “cultural citizenship” of the disenfranchised is overlooked by the holders of republican capital who believe in a modernized Turkey but are not willing to come to terms with elements, such as migrants and Islamists, who do not conform to their ideals of a “good society.” Popular forms of culture, such as WV, show the “space of possibles” available for masses of women. However, an inclusive deliberation about the best kind of life for many is lacking from the public sphere. Television consumption is a matter of “taste” and the reporting of what one watches (to a researcher or to one’s friends) is a status negotiation. “Woman’s Voice” is found to be embraced by most STR women, while it is mocked, criticized or ignored by most EUDs and STR men. One reason for the EUDs’ rejection may be that, as Inci Ertuˇgrul aptly put it in our interview, “we don’t like the picture of the society that “Woman’s Voice” programs reflect.” WV reveals the dust under the carpet, and makes it difficult to deny that a “society like this does exist,” as Yasemin Bozkurt said. In the next section, I will exemplify how EUDs distanced themselves from the topics and guests featured on WV.

“You and I Live in Different Worlds”: EUDs and “Woman’s Voice” Ratings and shares only slightly support EUDs’ claim of a lack of interest in WV. If ratings and shares are to be taken seriously, the following shares confirm my view that EUDs were not inclined to report watching WV, even though they may actually watch it. Yasemin Bozkurt’s Woman’s Voice on Kanal D did almost equally well among higher and lower socioeconomic groups (taking a 23.3 per cent share for the highest SES a-b group; 23.9 per cent for the lowest SES d group between 1 January ¨ Among Ourselves fared as well and 19 September 2005). Serap Ezgu’s

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as Woman’s Voice among the d group viewers, with 23 per cent, and received a share of 17 per cent among the a-b group during the same period. Finally, Your Voice received a share of 7 per cent in the a-b group and 13 per cent in the d group (AGB Ratings). Many EUD respondents in my research also claimed not to watch WV at all, only to recount entire episodes of WV a few minutes later, indicating that they watched WV but did not want to admit it. I only encountered two EUD respondents who admitted to watching WV programs. One was a 29-year-old female respondent, Derya, who was working as a public relations manager at the gated community: I stayed at home for a month before I started this job. I used to watch [Woman’s Voice] back then. But I would feel embarrassed for watching that. When my sister and her friends came home in the evening, they would ask me what I watched that day, and I would tell them. We would joke around, laugh, crack up. I find the stories interesting, but I would not watch attentively, to make fun mostly. I would watch thinking what I can tell my sister in the evening.

For a working woman such as Derya, watching WV is exceptional, since most employed women are absent from home during the day. In Derya’s case, although her viewing stemmed from curiosity and interest in the stories, she plainly took a clear distance from investing in the show emotionally. Derya also believed that women’s conditions were not as grave as depicted on television. She thought that television reflected women’s status in Turkish society as lower than it actually was. As is often done, she assigned the blame for being mistreated back to the woman: Maybe this will sound strange to some women, but I think that everything is up to the woman. Some let themselves get abused; some get beaten up deliberately . . . In groups with lower cultural levels, from incest to polygamy . . . Women do that too. They cheat on their husbands with the grocer’s aide. Then, when something happens to her, “It wasn’t my fault, I was married early, it’s because of my family,” so on and so forth.

Derya’s critique of women matched many EUDs’ critiques of peasants, STRs and Islamist women as “falsely conscious” subjects who let themselves be abused. According to Derya, women put themselves in difficult

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positions and then blamed their social circumstances for their problems. In taking this position, Derya, an independent educated woman who lived with her sister away from her family, clearly wanted to distinguish herself from these “other women” who were a “disgrace” to womankind. ¨ This clear distancing was also observed in Suleyman, a 75-yearold male retired architect. While a man’s viewing of WV may at first glance be considered unusual, ratings suggest otherwise. For example, Kanal D’s Woman’s Voice, had a 26 per cent share among female audiences and a 19.5 per cent share for male audiences between 1 January and 19 September 2005 in all socioeconomic groups (AGB Ratings).18 ¨ Suleyman was the only other EUD respondent who confessed to watch¨ ing WV regularly. Suleyman explained his interest in WV with a sociological kind of curiosity: They’re not just women’s programs. They’re the programs of our community. Women tell about their own subordination, about what happened to them, but it’s actually a mirror on our society. When you look at that, you understand the quality of our society . . . They’re useful for the viewers. It widens your horizons for what can happen. Things happen that you couldn’t imagine in a million years. A simple example: people have weddings all the time; you’re thinking they’re legally married. You look [at these programs] and see that many are married religiously and not legally. They have three or four children like that, and children still do not have identity cards . . . There are so many problems – beatings, other things. But first and foremost, all this happens because of the backwardness of our women, lack of education . . . More women than men, because at least men perhaps get chipped [civilized] a little bit outside, when they’re working, because they open up to the outside a little more. The other ones [women], they mostly get raised under the protection of their parents, in villages and such. The poor thing doesn’t have a clue. Her husband comes, says “sign this”; she signs it, no questions asked. But most of the time she doesn’t even know what it says there . . . Men try to control them, keep them under pressure. How? It could be battering, or other things, the guy will find something.

¨ For Suleyman, “Woman’s Voice” conveyed something about society that he had not known before, or of whose pervasiveness he had not been aware. What he saw on these programs also went beyond “our (collective) imagination.” WV tells him something about the “Other’s” life – a life

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that is foreign and strange to him. The choice of the phrase “quality of our society” – toplumumuzun kalitesi – indicates that he does not think very highly of this society. This is a common view of the “society” from ¨ higher-republican-capital circles. Like Derya, Suleyman also blamed the “backwardness of our women” for what was happening to them. Even ¨ more telling is Suleyman’s choice of the word “to be chipped” – yontulmak (a common expression) – when referring to “traditional men,” likening them to a piece of raw wood that needs to be worked into shape. The chasm between the “knowing subject” and “ignorant” becomes apparent here again, and employment contributes to the “chipping away” of unwanted rough corners. The professionals working in television also referred to a strong sense of a division between “us” and “them” with regard to WV programs and the women who appeared on them. Hatice S.K., the elegant and fashionable female program director of Kanal D, was one of them. She made the following comments on the recently cancelled Woman’s Voice on Kanal D: There are lives like that. This is so far away from me and you, I mean how can I know? Ultimately, I live in another world. But looking at these [WV programs], my eyes are opened. These things happen in my country. How is it possible that somewhere a 13-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy are married? How could you know these things if it wasn’t for the WV shows? You couldn’t. There are women who are sexually harassed by their fathers-in-law. Women who suffer from incessant beatings, whose husbands marry second wives, who are deceived, exploited. We were airing these things with responsibility.

Hatice S.K. was also shocked and scandalized by what appeared on WV. She argued that if it was not for the WV programs, we would not have known about the pervasiveness of these events. She then referred to the unfortunate death of one of the program’s guests, as a result of which Yasemin Bozkurt’s Woman’s Voice was cancelled by Kanal D. She complained about the impossibility of helping women such as these: These women know nothing. No job, no diploma, no communication skills, no self-esteem. Now, we think differently. We’re women who have been working for so many years. We’re grounded, we take the responsibility of our lives, we don’t care if we’re alone in life. We have a consciousness like

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this. These [other] women go from their father’s hearth to their husband’s hearth. Like a property. But she’s human too. At some point, she gets fed up. Where is she going to go? Who is she going to consult? This is a social problem.

Hatice S.K.’s discourse pointed to a strong sense of the other women’s lack of means and her kind’s “liberation.” She was convinced that there was a deep chasm between her and the women who appeared on WV. Although she identified the problem as a social one rather than an individual predicament, she nevertheless did not imagine any form of shared cosmos with these women. However, studies show that the media industry is also a highly sexist working environment in Turkey. For example, ¨ Tufan-Tanrıover writes that many female journalists complain about gossip in the workplace, and that “female journalists use their sexuality to ¨ a feminist filmmaker, also receive information” (2000, 183). Melek O., told me that, based on her firsthand experience in the media industry, women were considered dishonorable by their co-workers just by virtue of being in the media sector: A friend of mine had told me this while I was working in the media sector. This guy she works with invites her to his house. When she asks, “But why do you even get the impression that I’ll come to your house?” he answers, “You work here, so . . . ”

In contrast to Hatice S.K.’s strict division between “women like her” and “other women,” Inci Ertuˇgrul, host of Your Voice, had a more nuanced approach to the issue of divisions between women. But she also had a sense of her program’s critical reception by EUDs, and asserted that although her program was believed to be watched by a lower-income, less-educated cohort, based on her everyday interactions with people, she knew that people like professors and bank managers also watched WV with interest. This was a source of pride for her. By criticizing her daughter’s teacher’s disparaging comment, she tried to establish bonds between herself and the WV guests: There was a teacher at my daughter’s school. [After I started doing this show] she said to me one day: “That program doesn’t suit you.” She said that she found it – I don’t want to say that word, but I can’t explain it without saying it – “vulgar.” Now, the people who come to our program,

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they don’t come from space. They live to our left and right. When we use the pronoun “we,” we assume that everybody has the same opportunities, the same chances as we do. But we have to use that pronoun “we” more carefully. Turkey doesn’t consist of the few people we’re friends with. Maybe we don’t like the picture that appears on the screen. But that’s us. We can’t deny that.

I have argued that TRT has been successful in only displaying the publicly acceptable, modern version of Turkish society, whereas the new commercial networks unashamedly show the public the intimate and often untidy inner dynamics of the private sphere. The transformation from TRT to commercial broadcasting has been explosive in opening up the private sphere to the enjoyment of television viewers. While some aspects of this transformation have been exploitative, the transition has ¨ u¨ writes, “the ‘banal’ also held some subversive elements. As Ays¸e Onc world of everyday lives and voices, when commodified and projected onto the screen, proved subversive because it challenged the established cosmology of state broadcasting, revealing as arbitrary that which seemed self-evident and natural” (2000, 315). Previously, the so-called “white Turks” – that is, those with high republican capital – had created an atmosphere where their lives were viewed “as supra- or extra-cultural” (Navaro-Yashin 2002, 216). Thus, they were scandalized by the picture of the society the new commercial media came to reflect.

Cultural Citizenship and Daytime Television: The “Woman’s Voice” Audience STR women have an intricate relationship with daytime television. According to Joshua Meyrowitz (1985), television brings the outside world, which is the “man’s world,” into the private sphere, and thus provides women, whose primary social environment is the private sphere of the household, with direct contact with the larger social environment. In my interviews, most STRs informed me that they rarely left their homes for leisure purposes, except when visiting neighbors and relatives. Very few reported watching news or reading newspapers regularly. In fact, ¨ u¨ newspaper reading is at dismal levels, especially for women. Ays¸e Onc reports that, in a national PIAR-Gallup survey “only 11.7 per cent of the

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women sampled read (“looked at”) newspapers on a daily basis; those responding never was 79.7 per cent (2004, 17). The respective numbers for men are 29.5 per cent and 56.4 per cent. The STRs in my sample reported only buying newspapers occasionally, in contrast to EUDs, who bought one or more newspapers every day. This discrepancy might be explained by the fact that STRs simply could not afford to buy newspapers daily. Also, many STRs complained that it was “difficult” to buy newspapers or that the newspaper they liked was usually not available at the local grocery store. For example, STR Ibrahim reported the difficulty of finding his favorite newspaper Cumhuriyet at the local grocery store.19 Also, while EUDs count on doorkeepers to deliver their favorite newspaper to their door everyday, STRs have no such established system of regular delivery. Moreover, women are systematically excluded from public places such as coffeehouses, where collective television viewing and newspaper reading, as well as political debate on current issues, take place among men. Women’s perceptions of the world and political views are based on their daily face-to-face interactions with those with whom they have close neighborly or family relations, and the representations on television series, reality, entertainment and talk shows. The discourse about television cannot be overestimated. Women talk about television programs with their neighbors, relatives, friends, employers, children and husbands. Thus, I argue that their sense of belonging in a greater community of citizens consists, to a large extent, of the images they receive from television. WV programs contribute to the production, reproduction and transformation of women’s world-views and identities – their cultural citizenship. STR women recounted watching the WV programs with investment and interest. For many STR women, watching WV is a social activity they share with others either by watching together or talking about it afterwards: We usually talk about it. It comes up when we’re chatting. I tell my mom, my mom tells me, our neighbor Auntie Ays¸e tells us. I talk about it in my circle of friends too, we exchange information. I talk about it with my ¨ friend Muge. We do that. I think that’s useful. (Meltem, 20, university student, STR)

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I tell my children about the things I hear there. I mean, it’s exemplary. Look, what’s happened, what’s going on. Marriages and stuff, you should not be fooled by anything. (Zehra, 40, elementary school graduate, housewife, STR)

In fact, during participant-observation, a group of women naturally turned on the television and began watching WV. While watching, they exchanged thoughts about the issues being talked about. The following is an excerpt from the conversation that occurred while WV was playing in the background: Aysel: I like these shows. Now they made these people uncomfortable. [This guy] abducted a 16-year-old girl. They sell her from place to place, and moreover they threaten her family. (45, housewife, STR) ¨ Gulten (indicating her familiarity with the case): Did they find that girl? (42, housewife, STR) ¨ ¸at has her. He says “I found her but I Aysel: That guy called Kurs won’t give her up.” Why wouldn’t you? This is a 16-year-old girl. Some powerless families get some power here, that’s why I like this program. They [the abductors] get uncomfortable, thinking “What if they go on TV, what if we fall into the hands of the media?” Now these people [who abducted her] are scared. These programs revealed many things [like this]. Yesterday I watched one – her husband gave this woman a black eye, she’s bleeding, and the police say “He’s your husband, he can beat you.” She asks for help there [on television] saying “My husband’s moving my house somewhere else.” She saved her house. They gave her a right [to speak]. Nowadays you go to the police but nothing can be done without bribing. STR women identified with the stories that came up on WV. Television’s coverage of family and marital issues helped women identify with people in similar positions and establish resistance to the structures that confine them. Nur: I watched Semra Hanım. I found her behavior towards her future daughter-in-law very wrong. (29, high-school graduate, housewife, STR)

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Halime: Nur is a daughter-in-law too, that’s why she finds it wrong (laughter)! (47, no schooling, domestic worker, STR) Nur: Instead of looking for a wife for her son, she’s acting like she’s getting a maid for herself. I think we, young people, have to watch Woman’s Voice programs. Especially young girls, so they know what’s what. They marry at an early age, [WV offers a] lesson, they elope, lesson, they run away to become famous, lesson. At least she sees what’s going to happen to her . . . It’s important that we know these things. I’m saying that we should take it as an example, especially us, young girls. We see it, they were showing this girl earlier, she got married at the age of 13, he engraved his name on her face, arms, body because of his perverse feelings. It’s an example, see, you’re 13, you haven’t got your education, why [are you getting married]? (Meltem 20, STR, college student)

Furthermore, the appearance of similar stories on WV, as well as in my interviews, demonstrates that the stories told on WV are not isolated, exceptional incidences; on the contrary, similar events constitute crucial ¨ parts of STRs’ lives. In the following example, Gulzade is looking for her five children, who were separated from her by their father and his ¨ relatives six years ago. On WV, Gulzade remembered the moment of separation with the following words: ¨ Gulzade: My mother-in-law stood in front of me with her legs separated like this (shows with her hands), took the kids to her side, my sisters-in-law stood on my way. They kicked me out. It was snowing. (Yasemin Bozkurt, 30 November 2005) A respondent engaged in a similar narration during an interview. Note ¨ how similar Didem’s account in an interview is to Gulzade’s, which was heard on a WV program: Didem: I didn’t let her go, they took her by force. I fainted when they tried to take her; her shoes remained in my hands. (Didem, 36, no schooling, domestic worker, STR) My respondent Didem’s story was very similar to the eight examples of women pleading to see their children. Didem’s past came up unexpectedly in our interview. The informant who introduced me to Didem had

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told me that her “life story was interesting.” Upon my inquiry into why she may have said that, Didem explained: Didem: This is my second marriage. My first husband passed away. I became widowed, dul, at the age of 20. I had a daughter with him. They [his family] took my daughter away and didn’t let me see her. My current husband had wanted to marry me when I was single. I had refused him back then, and married my first husband. It was destiny. Then my first husband died when my daughter was two months old. We were married for four years. I stayed in my father’s house for two years. But of course, you don’t fit anywhere. You go to your sister-in-law’s [brother’s] house, she doesn’t want you, you go to your other sister-in-law’s house, she doesn’t want you either. Then my current husband asked again, he said he would accept my child too. I thought about it for a year. Then I said to myself, you don’t have an income, no salary, you don’t have anything. Everywhere you’re like a refugee. It was destiny, we got married. I had three children with him. Interviewer: What about the first one? D: I never see her. I: Who took her? D: My brother-in-law. His financial situation had improved. He’s got an identity card for her, but it’s fake.20 I have the real one. He sent her to school like that. I went to see her when she was in fourth grade. Of course, she didn’t come near me. She looks like me. But she didn’t approach me, she cried and ran from me. I: Did you tell her you were her mother? D: Of course. I showed her my marriage certificate with her father, her identity card, some pictures. But she cried and ran. Apparently, she told my sister-in-law [late husband’s sister]that I went to see her. My sister-in-law told me not to go see her again. She said she gets affected. My daughter thinks my brother-in-law [late husband’s sister’s husband] is her father and my sister-inlaw is her mother. She went and told them, “If I’m your kid, why don’t I resemble you but resemble her?” They didn’t let me see her. They took her away from school at fourth grade so I can’t see her.

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I: Did they send her to another school? D: No, they didn’t let her go to school afterwards. Because the school is nearby, they thought I could go see her. They said, “She can go see her mother after she’s married.” Didem also drew a parallel between her life and similar cases on WV: I see on the women’s programs. For example, someone hasn’t seen her/his mother in 20 years. They find the mother. That’s such a great thing.

As a further indication for STRs’ identification with WV’s topics and guests, some respondents related to me that they would consider resorting to WV under certain circumstances. When I asked Didem whether or not she would consider appearing on WV if something bad happened to her or her family, Didem replied: “Even if you wouldn’t want to go [to WV], if you have to, you would. If you’re obliged, for your children for example.” STR Ays¸e also admitted that she would consider applying to WV for her children: If my child had gone missing, I would appear on WV. For something like that . . . But I wouldn’t appear for charity or to publicize that I left my husband or something like that.

The following example further illustrates that WV reflects many women’s life conditions. An EUD respondent, Ayla, referred to her domestic worker’s interest in WV with the following words: She listens to that all day long while she’s working. Even though I try not to listen, because it really brings me down, sometimes we talk about it. Domestic violence is popular in Turkey nowadays. She likes those programs because she goes through similar things. She has a husband like that who is an alcoholic, who beats her up. Therefore, the programs speak her language. She has similar problems. The programs speak the language of Turkish women.

Female STRs also engaged in a serious discourse on the potential effects of WV on women’s rights. The contribution of WV to both the exposure of women’s status in Turkey and the spread of women’s rights was pointed out by many respondents:

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Interviewer: Do you see anything on television that tells you about women’s status in Turkey? ¨ Muge: Women are subordinated all the time. (21, university student, STR) Ays¸e (referring to my earlier questions about WV): You asked if we watched Serap Ezgu¨ [WV]. When you watch that, you see. Who gets subordinated the most? It’s women. (38, elementary school graduate, housewife, STR) ¨ Muge: Women are the ones who endure all the suffering. Ays¸e: It reveals that completely. You don’t have to say anything. You watch it and it’s all about women. Since the start of the “Woman’s Voice” programs, women’s rights have entered the center of Turkey’s agenda. Women’s rights have spread considerably. This is good. It’s beneficial for women. (Meltem, 20, university student, STR) Yasemin Bozkurt’s show was good, but they did that to her [cancelled her program] because she was really a defender of women’s rights. (Reyhan, 65, elementary school graduate, writer/folk music performer, STR)

Many interviewees also argued that WV has a positive effect on women’s rights in terms of teaching those who do not know their rights. Yasemin, an EUD and a lawyer, believed this, although she was mainly critical of the programs: I mean, for the masses who aren’t educated, who don’t know their rights, who don’t know the law, for them I believe that Serap Ezgu¨ certainly fulfilled the function of a teacher. Because the public trusts her.

Many viewers also reported “learning about the social environment” through these shows. The interviews indicate that during the viewing of the WV programs women and men think about issues such as their own place in society, what to expect, what to be afraid of, and how they should be raising their children. I like it, I mean, they reveal certain things ultimately. I don’t know, I think that’s better. Things get out in the open. This shows me how many things

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are going on that we don’t know about. We have no clue. (Barıs¸, 18, male, hairdresser, middle-school graduate, STR) I watch “Woman’s Voice” and take lessons from it. But I don’t choose it as a living standard. I contemplate while watching what’s missing from our lives, where we make mistakes, where we do right . . . It’s exemplary. In family matters – I have a daughter, a daughter-in-law, a son – I watch it ¨ thinking what’s better, what’s a behavior I should refrain from . . . (Tulay, 50, retired blue collar worker, elementary school graduate, STR) We watch those programs but the more we watch, we have children you know, we’re scared of everything now . . . I don’t know, while we watch it, we say, the environment has gotten considerably bad, you don’t even dare to send your child outside anymore. The atmosphere has changed so much. (Ays¸e)

Ays¸e was one of the viewers who expressed the fear that Woman’s Voice programs inflict on her. Ays¸e was a mother of three girls, who at the time of the interview were 21, 20 and three and a half. Her oldest daughter was attending Konya University and her second daughter was in high school in Niˇgde.21 Both cities are conservative Anatolian cities, and the fact that Ays¸e and her husband Ibrahim sent their daughters to school outside Istanbul was an indication of the emphasis they placed on their daughters’ education. Both Ays¸e and Ibrahim had only completed elementary school. Ibrahim was a blue-collar worker and Ays¸e had in the past been involved in home marketing for household goods, although she no longer did that for a living. The family lives in Gebze in a threebedroom apartment on the third floor of an apartment building. The couple spent a lot of money on their daughters’ education, making considerable sacrifices.22 Their view of the WV programs reflected a concern for the well-being of their daughters, who lived away from them, and a general view of a society “gone astray.” Stories that are featured on WV, especially those of abducted or runaway teenage girls, fill mothers and fathers with fear and anxiety. Abductions and elopements have particularly dire consequences for parents and young girls, since they constitute grave violations of the honor code. In our interview, host Inci Ertuˇgrul tried to assign a positive influence to the program in that respect: Yes, in Turkey in the last few years, there’s a lot of girls who run away from home. So many people come to the show [with this problem]. If mothers

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or fathers can learn to be a little closer to their children, if they say “I must be involved with my child a little more, I must listen, share more, if I don’t want that to happen to my kid,” even if one mother, one father said this to their child because of this program, I believe that’s a positive value of the program.

Many children of STRs I interviewed were attaining much higher levels of education than their parents, and thus had more occasions to leave the conservative parameters of their neighborhoods and social milieu. Having been born in the city, rather than having migrated after marriage like their parents, their accents, clothing, values and aspirations – in short, their habitus – show significant differences from their parents’. The remote, albeit physically near, city life, and television’s glamorization of that life, creates longings in these young people, which their parents find alienating and frightening. A generational and cultural clash is occurring between the parents, who continue to value honor and tradition highly, and the children, who aspire to a better future and greater freedom. One great danger of the “exemplary aspect” of the programs is that they may provide justification for women’s confinement in the safety of the home or in an unhappy marriage. It can be argued that the adverse examples viewers see on television might also lead to the justification of men’s desire to control their mothers, sisters, wives and daughters with a simple reference to the “dangerous world out there.” As we have seen in the analysis of the programs’ content, the world that is depicted on the programs is one where patriarchy reigns and women are confined to tight corners of impossibility. Moreover, for every woman who appears on television and claims a right, there is another one who is in a difficult situation resulting from her “breach of the honor code.” Hence, when women watch WV, they take lessons in the repercussions of dishonorable conduct, such as their inability to see their children as a result of divorce due to their ex-husbands’ family’s obstruction. This may result in a woman’s decision to stay in a violent and unhappy marriage with the fear that her children will be taken away from her, as illustrated by the following quote: ¨ It needs to be watched, the things they talk about especially. Gul: One feels a thousand times grateful for one’s own situation. (STR, 29, associate’s degree, unemployed)

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Depending on the viewer’s subject position, there is always room to read texts in multiple ways. Fiske notes the possibility of multiple interpretations of soap operas by their female audience. He argues that disruptions in marriages common in the storylines of soap operas may be read by the soap opera audience in two opposing ways: on the one hand, “dominant” or “patriarchal” readings may lead fans to “return to their more ‘normal’ marriages with a sense of relief ” (1987, 181). Alternatively, it can force viewers to question the status quo. WV raises awareness on issues of symbolic and physical violence. As Inci Ertuˇgrul puts it: People get informed about these things. The best way of learning is with examples, with identification, putting oneself in somebody else’s shoes. When they see it on television live, they get encouraged about their own issues. For example, a woman who’s been battered for 30 years, never said anything, she sees another woman here who tells about it, resists it, contests it. Suddenly someone who came to watch that day asks to speak and tells what she’s been through. She says “I have to do something to change this, I wish I had done something earlier.” Maybe someone in front of the TV tells her husband that he can’t hit her that night. Or she starts to investigate and question what she should do not to exacerbate the situation.

On the other hand, WV does not equip viewers with the tools to transform the system, but contains them in the world of impossibility and immobility. The way issues are treated is not geared towards showing a way out to women. Women on WV are ultimately questioned, blamed and judged. As I will argue in Chapter 5, this could be remedied by cooperation with the women’s movement and with efforts at framing the issues in a social context, rather than leaving them at the individual level. For example, upon my question as to whether or not they would consider appearing on a WV program, Zehra and Buket made the following point, Zehra: If something bad happened to me, why would I go on that show? There’s the city hall, prosecutors, judges, women’s organizations. I would take refuge in those, and see if I can get some help from them. (42, elementary school graduate, housewife, STR) Interviewer: Do you know of any organizations in this area that help women?

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Zehra (changing her tone): I mean, these programs have tied us to the home, until the evening [we watch these]! Buket: There must be some. An aid organization or something that helps. But as Zehra says, we’re in front of the TV all the time, we don’t know. (28, college graduate, housewife, STR) Zehra: We don’t have anything like that. If we had some leadership, we could also help women, do something, get some knowledge. But no, we wake up in the morning, we watch series, then we watch series in the evening. We’ve degenerated with television. It doesn’t give us anything. None of them are educating programs. WV shoulders functions such as finding the missing, helping mothers see their children, and reconciling marriages, which are normally functions taken over by state institutions such as law enforcement and courts, or other independent organizations. By appearing on television, participants on the programs, expect all their problems to disappear magically. This is a strange position to occupy, especially for commercial companies that are ultimately interested in nothing but profits. This peculiar public service task assigned to television has to do with the inadequacy of local and national social services available for women. The leverage an active women’s movement could have on the media and on the state cannot be overestimated. Demands for the furtherance of the WV programs to serve women’s interests better, as well as for the enhancement of state services for women, are crucial in making improvements to women’s status in Turkey. WV viewers were also aware of these needs, but did not know where to begin. Some viewers said that they liked the WV programs because they felt that their guests benefited from their appearance. These positive opinions concentrated on the fact that WV programs find missing persons, or reconcile broken marriages: Nur: People get married, the missing are found. For example, the man got divorced from his wife, they couldn’t get along. [The producers] call the woman, they let them talk, they get them back together. People even get married [like this]. ¨ Suleyman: It’s beneficial for the participants, too. For example, it’s been three months since they broke up, three months later the woman comes on television, says she wants to reconcile with her

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husband, or the husband comes and says he wants to reconcile with his wife. If there’s a little bit of [love,] some marriages still get fixed. Sometimes it works . . . They find the missing. That’s amazing – they find them in Germany, Bulgaria, Azerbaijan . . . ¨ S¸ukran: I used to be against those programs, but then I saw some benefits. They bring together families, people who haven’t seen each other for 20 or 30 years. Media has that power, those programs are watched everywhere, even in Australia. From Turkey you can find someone in Australia – it’s impossible for an individual to do. They fix some problems the police can’t, they do things that the law, attorneys can’t do. A girl runs away or gets abducted, she’s missing, the family’s crying, they find her because the whole of Turkey watches the program. However, the WV programs were also criticized for the emphasis they placed on the reconciliation of marriages as the ultimate goal. This critique came up repeatedly during a meeting with some members of the feminist organization Mor C ¸ atı (“Purple Roof”), who run the most established and active independent domestic violence shelter in Istanbul. EUD Yasemin, who also happens to be a single mother, pointed out this factor as well: Yasemin: What happens is, ultimately, it comes to the same point. The best thing that happens is that they get married. Do we have to always anticipate [marriage]? Isn’t that boring? That becomes very boring after a while. On the other hand, Tolga, a male STR, thought that the programs were actually harmful to the guests. Tolga believed that appearance on WV could hurt a woman: Ultimately, they don’t find any solutions to those people’s problems. They just fight on the show, that’s all that happens. After the show, do they reconcile? They don’t, but at the end [they say] this many people watched Yasemin’s program . . . Women are subordinated, yes, I agree, but she goes on television, says “I’m being beaten by my husband.” After the program’s over, are you really happy? If I’m unhappy with my wife, I wouldn’t go on television and talk about it. I’d tell my wife I’m unhappy with her, I’d divorce her legally. I mean, going on television, saying “my husband does

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this and that, I’m unhappy, he beats me, he doesn’t care for the home, for the children.” What use does that have? Even if he’s doing that there’s no reason to get that cheap. This goes for men, too. Go to the court, get a divorce, what’s the use in these things, because you sit there and let off steam but after the program is over you go home and get beaten again, I’m sure. Your relatives will see you on TV, your friends, won’t they shun you?

Tolga has reason to argue that women’s appearance on WV may exacerbate things at home. Since the number of domestic violence shelters is very limited in Turkey and the program producers do not take responsibility for what happens after the show, women are left in an even more vulnerable position than they were before the show. The killings that have occurred in the past are manifestations of this vulnerability. The producer of Your Voice complained about the absence of shelters as well. He argued that the producers were careful not to exacerbate a person’s situation by allowing them to appear on the program: A woman calls in distress, says “My husband married a second wife [kuma], I’m being beaten.” We check with the neighbors, they say, “If you put her on television right now, her face is all purple.” Why would I leave her there? If there were good shelters, I’d wish to put a woman who calls me in distress in a place like that. You can’t do that. And if you put her on television it will be worse . . .

The problem has to do with television’s role as the last resort for many in need in the absence of adequate social services. However, Zehra and Buket noted that some people also appeared on the programs for personal gain: Buket: There are some who go on that program because they’re truly victims and some who appear there for profit. They expect something, you can see that. So people give them a job, food, bread . . . I don’t think it’s all 100 per cent true. I mean, where do they get all those topics from? Zehra: I agree. I mean we can tell certain things. The woman goes on television and thinks “Maybe someone will feel sorry for me.” Turkish society is used to making easy money. Let me gain something without working. Without deserving. [That’s how they think.]

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Another line of criticism that came up during my research was concerned with WV programs’ tendency to reveal people’s private lives. This point was voiced by both, STRs and EUDs. Yasemin, a 40-year-old lawyer, was critical of this prevalence of private affairs. Yasemin, an EUD, was inevitably exposed to WV because her father, who she lives with, watches WV regularly: Yasemin: These programs are about other people’s inner world, I don’t like getting into people’s private lives so much anyway. It bothers me that this is being exhibited, because they know millions are listening to them, it’s not a natural environment. And I can’t watch it all the time, it’s impossible for me to watch all three hours [because I get uncomfortable]. Forty-year-old STR Selma believed that the show could have a possible positive effect on young people, although she felt that the discussion of private issues on television, especially in front of men, was outrageous. They talk about outrageous things on television, I don’t like those programs. I mean, something bad happened to you, you talk about that in front of all those men. I don’t like it, they talk about disgrace, nothing else. The only way “Woman’s Voice” could be positive is, it’s good in the sense that [it leads] young people not to get carried away by these things, so they don’t fall onto that path.

Similarly, Hatice, a rather conservative, religious woman, found the “exposure of private lives” disturbing: I don’t watch “Woman’s Voice.” When I watch it I get depressed. Sometimes when we get together with friends, the TV is in the salon in my house, they say let’s watch it. I mean nothing remains closed, a secret. Everything gets poured out, bad or good. I get depressed. You can’t find a solution to these things. That’s why I don’t watch. If they didn’t reveal their names, if they didn’t tell “They did this, they did that” but said “If you do this, that can happen” and stuff, that would be better. She reveals herself there, for people that know her – it’s like an ad. It wouldn’t be like that if they kept her face covered. I don’t like it because of that. Otherwise it’s good. It’s a good thing they warn, “If you go that way, this will happen.”

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This approach resonates with the widely held belief that family life is discreet and private issues must remain a secret.

“Woman’s Voice” and STR men The following words of a male respondent clearly showed the hierarchy in which domestic violence was placed in his mind: Today, in Turkey, there are many elderly who sleep on the streets. There are many who can’t buy medication, handicapped people, people who can’t take care of their household, people who need a loaf of bread, people who can’t go to school. Instead of media bringing these issues up, trying to remedy these, she goes on television, “My husband beats me.” Is that so important? (Tolga, 29, STR, male, hairdresser)

Also, WV programs were found to be against men and in favor of women indiscriminately, especially by male STR viewers. Tolga was entirely against WV because he believed that only one side of the story was presented on the program, and men were continually blamed: They execute men one-sidedly. All those women’s programs, on TGRT, Samanyolu, all the channels, all the time, violence against women, women’s problems, always problems like that. I mean on TGRT, Woman’s Voice, Women’s Diary, For Women; these kinds of programs are always on, nothing is on for men. Women go there, “My husband does this and that.” On TV, in newspapers. There are no programs to defend the men. Always, men this, men that, that’s all there is on television. I’m very much interested in Woman’s Voice on TGRT. I tried to call them many times, I could never get through; I faxed them too. Women who get beaten up, men who don’t take care of their home . . . Yasemin Bozkurt puts these topics in a row, the guy gets connected live to the program, they ask “Why do you beat her? Why do you not take care of her?” This is one-sided execution. It’s execution without trial. Does the man have no points where he’s right? There must be, at least one in ten. They literally tell the woman, “Our program has a lawyer, he’ll help you. You can get alimony from your husband – you can go to the state shelters,” always this. Always supporting the woman, but they never talk about where the men are right. That upsets me. They cancelled some of those programs anyway . . . The guy goes there, says two sentences,

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they shut him up. Maybe he’s right too. Maybe his wife does not show desire for him, maybe she doesn’t make him tea or coffee, maybe he has many reasons to complain about his wife too. I find women very passive. All they do is go to these channels and complain. If you’ve had enough, go to the courts, give a petition, get a divorce. What’s the point in humiliating yourself like this?

Thus, for Tolga, women had no right to complain since they might equally be culpable for reasons such as “not showing desire” towards their husbands, or not making coffee and tea for them. Thirty-year-old Kemal was another male STR viewer who told me that he did not want his wife to watch WV and would not by any means tolerate her appearance on such a program: I would never have anything to do with that program. If my wife would go on that program, I would divorce her immediately. [Interviewer: Does your wife watch Woman’s Voice] I try not to let her watch, but we don’t know what they do during the day. But she can’t watch that kind of stuff when I’m there.

Tolga and Kemal’s positions reflect the anxiety younger men feel towards a changing society, changing demands of family life, and increasing visibility for women. Younger men, who are responsible for continuing to protect the “honor” of the family, might feel that they’re increasingly losing grip on the “honor” of their women (wives, sisters, mothers, daughters), which constitutes the honor of the family, in the face of the media’s provocations, women’s increasing participation in public life, and increased economic demands for women to work and support the family in addition to the husband. Young men who are under pressure from the social environment to contain this transition within acceptable parameters, therefore, find it necessary to resort to more extreme measures than older men with more established family lives. Kardam’s (2005) UNFPA report on “honor killings” cites a similar finding: Young men, especially those who had migrated to the city from rural areas, emphasized more strongly the control of how women dress, whether or not they should go to school, whether they should work, with whom they should be friends and how they should behave. Young men ages 18–25 were rather

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hard and intolerant on the topics of virginity and divorce. It was observed that with age came some degree of increase in tolerance. (ibid., 17)

Conclusion Noting the “participatory” nature of daytime television dominated by Phil Donahue-style talk shows and quiz shows, Tania Modleski argues that daytime television emphasizes “connection to rather than separation from others” (1997, 112). For many viewers of Woman’s Voice, watching this format is a social activity they share with others in the form of either watching together or talking about it later. They also reported “learning about the social environment” through these shows, although the knowledge they gain may limit their options in life, rather than empower them. During the viewing of these programs women think about issues such as their own place in society, what to expect, what to be afraid of and how they should be raising their children. Like romance readers, they feel like they are “participating in a large, exclusively female community” (Radway 1991, 11). Although feminists dismiss Woman’s Voice almost entirely, it plays an important role in the construction of viewers’ imaginations of the society they live in. Morley writes: in relation to the charge that work on media consumption in the domestic sphere involves a “retreat into the sitting-room” away from the proper (“public”) concerns of communications and cultural studies, that seems to me to involve a very restrictive conception of what “politics” is. (1992, 168)

The home is a place where political identities are negotiated. For many, especially rural–urban migrant women in Turkey, the home is the only place where political and social information is attained through television, and discussed with female friends and relatives. Television’s coverage of family and marriage issues helps women identify with people in similar positions to them and establish resistance to the structures that confine them. Covering issues in a more general social framework will enhance this process of identification. Thus, instead of distancing themselves, feminist critics and activists should consider television as one of the fronts of their struggle. Brunsdon argues that when evaluating a cultural product, whether or not “the writer sees

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herself as included within the category ‘feminine’ or approaches it as a distant critic” matters to a great extent (2000, 26). When evaluating WV, EUDs, including feminists, take the approach of the “distant critic.” However, commonalities rather than differences between the lives of the “feminist” and the “housewife” should be emphasized. The distinction EUDs seek from the rural migrants exacerbates the lack of communication between these groups with different habitus. Greater cultural exchange, social contact and dialogue will help women realize that their lives are not so different after all.

5 Behind the Cameras: Production of Woman’s Voice

The discourse that emerges on WV is strained through production filters and framed by the approaches of the hosts and producers. This chapter draws on my interviews with network executives, WV producers and hosts, as well as participant observations during set visits. Some of the WV production patterns leave openings for something like a free public sphere to shine through. On the other hand, other production techniques account for exploitative effects and undermine the potential for subversiveness. Here, I will particularly dwell on the rhetoric on the “educational value” of WV to which all professionals associated with WV referred. I will dissect the discourse on “education” and “inculcation”, and develop an argument on the social distance between the WV hosts, guests, the studio audience and the home audience. Furthermore, I will critically analyze WV producers’ and hosts’ inability to place the issues they cover in a broader social context. In this regard, I will once again refer to the difference between phenomenological and structural explanations brought up in the previous chapters. I interviewed three people in respect of the production of Inci Ertuˇgrul, Your Voice: Banu K., programming director of TGRT; Ahmet S., producer and director of the program; and Inci Ertuˇgrul, the program host.1 After my interview with Banu K. on 5 October 2005, I was invited to the set on 12 October. The day started at 11:00 a.m. with my interview with Ahmet S. He did not have a private office, so we sat in the far end of a long room where his desk was located. Other members of the production team, 182

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as well as guests who would appear on the program on the same day, entered and left the room incessantly. Throughout the interview, Ahmet S. was multitasking. Since the program was to begin in two and a half hours, at 1:30 p.m., our conversation was interrupted many times by the phone ringing and Ahmet S.’s quick responses to technical questions. The production crew mainly consisted of young women. As an indication of last-minute nature of the production, a potential guest who was to appear on the program at 1:30 p.m. was being briefed in the background during my interview with Ahmet S. He was sitting at the other end of the same room in which Ahmet’s desk was located. Ahmet occasionally lent an ear to the briefing that was going on. I occasionally overheard the production team’s questions, such as: “So, was there violence in your marriage?” The decision whether or not to feature this guest in the upcoming show was being made then and there, in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the backstage. The lack of privacy offered to this person during the briefing was striking to me. This observation gave me a valuable insight into the production patterns: the team was not as careful and sensitive towards their guests as they wanted to appear. The briefing process seemed awkwardly informal, punctuated by occasional scornful laughter at the expense of the guest. The demands of producing a three-hour-long live program every day of the week explain some of the weaknesses of the programs diagnosed in the previous chapters. Ahmet S. acknowledged that the production crew who did the background research and briefings consisted of young people, but noted that I should not be fooled by appearances. He explained that the production team had a lot of experience gained since 2002 working with three different hosts. He noted that they learned how to listen to people “hands-on, on the job.” Thus, apparently, no formal training was deemed necessary to become a Your Voice production team member. At about 12 p.m., I was invited to Inci Ertuˇgrul’s dressing room to interview her. Part of our interview occurred while she was putting on her make-up. Our interview was also somewhat cut short with the hairdresser’s entry into the room, with the concern that Ertuˇgrul’s hair would not be done on time. Ertuˇgrul had just been given the cue cards for that day’s program. Because of our interview, she may not have had enough time to study them. After my interview with Inci Ertuˇgrul, I

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conversed with the studio audience who were beginning to gather in the waiting/cafeteria area. We were allowed into the studio around 1 p.m. While the audience was settling down in their seats, upbeat music was played in the studio, to which the audience responded by clapping, chanting and dancing. The audience members seemed to be in good spirits. This was a regular weekly outing for them, and it was clear that they felt like an indispensable part of Your Voice. However, it was also clear that Your Voice was not the only program they attended. During a commercial break I overheard a woman ask another if she was going to attend Mehmet Ali Erbil’s program later that day.2 The addressee of the question answered in the negative, explaining that her whole family including herself was fasting and she had to go home and cook something for the evening meal, iftar.3 There ¨ un’s ¨ show, which had just started on Star was also talk about Ays¸e Ozg TV. It seemed that attending talk shows such as WV or entertainment programs such as Seda Sayan in the Morning or Mehmet Ali Erbil’s Ya S¸undadır Ya Bunda had become a social activity for this group of women, replacing visits to relatives’ or neighbors’ homes.4 When the program started, the cheerful atmosphere of the preprogram entertainment subsided and the studio audience began to contribute to the discussion about the cases at hand. This sudden change in the emotional atmosphere in the room was remarkable. I also observed that the audience members continually made comments among themselves (off camera) on the issues and individuals being talked about. Although their opinions changed quite often in light of new developments and the hosts’ comments, it was clear (as we will see below) that their perception of a guest was often based on their own similar experiences, as well as the general atmosphere in the studio concerning the guest’s honor. Towards the middle of the program, I was invited into the control room by Ahmet S. There, I observed Ahmet’s direction of the show and his dictation of captions to the teleprompter. As the program was being aired live, every word uttered in the studio reached the home audience approximately three seconds later, rendering the risk of inappropriate behavior or speech high. To avoid any such situations before they occurred and to help Ertuˇgrul keep track of the complicated stories and ask the right questions, Ahmet often prompted Ertuˇgrul with suggestions of what to

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ask next. Ertuˇgrul received the cues through her earpiece (invisible to the audience), and at times she repeated them almost verbatim. Despite the heavy atmosphere in the studio and the sadness of the topics, the air in the control room was light and cheerful. In fact, while I happened to be in the production studio, the man who was being briefed earlier (during my interview with Ahmet S.) was speaking on the screen. Upon his confession that “he was being beaten by his wife,” exclamations of disbelief, surprise and protest filled the room. The production team was surprised because this apparently had not come up at the briefing. While some female crew members expressed their disbelief, others were clearly entertained by this unexpected outburst. Ahmet S. belonged to the latter group, and quickly asked the person in charge of the teleprompter to write “MY WIFE IS BEATING ME” as an on-screen caption. ∗ My visit to Yasemin Bozkurt’s Woman’s Voice set occurred on 10 November 2005. She had just started doing the show on Flash TV on 7 November. Therefore, the observations described below may not reflect established production patterns. Bozkurt was the self-proclaimed pioneer of WV programs, and began hosting Woman’s Voice on TGRT in October 2002. She transferred to Kanal D, one of Turkey’s most popular channels, in February 2004. When I arrived in Istanbul to conduct my field research on 1 June 2005, Yasemin Bozkurt’s Woman’s Voice on Kanal D had just been cancelled due to an upsetting incident: a woman had been shot dead by her son as soon as she arrived in her home town Elazıˇg after appearing on Woman’s Voice the day before. On 18 May 2005, five days after the sad incident, the general manager of Kanal D announced that the program was cancelled since it had “become a social issue itself” (Sabah, 18 May 2005). As the Kanal D program director related to me in our interview, they cancelled the show as a sign of “responsible broadcasting.” Given the large amount of negative press about her and her program following the cancellation of her show, Bozkurt’s reincarnation in November was surprising. However, it was less surprising to see her reincarnation at Flash TV, a small and less popular channel.5 Moreover, the program was temporarily scheduled to run from 6:30 to 10:00 p.m., with an interruption between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. for the evening news. Woman’s Voice included clips from

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old episodes of Yasemin’s Window, Bozkurt’s old show, outside shots featuring “makeover” segments, as well as other random clips and segments including footage taken outside the studio (in a guest’s house, for example), were scattered throughout the show. In that regard, it did not present as stagnant a picture as had Your Voice. ¨ Tulin, the producer of the program (as well as Bozkurt’s sister) invited me to the Flash TV building in Tepebas¸ı at 5 p.m. The program was to begin at 6:30, so I had an hour and a half to interview Bozkurt and observe the preparations for the show. As soon as I approached the Flash TV building, I was struck by the amount of construction going on. The elevators were out of order and the noise emanating from the construction was unbearable. I climbed the five storeys to the very small “Woman’s Voice” studio, and was invited into the small back offices by ¨ Tulin. There were three or four tables in the tiny office, and I was informed that a team of five young women worked on the production of the program. Bozkurt’s team consisted of women who were very similar to the team at TGRT in terms of age, demeanor and outward appearance. I was led into a small room where Bozkurt’s hair was being done. After the interview, I was asked to wait in the hallway until the program began. The narrow hallway began to fill with guests and audience members by 5:45 p.m. After a while, it became so overcrowded and overheated that it became almost unbearable to stand there. Finally, around 6:15 p.m., we were invited into the studio. The audience coordinator seated people in the auditorium-shaped structure. My presence was met with interest by the audience members, since I had not arrived there with the group. Sibel, a young woman who sat beside me, immediately asked me what I was doing there, recognizing me as an outsider.6 She also informed me that the group she was with actually had not wanted to come to the program. Some young men in the group, for example, were audibly complaining that they did not want to be there. Although the audience members were not very happy to be there, they still became engaged in the program. Throughout the show, the audience members commented on the topics among themselves, and occasionally took the microphone to talk, and replied to each other. Personal experience with similar situations played a key role, as exemplified by a woman who lashed out at a man for considering divorcing his wife, which would deprive his wife and children of social security benefits. This female audience member later

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explained that her father had left them when she was little, and that her mother suffered many difficulties after that. Sibel, who was sitting next to me, often changed her mind and commented on many of the guests’ situations. The audience members clapped, cried, laughed and fought with each other throughout the show. They also noticed that a couple among the day’s guests had visited other WV programs as well. “We’ve seen you in other shows, too,” one woman exclaimed to the couple, in an effort to delegitimize their plea. People who visited more than one show were apparently not viewed as sincere, and were not respected much by the studio audience. It was viewed as an indication that they were using their appearance on the program for personal gain, rather than as a sign of desperation. Much more conversation and interpretation among the studio audience was happening than was reflected to the home audience. The Woman’s Voice audience was more heterogeneous than the Your Voice audience. Young men and women were widespread, although the majority of the audience consisted of middle-aged women. There were some older men as well. This group seemed lower in socio-economic status than the Your Voice cohort. Because of the strange scheduling of the program, mentioned above, the news hour interrupted the flow at 8 p.m. A few minutes before then, the audience was asked to exit the studio. As we were leaving, a banner was being attached to the window of the room overlooking the studio, which was to serve as a background behind the newscaster. It was clear that Flash TV operated with limited resources and space. We were led into the cafeteria in the basement to spend an hour before the program resumed again at 9 p.m. The group leader distributed sandwiches to everybody and we sat and ate in the smoke-filled room. The audience members chatted, smoked cigarettes and consumed the food and beverages. Nobody could leave, because they had surrendered their identity cards at the security desk in the lobby. This practice, I believe, was deemed necessary to prevent any “escape attempts” from the set – probably to make sure that the program had enough audience members until its conclusion. ∗ My set visit to Among Ourselves with Serap Ezgu¨ occurred on 24 November 2005. Unfortunately, I was not able to interview Ezgu¨ since she did not return my calls requesting the interview. However, I managed to

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establish contact with Arzu, a production crew member, who invited me to observe the program and the backstage area. Arzu was a veteran of WV programs. She told me that she had started working for Woman’s Voice with Yasemin Bozkurt at TGRT, moved on to Kanal D with her, ¨ and subsequently transferred back to TGRT to work with Serap Ezgu, ¨ As with the other programs, Serap moved on to Show TV with Ezgu. ¨ team also consisted predominantly of young women. Ezgu’s Serap Ezgu¨ took over Woman’s Voice on TGRT in February 2004 after Yasemin Bozkurt’s departure from that channel. In March 2005, Ezgu¨ transferred to Show TV and began to host the show under the name Among Ourselves with Serap Ezgu¨ which she continued until June 2008. Among Ourselves, like its counterparts, lasted approximately three hours with commercial breaks and was aired live during the daytime slot. Its air time was subject to change depending on scheduling demands, such as Ramadan. For example, the program duration was an hour shorter during Ramadan, probably to accommodate additional Ramadan programming.7 A distinct aspect of Among Ourselves compared to its two other counterparts was the presence of tight security. Throughout the program, the audience was controlled by strict and somewhat impolite professional security guards. For example, members of the audience were forbidden to leave the studio during some of the commercial breaks, which they met with protest. In contrast to the other programs’ studio audience, on the other hand, the Among Ourselves audience seemed much more diverse. Although they had a group leader, the audience members had come from different neighborhoods of Istanbul. There were too many people for the studio to accommodate, so additional chairs were brought in to seat everyone. Despite the large audience turnout, Serap Ezgu¨ did not encourage audience participation. In fact, during the course of the program I attended, audience members were not given the microphone to comment at all. ´ The attitudes of the audience members ranged from attentive to blase. For example, when a young woman was reunited with her mother who had left her home 15 years previously due to domestic violence, nobody around me could restrain their tears. The same off-camera discussions and comments among the studio audience also occurred during Among Ourselves. However, towards the end of the three-hour program, the

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woman sitting next to me loudly protested that she would not attend this program again since it only talked about problems and there was no entertainment. She said that this was her second time attending the show, and she did not intend to come ever again.

Guest Recruitment Techniques At Your Voice, the guest selection process seemed to take place in the following way: a potential guest contacts Your Voice to make a plea, and the team places the case in an order of urgency. According to Ahmet S., at the time of our interview they had approximately 600 applicants on the waiting list. When their turn comes, the applicants are contacted by the crew, interviewed either over the phone or in person, and invited to the studio to appear on the program. When the guest lists of the day are confirmed, the details of each case are written on cue cards and given to Ertuˇgrul. During the program, Ertuˇgrul interviews the guest live in the studio, with Ahmet S.’s help through her earpiece. During the three hours the program is on the air, the team also responds to new developments by receiving phone calls containing tips. The team screens the calls and connects the relevant and exciting ones to the live program. When asked about their guest-selection criteria, Arzu from Among Ourselves informed me that they concentrated on “missing persons” and did not “do violence” these days. She attributed this to the fact that there were no shelters for women to go to, asking “How much space does the Purple Roof have? How many beds does SHC ¸ EK8 have?” Arzu told me that she gave information about SHC ¸ EK (Social Services and Child Protection Administration) or the district attorney’s office to callers when “she felt like it,” affirming the arbitrariness of the “help” that WV programs afforded to their guests. Arzu added that “doing reunions” was better since reunions of long lost family member’s (missing person cases) received high ratings. It seemed as if they were being extra careful since earlier in the month a man implicated for abducting a woman on Among Ourselves had committed suicide, leaving behind a letter blaming Serap Ezgu¨ for his suicide. Indeed, while I was sitting in Arzu’s office, a woman called to apply to the program. Her father had been killed and her brother had been shot. The team rejected her application on the basis that her appearance on the program might prompt another murder.

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There were some indications of informal guest recruitment techniques at Show TV, as well. For example, a young man was sitting together with me in Arzu’s office while I was asking Arzu questions concerning guest and audience recruitment. Since this man was not introduced to me and the team members addressed him as “abi,” “brother,” I assumed that he was a member of the production team. I later learned that this man was there to plead for his wife’s return. The fact that Arzu was not shy to talk about the intricate details of the program in front of a guest was indicative of the guests’ low status in the eyes of the production team.

Studio Audience Recruitment Techniques TGRT’s Banu K. claimed that their studio audience was the “voice of those who sit at home and watch TV.” She argued that it was critical that the studio audience consisted of “housewives – that is, people who are the real viewers of WV, people who are ‘at the same level’ as those who sit at home and watch TV while sipping their tea.” She explained the procedure of recruiting audience members as follows: We have a guest coordinator who works with the group leaders. The group ¨ Beyleaders are professionals who live in neighborhoods such as Bakırkoy, ¨ u, ¨ Avcılar, Bes¸iktas¸. They find the people who would like to attend likduz Inci’s program. These are ordinary people who say, “I always wanted to see Inci’s program.” That’s the kind of people we select. All we require is a certain number.

However, I observed that the audience members were not random, ordinary people who were simply interested in the show. The day I visited the Your Voice set, the “Wednesday group” made up the studio audience. This group of women regularly attended the show every Wednesday ¨ ukc ¨ ¸ ekmece, a lower-middle-class neighborhood on the fringes from Buy of Istanbul. Wednesday was not an exception; every day of the week had its own regular group. The women were led by a group leader who collected a small fee from each person. In exchange, the group leader was responsible for transporting the group to the studio in a rented van. I will argue below that the practice of recruiting the same audience members regularly impacts on the dynamics between the host, guest and audience members. Their regular status provides the audience members

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with power and control over the program’s discourse. Banu K. agreed that the audience members had established a close relationship with WV programs: The studio audience really loves and embraces the program. They also love and embrace the production team and Inci to the same extent. They make necklaces or cakes and bring them to Inci. They consider themselves a part of the program, a part of the family. Sometimes the audience asks the right questions, makes very keen observations. They ask the questions that the home audience would ask. Sometimes, we even ask for individual audience members specifically based on the topic.9

¨ audience members were not regulars Yasemin Bozkurt and Serap Ezgu’s of the program. However, both audiences also consisted of people who circulated between different programs. Sibel, the young woman I sat next to during Woman’s Voice, explained to me that she regularly attended the programs of Seda Sayan, Aydın and Esra Ceyhan.10 She informed me that the group leaders collected 2 YTL (about $1.50) from each person they brought to the show. Talking with her, I realized that there was a subculture of people attending these shows. A business opportunity had also come into being for women to act as “group leaders” and make some money. The phenomenon of a small group of people circulating between different programs was pointed out to me by regular WV viewers as well. One can conclude that many studio audience members as well as home viewers were “media literate” in the sense that they saw through the production techniques and understood that they were participating in a business interaction, the ultimate goal of which was profit.

Producers’ Discourse on the Mission of the Programs Before I move on to the analysis of what the producers thought about the programs, I would like to briefly comment on the titles of the programs. The use of the “voice” metaphor in two of the programs I analyze is telling. As Yasemin Bozkurt’s original title Woman’s Voice and Inci Ertuˇgrul’s Your Voice suggest, the programs’ purpose is to be women’s ¨ program also voice, to represent women and their problems. Serap Ezgu’s made reference to a “community of viewers” in its title with the expression

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biz bize, “among ourselves.”11 An intimate atmosphere is created through set design, which resembles a living room (which is common on daytime talk shows globally), techniques such as informal interactions with the studio audience who tend to be regulars, and a lack of camera operators on stage because of the stationary positions of the cameras.12 Ezgu¨ even once forced a confession out of a guest with this ironic reminder: We’re just talking among ourselves here. Tell me, did you deny the children to their mother? (Program aired 17 November 2005)

In general, the discourse of the individuals associated with WV programs emphasized “social responsibility” in production. The social responsibility discourse was especially dominant among the TGRT employees. All three TGRT employees claimed that the fact that their program was not associated with any murders could be explained by their cautious attitude. Ahmet S. explained that, in any missing woman’s case, there was the possibility that the family was looking for the woman to “clean their honor” by killing her. Ahmet S. gave the following example to illustrate how his team tries to be alert in the face of such danger to a guest’s life: We inquire into why the girl doesn’t want to contact her parents. There might be a blood feud or something, so she’s scared. In Turkey, there are still these things called “honor killings,” so sometimes, in the case of girls who ran away from home, we don’t trust the family. When we don’t trust the family, we either notify the police of her whereabouts, or tell her to go to the police. We’re scared that if the family catches her, they can do something to her. I mean, we have to do this. What does a 16-year-old girl do when she runs away? She’s not on a normal path, she’s on a controversial path. It’s open to dangers. Like an open wound, it can get infected. We tell her not to roam around like this. So, we tell her to go to the police. We tell her that if she doesn’t go to the police, we’ll hand her in. We give a heads-up to law enforcement, we tell them we watch out for the family. The police send them to foster homes.13 For example, there was a 16-year-old, Zeynep. We got suspicious of the way the family was acting. Her family had connections with Lebanon, an Eastern culture. Zeynep ran away. Nobody knows who she is with – some unpleasant things were mentioned on screen. We suspected that the family would harm her. We

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told the police everything we knew. They found her and sent her to an orphanage. She later said things corresponding to our suspicions. She said her life was indeed in danger.

Interestingly, Ahmet S. also noted that sometimes the police sent potential guests to Your Voice to help them find their missing family member: [The police] send people to our program. For example, when people apply to us, we ask them, “Did you go to the police? Did you apply to the DA’s office? What did they say?” The applicants tell us that the police told them to go to Inci’s program so she can find the missing.

Thus, where law enforcement falls short, Inci takes over. Most guests attend these programs out of desperation after exhausting all legal avenues. For example, for women, whose ex-husbands are retaining their children despite the mother’s legal custody over them, television exposure can be a last resort. This stems from the impracticalities the law presents in a case like this. According to the law, recovering a child who is being held by a parent against the court’s custody decree requires the identification of the address at which the child is being held, entering those premises accompanied by law enforcement, and recovering the child under their auspices. Given that many women may not know the relevant address, exposing the child’s picture on television can be practical, because in this way tips can be gathered from neighbors and other witnesses. Due to the small number of crisis and information lines and the overwhelming need, the task of providing legal or psychological advice also falls on the WV programs. Although Ahmet S.’s above explanation indicates some level of responsibility and understanding of the dangers facing women, a disturbing experience with a WV production crew was communicated to me by an employee of New Ways: Women for Women’s Human Rights, a women’s rights organization operating in Istanbul. The employee told me that she had called a WV program once (she did not remember which one) to ask the production crew to convey a piece of information to their guest, who she thought would benefit from that resource. She was startled when the production crew was quick to provide her with the woman’s phone number. This indicated to her that the production crew was not acting

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sensitively to protect the guest. After all, the employee could have been a member of the guest’s family looking for her to kill her. Through their impromptu decision to give her the phone number, the production team could have endangered her life. Ahmet S. also noted that they explain to their guests the danger of appearing on the program. To protect itself legally, TGRT asks its potential studio guests to sign an agreement before they appear on the show. However, Ahmet S. also admitted that, while they were trying to be responsible, there were also certain “tricks” that they used for ratings’ sake. Live broadcasting had its clear advantages, according to Ahmet S., because it gave them the opportunity to catch live, real-life “moments of truth” in “money shots”: People follow the developments live. This is being tried for the first time – it’s a live reality show, anything could happen any moment. A fight could break out, people could faint. These types of things began to attract people’s attention. I mean, we don’t do this on purpose, not knowing that she’ll faint or anything. But we can tell that a studio guest will cry. Sometimes she’s telling the story too quietly, the viewers will not watch that. The guests are inclined to crying, and there are ways to make them cry. We make them cry without interfering. For example, as she’s telling her story, suddenly her child’s picture appears in front of her [on the screen]. She begins to cry. This has to happen, otherwise the viewers would say, “Look at this woman telling this like a machine.” But nobody knows that she’s containing herself. We don’t want her to do that. Sometimes, we do little mischievous things like this.

Ahmet S. refers to what Joshua Gamson calls the “money shot.” Gamson writes that “talk shows demand external, visible proof of a guest’s inner emotional state, and the money shot – the dramatic climax when the lie is exposed, the affair acknowledged, the reunion consummated – is the linchpin of the discourse” (Grindstaff, quoted in Gamson 1998, 92). Talk shows claim to be simultaneously real, authentic and spontaneous. They attempt to convey the feeling that “anything might happen, that something really real is going on here” (ibid., 91, italics in original). However, Gamson goes on to argue that the “little tricks” in search of the “money shot” sometimes heighten the intensity of the moment. Gamson writes, “for a moment, watching Amy, you could actually feel what it meant to be hated . . . the pain in which lesbian pride resides”

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(ibid., 94). I also demonstrated in Chapter 3 that WV guests sometimes utter unexpectedly subversive lines. Rarely and perhaps unintentionally, a liberating discourse on women’s rights over their children or domestic violence comes into being on WV. Or, by engaging in a matter-of-fact description of the circumstances around his wife’s disappearance, a man reveals the gender structure of his social world in his own words and from his own perspective. I would like to argue that these moments of spontaneity and reality are due to the under-produced nature of WV. These moments erupt since guests cannot be coached or provided with scripts in advance, due to the hustle and bustle of the day-to-day preparation of the program. Moreover, the live broadcasts leave no room for editing. In this regard, as Gamson argues: “Talk shows leave openings, sometimes tiny, sometimes rather gaping, but typically more than elsewhere in mass culture, for honest expressions like these to burst through, little shots of something like the truth, through the walls of distortion” (ibid., 94).

Discourse on “Educational Value” and Social Distance The Hosts and Social Distance In my analysis of production patterns of WV, I detected a “maternalistic” approach from the producers and hosts of WV directed at the guests, who tend to be from lower-republican-capital backgrounds. As the republican elite has done for decades, the WV programs also attempt to teach, modernize and transform. However, following the republican elite’s presumption that modernization will follow suit when all legal obstacles are lifted, they too fail to recognize the deep-rooted gender structure that controls the lives of those with low republican capital. This is surprising, since WV programs also constitute one of the few spaces on television that render this gender structure visible as never before. The wealth of references to “education,” “inculcation” and “inoculation” made by the professionals associated with WV programs indicate the social distance the producers perceived between themselves and the WV guests. I find that this is symptomatic of a general EUD attitude towards STRs – the typical guests of WV programs – constituting the positions of the “knowing subject” versus the “ignorant other” (S¸afak 2005). This “maternalistic” attitude of the “modern” women towards their “traditional others” is also diagnosed in other contexts where these

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women come in contact, such as in domestic work. Aksu Bora (2005) finds that the employer-employee relationship in domestic work is viewed by the employer as an arena of instruction and modernization of the “other.” Bora argues that this “maternalistic” attitude, coupled with the nature of housework (the fact that it is conducted in the private sphere) makes it difficult for both parties to acknowledge their relative positions as stemming from class division. The “maternalistic” attitude of employer towards employee hides symbolic power as arbitrary and natural (Bourdieu 1998a). Bora also argues that the class division is thus naturalized with the help of cultural divisions such as modern vs traditional or urban vs rural. Inci Ertuˇgrul, host of Inci Ertuˇgrul, Your Voice, referred to her initial unwillingness to host the show with a concern such as this: The previous hosts’ styles seemed . . . Their treatment of the guests was too hard, as a style. There was too much screaming and shouting by the hosts. When I first started the program, the most common criticism I got was, “You’re acting too soft towards your guests. Why don’t you scream? The hosts before you screamed. Why don’t you scream and handle it hard?” But I don’t have a right to do that.

Screaming and shouting are considered necessary for purposes of educating and enlightening. This “republican-era public school teacher” attitude of some television talk show hosts was also diagnosed by other ¨ ¨ glu (2000), as mentioned in scholars, like Tufan-Tanriover and Eyuboˇ Chapter 2. The host’s elite status grants her the right to scream at guests. On the other hand, the guests, by virtue of being the “asking object,” are regarded as deserving this kind of treatment. As an indication of this “maternalistic” attitude, all three interviewees associated with Your Voice had something to say about WV’s role in women’s education in their rights. Banu K., however, also admitted to her personal belief that the programs merely help women “accept” things by creating false consciousness, rather than empowering women to do something about their predicament: I mean, our purpose is to educate. We want to convey the message “Do not accept your fate – make your own fate.” But if you ask how much of this the viewers take in, I believe that they think in terms of “my husband

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beats me, but their husbands beat them too,” rather than “I have to call a lawyer, do this and that.”

Like some of the other media executives I interviewed, Banu K. also made the point about the difficulty concerning the maintenance of educational programs on television, given the ratings wars. Banu K. argued that Turkey was not at a “level” where educational programs would make money. She asserted: “Turkey has not reached that point yet – it’s not on that level”: Last year, we had an educational program in the morning slot. We hosted women’s organizations, people from the news, current affairs. The Civil Code14 was on the agenda at the time. We talked about the changes concerning women in the Civil Code; we talked about the family structure, the contribution of marriage counselors to the family, raising children, many things like that. But we ultimately realized that we are a commercial institution, a national channel. Ultimately we’re in a race, and the AGB ratings are very important . . . The viewers preferred to belly dance with Seda Sayan on the other channel . . . Then we decided to integrate music and entertainment into the programs while still continuing with education as a side feature. This is like mixing medication into an animal’s food; you’ll know what I mean if you have a pet at home. We tried to give them aspirin in their sandwich.

With this, Banu K. implied that education could only be conveyed by mixing it with entertainment. In this statement, television viewers of WV were placed in the position of “animals,” while the program producers take the role of “zookeeper,” who not only knows that the animal is sick but also knows what medication is good for the sick animal and also how to feed it to him. The “maternalism” Aksu Bora (2005) diagnosed in domestic work relations similarly “infantilizes” the domestic worker, while assigning the higher status of the omniscient “mother” to the employer. In that sense, I can argue that the WV producers see themselves as the mothers of the STRs who watch and attend their programs. Thus, they know what is best for them and feed it to them mixed in with entertainment. Ertuˇgrul and Ahmet S. were quite optimistic about the educational mission of Your Voice. This was also an attempt to assign a high value to

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the program. Given the controversial status of the programs due to the various violent events associated with them, this was a rare chance to defend the programs’ usefulness to society. Ahmet S. gave the following example to illustrate this point and to assert that Your Voice helps women learn their rights: Some men say, “We can’t get mad at our wives anymore.” They say, “After having watched your show for years, they don’t let us get mad at them.” For example, there was a guy who came to the program to plead. He was from Erzurum15 – a typical Anatolian man, very macho. He said, “Whatever I suffered, I suffered because of your program.” I asked him why. He said, “I had a fight with my wife. I slapped her once. Before I knew what was going on, I was given a three-month restraining order.” He said he went back to his house to learn what was going on, but I guess he went there with rage. He broke the door or something, so he received a six-month restraining order this time because he violated the first one. Then he wondered how she learned about these things, the restraining orders and stuff. And he found out that she learned about it when watching our program on TGRT.

Like the producers of Your Voice, Yasemin Bozkurt also claimed that the program was of great benefit to society: It activated the society – people gained self-esteem. Both men and women did. Men learned that they could also be betrayed and that sharing this with the society would not destroy their manhood. Women gained consciousness against battering. Look, women don’t know the great opportunities and civil ¨ has given to them. We talked about the recent changes rights that Ataturk in the Civil Code every day on our program. We gave messages such as: “If you’re battered, go to the precinct; if you’re legally married, your husband can’t kick you out of your home.” I think we took huge steps in raising women’s awareness. But ultimately, Turkish society is patriarchal. On the other hand, even if one woman says something like, “Don’t raise your hand to me, otherwise you’ll end up in jail,” even that could make him take a step back.

Bozkurt believed that she was a pioneer in defending women’s rights and covering women’s issues:

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There is the tradition of berdel16 for example, a great embarrassment in Turkey. I handled those issues. I’m a very brave woman by Turkish standards, I realized that. Nobody would dare talk about this, I talked about it. I talked about the murders of women. Some said to me, “What are you doing? What do you care if women are dying? Why do you awaken the society?” I received messages like this. In the Turkish family structure, the man sells his wife to the brothel, he sells his daughter to another man as “religious marriage,” and then they call this “honor.” When I showed these things they said, “There is no such thing in our society.” This was dust swept under the carpet. I startled some circles when I revealed this dust. That’s all there is to it.

It was clear that the hosts of WV considered themselves to be superior to the guests. Ertuˇgrul challenged this perception with references to her father’s public servant status and her deep knowledge of Anatolian life: I was not so foreign to these events because I was born in Trabzon. My father was an elementary school teacher in a village. I grew up there, in that village. I went to college in Trabzon. I know Anatolia more or less . . . People usually think that those who are on television live cut off from society. I don’t think I’m like that. I think I’m one of those people who lives the closest to that [segment of society].

Among the three hosts, Ezgu¨ was the most distant from her guests and the studio audience. In terms of her behavior, I observed that she is the closest host to the “didactic republican elementary school teacher” prototype. Ezgu¨ often screams at the guests, uses aggressive hand gestures and body posture, and engages in long monologues. I witnessed an odd ¨ general moment during my set visit, which gave me a sense of Ezgu’s attitude towards her guests. A woman pleading to see her children was one of her guests on 24 November 2005, when I was present on the set. The woman was dressed in traditional baggy trousers (s¸alvar), common in rural areas of Turkey, was overweight, had a lazy eye, and limped a bit when she was walking. During the course of her narration, she explained that she obtained the lazy eye as a result of her husband’s incessant battering, which was met with some (off-camera) skepticism by the studio audience. An odd occurrence took place during one of the commercial ¨ lack of knowledge of my presence breaks, which I probably owe to Ezgu’s

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there.17 After her segment was over, during the commercial break, Ezgu¨ asked this woman to go backstage, although guests typically stayed in the studio until the end of the program. As the woman was walking out of the studio, Ezgu¨ turned to the studio audience and behind her back imitated the way the woman walked, with a slight limp and with her arms open to indicate the woman’s obesity. The studio audience responded with laughter. It was strange to witness this callous impersonation, especially after hearing this guest’s sad story. ¨ Bozkurt also had an air of celebrity about her. She often Like Ezgu, compared herself to Oprah Winfrey. In contrast to Oprah, who sometimes places herself at the “level” of her guests and “participates in emotional self-confessions of childhood sexual abuse, weight loss and other personal details” (Moorti 1998, 87), Bozkurt thought of herself as living in a different world from her guests. She answered my question about whether she considered herself to have common problems with her guests with references to the injustice done to her – namely, her program’s cancellation by Kanal D: Our commonality is of course that we all live in Turkey and we are women. An injustice has been done to them. Has an injustice not been done to me [referring to the cancellation of her program by Kanal D]? If something like this were to happen in America, people would protest. The journalists would report this in headlines. Isn’t that right? Let’s say Oprah did this. They would declare Oprah a queen. They already do! All sorts of organizations, the president, governors, they would all support her and say, “Kudos to you, you are talking about these murders.” Instead, they treat me as if I committed a murder on the air. This is sad, thought-provoking, but true.

In their analysis of “Yasemin’s Window,” Bozkurt’s breakout show in the ¨ ¨ 1990s, Tufan-Tanrıover and Eyuboglu (2000) point out Bozkurt’s insistence on a “woman’s perspective” in their interviews with her. However, I would like to argue that Bozkurt’s notion of a “woman’s perspective” does not come from a profound and coherent understanding of women’s systematic subordination by society. For example, occasionally she engages in sexist language or blames women for having materialistic tendencies. Additionally, in her programs a woman’s physical beauty is treated as extremely important, and a husband is viewed as having the right to request appropriate adjustments to his wife’s physical appearance according to his taste. Overall, Bozkurt’s perception of her social distance from the

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WV guests accounts for her inability to identify with them, and leaves her discourse at the level of “knowing subject” in the face of the “asking object.” On the other hand, the awareness-raising mission of the programs through “messages” was approached by Inci Ertuˇgrul with caution: This is a three-hour-long live program. It’s a double-edged sword, there are many risks. But you have the chance to convey some messages to people with some sentences in between. On the other hand, the Turkish viewers don’t like to hear too many messages. [I give these messages] in the context of the cases there. For example, a woman lived with somebody without a legal marriage and now she can’t see her child. If a woman watches this at home and thinks, “I have to get a legal marriage in order for this not to happen to me,” that’s a message. Or, a woman had nine children and could not take care of them. When I say, “Don’t bring children to life that you can’t take care of,” that’s a message. And it’s a soft but I think effective message, because there is an example there.

Bozkurt also attributed her program’s success in raising awareness to its coverage of issues based on examples. At this point, she also echoed Inci Ertuˇgrul, who referred to the negative effects of being didactic on the audience: You’re not watched when you’re didactic. But the viewers learn a lesson when real people say these things, when it happens to them. My style is never to shake my finger or to lash out at people. It’s a very difficult thing for them to come here anyway. They come here shaking out of anxiety; they tell the secrets of their lives in front of a national audience. Therefore, I treat them very softly. I never get angry, I never scream.

Bozkurt noted here WV’s ability to challenge the monopoly that the “knowing subjects” claim over “knowing” and “disseminating knowledge.” The STRs for the first time have the opportunity to represent themselves in front of a national audience. In that sense, on WV, STRs generate firsthand knowledge about themselves. Gamson refers to Patricia Hill Collins’s valuation of “concrete experience” in black feminist thought over the “‘Eurocentric masculinist knowledge validation process’ which emphasizes decontextualized, detached observers generating ‘objective’ knowledge” (1998, 95). Gamson argues that this is precisely what talk shows do, albeit in a commodified manner. I believe that this experiential

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knowledge is precisely what Ertuˇgrul is referring to with her emphasis on “examples” in the above statement. For example, it is important to have someone such as Veysel A., a man who grew up in an orphanage, recounting his personal story to the viewers when the “orphanage scandal” is being covered. Thus, the “objective” knowledge is “personalized,” “contextualized” and made “concrete” in the face of the masculinist patterns of knowing and telling that are common in republican practice. This distinguishes WV programs from the earlier versions of TRT-style talk shows, where the discourse conformed to the state line of top-down inculcation of modernity.

Experts and Social Distance Among Ourselves was the only program in my sample that featured two ¨ regular experts in the studio: psychiatrist Tanju Surmeli and celebrity de18 ¨ ¨ fense lawyer Rahmi Ozkan. Surmeli is the founder of the “Life Health Center,” which provides individuals, couples and families with educational and therapeutic programs and services. Given his experience in ¨ couples and family therapy, Surmeli seems like an appropriate person to ¨ consult on a WV program. However, while Surmeli is obviously qualified in this field, his participation in the program remains cold and distant. According to the website of Life Health Center (Yas¸am Saˇglık Merkezi), he completed his residency in the US after graduating from medical school in Turkey. His republican elite status and his education abroad are some of the reasons for this distance. His presumed difference from the guests is reflected not only in his body language and diction but also in his choice of words. For example, when analyzing a guest’s husband’s behavior, he used the English word “defect,” which probably sounded foreign and unintelligible to many WV viewers (25 October 2005). The two experts of Among Ourselves create an odd atmosphere in the studio in terms of their appearance, speech, tone of voice and unpredictable, somewhat inappropriate contributions.

The Studio Audience and Social Distance I observed that the studio audience also at times played the role of the “knowing subject” and treated the guests as “asking objects.” For example, Ays¸e K. appeared in the episode of Your Voice aired on 11 November

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2005. She alleged that she was being battered by her husband and asked for a divorce. During Ays¸e’s narrative it became clear that Ays¸e and her husband were not legally married after all, and that Ays¸e was still married to a man who was in prison. Because of some bureaucratic requirements of the Population Office, her legal husband appears as her two children’s father on the children’s birth certificates, instead of Metin, who is their biological father. The children’s strange bureaucratic status was a source of contention for the couple. Economic difficulties constituted another problem. Ayse K. defended herself as an audience member commented as follows: Ays¸e K.: I was under wedlock when I came to Metin. I was desperate, my husband had been in prison for six years. Audience (female): Inci Hanım, did they have to make two children out of desperation? For God’s sake, if you didn’t divorce from the other guy, why did you have two children? How did you think you were going to feed them? Please, isn’t this unfair to the children? People used to be ignorant before. They didn’t know. But nowadays, newspapers and television stations warn people everyday: “Don’t live without a nikah [legal marriage].” “Get a divorce first, then get married.” These people act as if they’re saying, “Go find somebody else when you’re already married, have five children, and then throw them on the streets.” This is ayıp [embarrassing]. I swear, we can’t tolerate this anymore! In this case, by exclaiming that they “can’t tolerate this anymore,” this audience member took on the role of the “knowing subject” in the face of the “ignorant.” This was not the only instance where audience members blamed WV guests. Ahmet S. also observed the audience’s occasional outbursts, such as the above-mentioned criticism that Ays¸e K. received: Sometimes they overdo it. For example, a person comes on and says, “I have a problem: my relationship with my husband is not going well, I’m 27, and I have four children.” They immediately go, “Oh my God, four children!” Hold on a minute; let her tell her story . . . Sometimes they do little things like this.

In my interactions with audience members during my studio visits, I made similar observations on audience members as perceptive, frustrated

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third parties who watched the guests’ lives from a social distance and found it in their power to finger-point and criticize as members of a higher milieu or advocates of higher values. The “We can’t tolerate this anymore” echoes the relentless criticism of EUD viewers. The audience members were also trying to distinguish themselves from the guests, who they believed to be inferior to them. Socioeconomic and migration status, as well as “honor,” played a role in these attempts at boundary work (Lamont 1994). I observed similar cases of such scorn during my set visit. Before Your Voice began, we were waiting in the cafeteria before we were allowed to enter the studio. The audience members did not even make eye contact with the guests of the next day, who were waiting in the same cafeteria area with them. In fact, when someone said that a young woman who was sitting with her father in the waiting area was fasting, one of the audience members commented: “She is not old enough to fast.” It was implied that the father was making (or letting) her young daughter fast out of fake piousness or ignorance that she was not old enough to fast.19 Another example was that, during a commercial break, a group of Your Voice studio audience began criticizing the program’s guests for being ignorant. Referring to these “ignorant” people, one of them said, “They say they live in Istanbul, but they don’t know Istanbul – they wouldn’t sit down and talk with people from Istanbul.” Another woman responded: “They don’t know how to talk. You can’t even understand what they’re saying.” I suggested that people from Istanbul did not really talk to them either. One of them responded: “They would go and talk to kırolar again.” The word kıro (plural: kırolar) is key here. Clearly, by people “who say they live in Istanbul” the audience members meant the rural–urban ¨ u¨ migrants, STRs, who constitute the majority of WV guests. Ays¸e Onc argues that “in the cultural cosmos of contemporary Istanbul, ‘the immigrant’ has become an absolute other, activated to gather all accents and nuances of cultural hierarchy and distinction into a single, to¨ u¨ argues tal, and totalizing category of exclusion” (1999, 97–8). Onc that the word maganda (a word synonymous with kıro) encapsulates ¨ u¨ writes: “In this sentiment perfectly. Defining the word maganda, Onc everyday speech, its meaning seems self-evident, operating simultaneously as a derogatory label and a stereotype which condenses and connotes an array of socially and morally offensive attributes into a single

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¨ u¨ 2002, 172). Further, Onc ¨ u¨ argues, “being middle typification” (Onc class” and “leading a middle-class life” are not stable and unchangeable statuses either. Thus, she concludes that “constructions of the immigrant as the absolute other in the neoliberal ethos of Istanbul is part of an ongoing struggle to redefine the boundaries of middle sectors or classes” (1999, 98). I also argue that the WV studio audience is engaged in a continuous struggle to negotiate their “middle-class” status. They aim to distinguish themselves by “othering” the WV guests as the kırolar. The studio audience of Your Voice is placed socioeconomically somewhere between Inci Ertuˇgrul and the guests. Because of their weekly visits, the Your Voice studio audience members have gained a lot of experience, and are therefore very articulate and vocal. Also, because the women making up each group (the “Monday” group, “Tuesday” group, and so on.) have come to know each other in the course of their weekly visits to the program, their views are subject to group dynamics. If a group consensus comes into being, it becomes difficult to challenge the dominant view. That is dangerous, especially given the sensitivity of the topics and the vulnerability of the women who appear on the programs. The studio audience’s attitude towards a certain guest often determines the tone of the segment in which this guest is presented. Thus, the studio audience plays a critical role in deciding “who’s right” and “who’s wrong.” Ahmet S. explained the production crew’s preference for a regular group of audience members in terms of a sense of “security” and “predictability”: There are those who want to come [to the program] regularly. We let that happen. They come regularly and they know our style. They’re dependable. We know what they’re going to say. After all, this is a live program.

Inci Ertuˇgrul noted that the audience could function in two complementary ways. Sometimes they make her job easier by asking the questions she cannot ask. On the other hand, she also felt that the audience members could be hurtful on purpose: They can be offensive sometimes. Of course, they look at the issue from their own perspective, from their own educational background. They comment on the case based on their own value system. Sometimes they don’t understand the case fully, so they make wrong comments. In cases like

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these, I interfere and explain. Sometimes they want to hurt that person – they take a pleasure in that, I notice that too.

With this comment, Ertuˇgrul also drew a line between herself and the studio audience, implying that the audience members have a certain “perspective and educational background” and a different “value system” than hers. In addition to the negotiation of class status I mentioned above, “distinction” is negotiated in WV in another way as well. The audience members also attempt to draw a line between themselves and the guests, whom they perceive as dishonorable. Thus, “honor” becomes a subject of status negotiation as well. This discourse becomes even clearer when the audience members talk about a woman in her absence. For example, a female audience member made the following comment on Fahri’s case on 7 November 2005. Fahri was pleading for a divorce. Audience: Did you have a legal marriage? Fahri: Yes, I did. And now she wants to divorce me and receive alimony. A: She’ll enjoy it with the other guy. F: Yes, she will! I don’t know how many more husbands she’ll have. On the next day, when Fahri reappeared on Your Voice, the discourse was similar. It had been revealed that Fahri’s wife had been married twice before, which had been kept secret from him: Audience 1 (female): I wonder if she knows shame. What kind of good would come from a woman who left her husband? She’s probably too ashamed to answer the phone. Fahri: I don’t want her anyway. I want her to divorce me. I don’t care what she does afterwards. Besides, she called me on Saturday. She says I threatened her. I’m not threatening anybody – she’s not worth threatening! A1 (with an expression of disgust on her face): I’m sure that’s unsubstantiated. She’s not worth it – don’t call her. Don’t even answer her calls. Fahri: I didn’t call and I won’t call. They can check the phone records. A1: Don’t accept her even if she comes back and collapses at your feet. She’s no good; she won’t suit you, yuck (with disgust).

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A2 (female): She has no personality, no honor. If she had honor, she would not have [gotten married more than once] to begin with. She abused you, literally. Fahri: All I want is for her to divorce me. A2: She’s apparently used to landing on different branches like this [daldan dala konmaya alıs¸ık].20 This is one of many cases in which audience members distinguished themselves from the “dishonorable woman.” The same treatment was rarely afforded to men. In fact, men were often forgiven by the audience even if they had been violent or adulterous. Aksu Bora (2005) notes the negotiations over “respectability” between the domestic workers and employers she has studied in Turkey, and asserts that these categorizations signify class and status. For example, in her study, the employers assign an animal-like sexuality to their domestic workers, and explain the workers’ commitment to their husbands in terms of “sexual dependence.” These women’s bodily worker status, coupled with their migrant and villager background, assigns them more to “nature,” whereas the middle-class women who hire them perceive themselves to stand closer to “culture.” Thus, sexual practices, or perceptions of sexual practices, signify class. The EUDs appear to be respectable housewives, and the STRs are assigned a wild, “natural” sexuality. My studio visits and observations indicate that a similar negotiation of class and status also occurs between the guests and studio audience of Your Voice. Female audience members distinguish themselves from these “wildly sexual,” ignorant women by judging and criticizing them relentlessly. Fatma was another case in point. I described the audience’s harsh treatment of Fatma in Chapter 3. Fatma had left her husband for another man, leaving her three children behind. Although criticism is inevitable in WV programs when women have committed adultery (in contrast to men), the audience was overly critical of Fatma. The audience’s extreme harshness can be explained by this little detail: apparently in the previous program, which I had not taped, Fatma had said something along the lines of “every woman cheats on her husband.” This evidently made the audience members extremely angry. It seems that they felt they had to defend their honor by distinguishing themselves from this

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dishonorable woman. Showing empathy for or understanding of Fatma would have equated them with her, raising questions about their own “respectability.” Despite these attempts at distinction, it was also evident that the guests and studio audiences of WV programs had similar experiences. Ahmet S. pointed out to me that what was unique about Your Voice, hosted by Inci Ertuˇgrul was that for the first time, the studio audience had spontaneously begun to tell their stories as well: We saw this with Inci for the first time. I don’t know, maybe they find her more sincere. Now sometimes we have studio audience members who talk about their troubles as well. Apparently, they had problems too (laughs). This is happening for the first time with Inci. They didn’t tell Yasemin ¨ They feel that Inci is one of them. First they [Bozkurt] or Serap [Ezgu]. started telling during commercial breaks. Then, they began telling while crying live in the studio: “I have a problem like this too, I can’t see my daughter,” etc.

Ahmet S. made a few interesting points here. First, he pointed out Inci Ertuˇgrul’s unique status among the WV hosts. She screams less – acts less like a republican elementary school teacher. She explained this phenomenon through her familiarity with Anatolia, as quoted above. Secondly, it is clear that, while the studio audience tries to distinguish itself from the guests, they share a common social world. One shocking example of a studio audience member unexpectedly beginning to narrate her own circumstances occurred on 7 November 2005 on Your Voice. Esma’s mother had deliberately separated her daughter from her husband Ali, on the grounds that Esma did not receive her own space in her inlaws’ house. A female member of the audience responded as follows: Audience: Listen! I’ve been married for 36 years. I raised five children in one room. I never even told my mother about this, I swear to God! Nowadays families interfere in the children’s business. “Your mother said this, your father said that.” I mean, c’mon! For 35 years I’ve been married! Audience applauds and chants “Bravo.” Audience (continuing): They made my life hell. I lived with 20 people – 20!

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Esma’s mother (to the audience member): Do you hear what you’re saying? My daughter is [inaudible]. Audience (crying): Shut up! They made my life hell. This episode ended with this audience member having a fainting spell and being carried out of the studio for medical attention. In this case, “suffering” becomes a precondition for respectability. As far as this audience member is concerned, Esma has to suffer just as she had suffered. She is not empathizing with her; instead, she is blaming her for not being as subservient as she had been. On a different occasion, an audience member began giving Ays¸e K., a domestic violence victim, advice about what to do when she is being beaten: “He would beat me; then I would fall to the floor. There, I would bite his feet.” These outbursts indicate to me that these cases are common to many women, although the aspect of commonality is never framed by the programs as a call for “female solidarity.” These moments remain scattered within the stories told, phone calls received, missing people found, and commercials shown.

Structural Context and Phenomenological Explanations In this section, I shall argue that, despite their discourse on social responsibility and raising awareness, the people responsible for WV lack a full understanding of women’s problems stemming from the social structure. I shall propose that this is due to a great extent to the inexperience of the hosts with women’s issues. Additionally, the perceived social distance between hosts, guests, studio and home audience of WV discussed above accounts for the coverage of cases from a phenomenological perspective, rather than in a structural context. Therefore, no commitment was made to the actual transmission of certain pieces of information, although “messages” scattered between the lines were overemphasized. Also, no attempts were made to cooperate with women’s organizations. My critique borrows many elements from Pierre Bourdieu’s attempts at reconciling structuralism and phenomenology, which I discussed in Chapter 3. There, I used Bourdieu to argue that cases and guests that appear on WV must be analyzed from the phenomenological and objectivist points of view simultaneously. Here, I propose that hosts and

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producers merely view the WV cases and guests from the phenomenological (subjectivist) perspective. In The Logic of Practice, Bourdieu argues that phenomenological social analysis assigns action to “self-interest” (or, by extension, assigns inaction to “false consciousness”). In doing so, it forgets that action is always also determined by the structure, and that agents are only able to act within the parameters of the structure as they perceive it. Reducing action to consciousness (and inaction to false consciousness) assumes that agents act with rational, calculated and intentional strategies towards pre-determined and always economical ends (Bourdieu 1998a). According to subjectivist analysis, then, the inaction of the weaker party in a relationship of domination (such as in male domination) must mean that she is simply not aware of the conditions of her existence. However, as scholars of gender relations show (and as we see on WV), that is not always the case. As Bourdieu suggests, practice has its logic in the mental maps of the agents. With its internal logic and rules, the “honor” system is a structural construct. One’s conditions of possibility are always matched to one’s understanding of the field (structure), and the view of one’s own position in the field. For example, in classical patriarchy, when young women spend their youth serving their mothers-in-law, it is not out of false consciousness, but out of the expectation (based on their understanding of the “honor” system) that they will themselves one day be served by their own daughters-in-law. To this end, they devise strategies towards the end of ensuring the life-long loyalty of the male child by actively taking part in the selection of his wife when the time comes (Kandiyoti 1988). Similarly, when women do not escape an abusive marriage, that is not always due to their weakness but to years of manipulation, emotional abuse and other tactics used by abusers (see Figure 1). However, the typical republican approach to gender inequality has always assigned agency to women and expected them to lift themselves out of abusive circumstances. What they and the EUDs who are responsible for WV production miss is that making this subjectivist claim and ignoring the structural circumstances is seeing only part of the picture. None of the WV hosts seemed capable of making generalizations in terms of explaining the events at hand through the rules of the “honor code.” Instead, each case was covered as if it was an isolated event with no logical explanation, stemming from a capricious idiosyncrasy. For example, Inci Ertuˇgrul can ask a family: “I don’t understand. There are

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many women who work. Does that constitute some sort of danger?” when the inappropriateness of a woman’s outside employment is mentioned (Zuhal, 11 November 2005, Your Voice). With this question, she is pretending that she is not aware of the bias against women’s work outside the home. Of course, she is using that statement to contest the family’s matter-of-fact criticism of women’s outside employment. However, this passing comment does not necessarily subvert the family’s self-righteous approach. At best, it weakens the validity of their complaint, though only temporarily. In Freaks Talk Back, Gamson quotes a transgender activist who was asked to appear on a talk show on transgender individuals. Commenting on other transgender individuals he was asked to appear with, the activist wrote: “They had no context for all of this, it was just their life and that was it” (Gamson 1998, 84). This is true for WV guests to a large extent; in WV programs, it is their life, and that is it. In contrast, Sujata Moorti (1998) finds that Oprah Winfrey is occasionally successful in providing a social context for the issue of rape in her talk shows: “Winfrey invariably juxtaposed individual women’s narratives with statistics revealing the prevalence of this crime. ‘Acquaintance and date rape is more common than being left-handed,’ she clarified during one show” (ibid., 92). According to Moorti, Winfrey not only provided a social context for rape, but also “moved beyond exploring women’s status as always-already victims and allowed women to see themselves as potential agents in their liberation from a shared threat” (ibid., 93). The hosts and producers of WV programs lack the ability to place issues in a broader social context as well as the agency to direct women ¨ ur ¨ E., on a course leading to their liberation. A feminist reporter, Ozg explained this phenomenon by reference to the lack of gender education at universities:

I think that Media and Communications departments must include “gender” courses in their curriculum. They don’t even offer it as an elective. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if they’re male or female, reporters come out of there [with no sense of “gender” problems]. A general “human rights” consciousness doesn’t create that awareness. It stays at the level of “that’s a person too, you shouldn’t do that,” but they can’t understand the patriarchal system.

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In addition to the lack of gender education at universities, in Inci Ertuˇgrul’s case, her sudden transfer to the task of hosting Your Voice and her inexperience in presenting similar shows are contributing factors to her failure to approach the issues from a feminist perspective. ¨ replaceErtuˇgrul told me that she took over Your Voice as Serap Ezgu’s ment literally overnight: When the host went to another channel, I received an offer. I was a newscaster. It was a very sudden transition actually. It was discussed on Sunday. Actually, I was going to read the news on Sunday, but then we had the negotiation. I went into it head-on. On Monday, I was on the air [with Your Voice].

Having grown up in Anatolia, Ertuˇgrul had argued, equipped her with “knowledge” about her guests’ conditions. However, like Bozkurt and ¨ she is not “one of her own guests” either. Despite her softer, more Ezgu, empathetic approach to her guests, Ertuˇgrul nevertheless admitted to getting angry at the people who appear on the program: It’s impossible not to get mad. You can’t believe it. I mean, a person can make a mistake. The reason can be ignorance or lack of education. The reason can be the imitation of the kinds of behavior that you see around you. Or you may have nowhere to go, feel desperate or obliged. But if a person makes the same mistake for the second or third time, then there must be something else. People succumb to excuses too much. For example, they say, “We didn’t have a legal marriage.” When you ask why, they say, “We didn’t have money.” It doesn’t even cost 100 million (ca. $75) to have a legal marriage . . . These are excuses. Women are deceived like this, they deceive themselves. There’s always the thought of attaching yourself to somebody to be taken care of. There is a problem of self-esteem.

As is evident from the above quote, although she starts out with a structural outlook, Ertuˇgrul ultimately engages in a phenomenological explanation for her guests’ actions. She views certain behavior patterns as “repeated mistakes,” instead of the result of socialization. As the sentences in italics indicate, women are blamed for lack of initiative and independence. Thus, the WV programs commit the same crime that the Turkish republican elite has committed for decades. Women are assumed to be ignorant or suffering from false consciousness. In that

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regard, ultimately, whatever they do not do, such as not divorcing a violent husband, is considered their own fault. If they do not act, and are asked why they are not acting, whatever answer they give is “an excuse.” They are believed to “attach themselves to men,” for personal, material or sexual gain, with no regard to their structural chances for outside employment (discussed in Chapter 2). Although Inci Ertuˇgrul missed the big picture most of the time, she did occasionally criticize the double standard with which men and women were treated on the show and in everyday life. The following are Ertuˇgrul’s comments about the unfair treatment Fatma received on the program aired on 7 November 2005, for having left her violent, irresponsible husband for another man. As I pointed out above, Fatma was heavily criticized by the studio audience for engaging in this “dishonorable” behavior, and the general consensus among the audience was that she did not deserve to see her children, who were being kept away from her by her husband and his relatives. Ertuˇgrul offered a long monologue at the end of this segment: But let’s not forget: Even if a man had cheated on his wife three or five times, we’d still believe in his right to see his children. Let’s be honest with ourselves. When a man comes here and says, “I cheated on my wife ten times,” we laugh under our breath; we consider it dirt on his hand (elinin kiri)21 but we don’t consider it a hindrance to him seeing his child. But this woman is saying, “For 15 years I’ve been beaten, sidelined, left unloved.” This isn’t an excuse for what Fatma has done, that’s not what I’m trying to say. I wish she had divorced first before she started another life. But we have to think about this: we immediately stamp her with the “she cannot see her child” verdict. When a man does it, we see no harm in that, but when a woman does it, we execute her sentence. Let’s be more honest, more objective. I think this is one of the social norms we have to break.

Although Ertuˇgrul sometimes revealed these double standards as she saw them, she remained within the “we have to break these norms” discourse. She does not dig deeper, such as by asking why these double standards exist in the first place. She is also not very successful in subverting the studio audience’s conservative comments. Ertuˇgrul’s discourse, in short, remains within the confines of the republican elite who dictate

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to the “uneducated folk” what to do without exactly understanding their situation. I argued above that, in terms of republican status, the studio audience occupies a level between the hosts and the guests. While the hosts attempt to remain more objective, it is very ambiguous whether the audience will find a guest’s story legitimate or criticize it. “Likeability” plays a large role, although it is not the only determinant.22 I mentioned above that “dishonorable” behaviors receive harsh treatments. On the other hand, honorable status does not automatically win a female guest positive treatment from the audience, either. Sometimes, victimization by a violent husband also receives harsh criticism for the lack of agency it implies. The criticisms sometimes go to the extent of humiliating the guests and completely delegitimizing their stories. The studio audience, with their questions and comments, often pull the discussions to the level of “who’s right” and “who’s wrong.” For example, the audience members blamed different people in Meral’s case. Meral was looking for her daughter, who had been kept by her father in Ankara for the past year, although Meral had been given custody by the courts: Audience 1 (female): It’s Meral’s fault. She should have looked for her. Ankara is only four or five hours away [from Istanbul]. Audience 2 (female): She had to believe the lawyer when he said she [her daughter] wasn’t there [with her father]. I don’t blame her. She didn’t disparage her husband’s family. She told the truth. It’s the lawyer’s fault. They do anything to get money. Audience 3 (female): Inci Hanım, we witnessed a great event: she found her child. But nobody is faultless here. No mistakes are made one-sidedly. Meral Hanım could have gone there herself, dealt with it herself, instead of relying on the lawyer. Audience 4 (female): Her [ex-]husband is also at fault here. He took the child away one and a half years ago. Even if the mother wasn’t looking for the child, he should have brought the child to her mother. In a similar manner to the guests, the experts of Among Ourselves also failed to provide the issues with a context: first, apart from the individual characteristics of the experts, the subjects they are experts in do not seem

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conducive to this task. It is not self-evident why a defense lawyer and a psychiatrist are chosen as experts on a program such as this. Alternatively, perhaps it would have been more fruitful to have a lawyer with a specialty in civil law, who could advise the guests on questions of divorce, child custody, restraining orders, alimony, child support, inheritance, and so on. Also, a social services expert could provide advice on what to do in cases such as domestic violence or child abuse. And the experts are all male members of the republican elite. Thus, like the WV hosts, they are unable to connect with the guests and studio audience on level ground. They assert their superiority by advising the guests on appropriate behavior without truly understanding their situation or placing it in a social context. The guests’ problems are viewed as results of individual mistakes, rather than symptoms of repressive societal norms. Two members of a women’s organization who work specifically on women’s rights violations in the media (the then emerging, now active The Women’s Media Watch Group – MEDIZ) pointed out in our interviews that WV programs could do much more to raise awareness, such as providing phone numbers that viewers could call to receive information about the issues mentioned on the programs, such as battered women’s rights or child custody laws. Although these organizations are insufficient in number and personnel, there are some government-operated help-lines for women. Also, the Bar Association assigns counselors to victims of domestic violence who live below the poverty line. The Bar Association also operates the “Women’s Rights Implementation Center,” which offers free consultation and organizes various consciousnessraising activities. All such services would benefit from greater publicity, since many women are not aware of their existence. One MEDIZ activist argued the following: In Turkey, the women’s movement made the violence [against women] visible, but the media has been ignoring this for years. I think that they have to at least have this much responsibility. I mean, if they’re exposing violence, they also have to give the addresses of independent organizations, tell the audience where to go. I mean, on the third page,23 when they report news about violence, my personal suggestion – and I’ve been saying this for years – is that they [newspapers] should include a little box next to the article telling the readers where to go and what their rights are when they’re subjected to violence.

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In November 2006, MEDIZ, the Women’s Media Watch Group, was officially launched as a non-profit organization dedicated to uncovering and protesting women’s human rights violations in the media. In the press release announcing the establishment of MEDIZ, the founders of the organization identified the following items as examples of women’s rights violations in the media: “the media’s use of sexist news, sexist language of presentation and visual material” and “the media’s disregard for women and women’s organizations who have been working on women’s issues in their coverage of such issues.” In 2008, MEDIZ also published their first book, End to Sexism in Media, a compilation of their campaigns and findings. When I asked TGRT executive Banu K. why Your Voice did not give the district attorney’s phone number, for example, as was suggested by the MEDIZ activist, she first referred to the things their production team did do, such as referring guests who needed medical attention to hospitals and taking care of the expenses. She said that they needed to ¨ respect RTUK’s rules concerning unfair competition. When I pointed out that “unfair competition” should not be an issue, since the district attorney’s office was not a private company, she claimed that they could not provide the phone number because they are a national network and would have to provide each city’s DA’s phone number. She informed me that, instead of providing the number onscreen, they refer the guests to the DA’s office individually off-screen. Thus, again, the WV programs were opting for individual solutions instead of seeking societal benefit, directly contradicting their “missionary” discourse: [Backstage] We tell them to go to a lawyer, go to a psychologist. We refer them to these people. But giving the phone number or address [onscreen], that’s very relative. Beyond the discussion that this is ethically right or wrong, it is practically impossible because we cater to all of Turkey.

This seemed like an excuse, especially given that they could provide the phone numbers in groups each day or refer viewers to national non-profit organizations who might further refer callers to appropriate agencies. Later, when I asked Banu K. whether or not they worked with women’s organizations such as Purple Roof, a battered women’s shelter, she misunderstood the question and said that in her opinion cooperation

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with women’s organizations could pose a great danger for women. The following passage reveals her misinterpretation of my question: I see a great danger in that. You expose the women. I mean, when you contact [the women’s shelters] and say, “Do you have anybody [that you can send to the show]?” they can blindly send someone.

Banu K. also claimed that the You Are Not Alone team of ATV worked with Purple Roof in this way. I was shocked to hear that the WV programs would even consider recruiting guests from battered women’s shelters. The shelters are, after all, places where women hide from their assailants. To ensure the safety of the women involved, the locations of women’s shelters as well as the identity of women who stay there cannot be revealed. Since I knew many Purple Roof volunteers and had been to one of their weekly meetings, I knew that they would not act as irresponsibly as to send the women in their shelters to the WV programs. Moreover, Purple Roof volunteers were highly critical of WV programs’ treatment of women’s issues. Therefore, I did not know what to make of this claim. I deduced from the following quote, however, that Banu K. did not possess a clear understanding of what battered women’s shelters were about: In any case, I don’t think that women’s shelters are long-term solutions. Women can stay there for a while but then they have to continue with their lives. Therefore, it’s not a solution that I wholeheartedly believe in. Therefore, we try to collect financial aid and put their lives in order permanently.

With this emphasis placed on “financial aid” for individuals who appear on WV, once again, individual solutions are privileged over societal, overall change. Inci Ertuˇgrul also complained about the limited number of shelters and the lack of interest from women’s organizations in their program: There are so few shelters. I wish the women’s organizations would be ready to cooperate, push us a little sometimes. I mean, we also have to think economically. Our network expects a certain level of ratings from us – that’s the truth. Broadcasting is an expensive business – the channels don’t do these programs so that women are educated or learn the phone numbers of these organization. We have to speak candidly here. But I’m sure we [producers] also make mistakes. I wish they [women’s organizations] would

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call and say, “Inci Hanım, you approached that issue incorrectly. This issue has this aspect, too; you should mention that as well.” I’m open to that. I would not be offended. To the contrary, we’d be happier, the more the job we do serves a certain purpose. Ultimately, I’m a woman too.

Confirmation of this candid call for cooperation was Ertuˇgrul’s interest in my interpretation of the programs as a sociologist. Ertuˇgrul asked me for recommendations for books and resources that could help her better prepare for the program. This indicated to me her genuine interest to improve herself. She seemed willing to take suggestions seriously but did not know where to begin. Like the Your Voice team, Bozkurt was also critical of women’s organizations and how they ignore WV programs: Unfortunately, the women’s organizations are acting as if they’re blind, deaf and mute toward the program. It’s very interesting. I don’t believe that women’s organizations are very active in Turkey. All they do is give donations during holidays, dress up a few kids. I’m not saying that all of them are like that. But I’m not scared if they attack me. Look, Woman’s Voice was cancelled, not even one women’s organization said anything. I attribute this to jealousy. Plus, they remained distant because I’m much more influential than they are. But I can’t say that I’m surprised – that’s how things work in Turkey. I don’t take them seriously because they’re not taken seriously anyway.

Bozkurt continued to assert many times that she had quite a bit of “power to influence policy makers,” and informed me that she was planning to start a campaign to pressure municipalities to build more women’s shelters. The law had recently changed to oblige all municipalities serving more than 50,000 people to build a shelter within their jurisdiction. Referring to this law, she asserted: People in Turkey don’t know the power of votes and taxes. They don’t have that consciousness. That’s what I’m trying to inoculate. I will apply sanctions for this. I will call on municipalities [in the program] and say, “The municipality of this and this town, this is your population, why don’t you have a shelter?” This is a major problem. Women are 90 per cent dependent on their husbands. Every day she’s beaten, but she can’t leave her home, because she has nowhere to go.

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The potential that the programs have for demanding services from policy makers is, however, never fulfilled. As far as I know, Bozkurt did not keep her promise to start a campaign to request shelters. What is striking is that the media and women’s organizations blamed each other for lack of interest throughout my research. The media organizations continuously claimed that they were open to suggestions from the women’s movement, while the women’s organizations blamed the media for not consulting them in their coverage of issues having to do with women. It is clear that the WV guests and audience are the ones who suffer from this disconnect.

Conclusion In this chapter I have attempted to provide an overview of WV production patterns. I argued that WV programs did not fulfill their emancipatory potential due to certain shortcomings in their patterns of production. These shortcomings partly stem from the obligations of filling two net hours every day of the week with live material. Therefore, I argued, guests are selected quickly and unsystematically. Also, the programs have a responsibility to bring profit to the network. They attempt to maximize profits by keeping costs low. Accordingly, the programs rely on a limited number of untrained crew members. Training in women’s issues is not expected from the production team. Hosts are also selected on the basis of their previous newscasting experience, and not familiarity with women’s issues. In the second part, I argued that WV programs reproduce the top-down education patterns that were characteristic of TRT programming. Despite moments of raw testimony offering a glimpse into people’s real circumstances from their own mouths, a great discursive authority is assigned to WV hosts and the studio audience. Finally, I proposed that this top-down approach renders it impossible for WV programs to place issues in social contexts and show their pervasiveness. Instead, the individual story is treated as an isolated, unique and random incident with no social basis. In accordance with this, no real attempt is made to establish contact with women’s organizations. Thus, the “personal” is not placed in a space where it can be politically relevant.

Conclusion

Prior to the 1980s, a certain form of cultural capital was predominant in the Turkish field of power. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptualization of forms of capital, I coined the term “republican capital” to describe this form of capital. It was argued in Chapter 1 that republican capital signified and required allegiance to the principles of the modern, secular and republican state, and provided citizens with a high degree of legitimacy to operate in the public sphere and the economy. Prior to the 1980s, the public sector dominated the economy, and public service afforded a person a high degree of respectability and stability. Those who aligned themselves with the secular and modern principles of the Republic gained higher positions in the private sector as well, for reasons discussed in Chapters 1 and 2. Those with high republican capital also took over the mission to “civilize” and “modernize” others, such as rural peasants. However, as the waves of rural–urban migration intensified in the 1980s, encounters with the persistently “backward, uneducated and traditional” peasants in urban spaces became more contentious. In their efforts to seem European and Western, the republican elites began to view anything that deviated from Western ideals as unwanted and intolerable. Their alienation from WV programs has been situated within this context. With the economic liberalization policies of the 1980s, republican capital began to lose its primacy in the field of power, and economic capital took the upper hand. Nouveau riche dispositions became visible in the public sphere. Other elements, including Islamist factions, also entered the economic and political arena and began to challenge 220

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republican dominance. In the 1990s, Islamist political parties won many local and national elections, and began to pose a challenge to the secularist rhetoric. Today, the republican elites feel that their lifestyles and power positions are being threatened by an influx of migrants into their urban spaces. Further, they fear an Islamist takeover of the public sphere and government. In this book, I have situated cultural consumption in the context of class and status negotiation in this environment of fierce competition for the field of power. Karl Marx’s notion of the capitalist mode of production rests on a distinction between the economic base and the cultural superstructure, where the economic base determines the superstructure of religion, ideology, law, culture, and so on. While, in Marx’s theory, “class” position is strictly determined by access to the means of production, Max Weber introduces the concept of “status honor” to rescue social stratification from pure economism. According to Weber, “classes” are stratified according to their relations to the production and acquisition of goods, whereas “status groups” are determined according to consumption and lifestyle (Gerth and Mills 1973). Pierre Bourdieu, taking this idea one step further, argues that tastes function as “markers of class” (1984, 2). Thus, a two-way relationship is established between economy and culture, in which not only do economic conditions influence one’s cultural acquisition, but also cultural acquisition further reinforces economic conditions (and those of one’s descendants). I have argued that patterns of cultural consumption also lead to politically relevant consequences. In Chapter 4, I showed that viewers with low republican capital (“Squatter Town Residents” – STRs) displayed high levels of interest in “Woman’s Voice” (WV) programs, while viewers with high republican capital (“Established Urban Dwellers” – EUDs) either reported not watching WV at all or were critical of WV for being vulgar and lowbrow. In their criticisms and with their lack of interest, EUDs, including feminist activists, dismissed the programs as politically irrelevant. I have argued that patterns of cultural consumption, which are markers of class and status position, determine the parameters of political discourse as well. As Herbert Gans argues, “taste culture is ultimately political, insofar as it depicts one view of society to the exclusion of others” (1974, 108). As demonstrated in Chapter 3, the discourse on WV is an important indicator of the prevalent gender structure of society, and displays the social conditions in which women

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with low republican capital live in Turkey. In this way, WV programs have important implications for “cultural citizenship.” As discourse is linked to power, the ascent of women’s subordinate conditions to the political agenda could occur through discourse. It is essential to produce policies to empower women. However, women’s rights and needs do not receive the urgent attention they should in contemporary Turkey because of the struggles in the field of power. Thus, political processes once again exclude the voice of the citizens on whose behalf elected officials are supposed to act. As a popular medium, television has the potential for raising awareness of social issues. I have proposed that the “Woman’s Voice” talk show format offers openings for lower-status women to speak. I have also shown the limitations of such openings, stemming from production techniques as well as from the repressive gender structure of society. Divisions between rural and urban as well as Islamist and secular women, prevent women from forming solidarities. EUDs’ approaches to STRs remain at the level of patronage, and do not evince empathy stemming from shared problems. Women with high republican capital view “Islamist” women as their absolute “Others,” and deny any commonalities with them. This has to do with the specific development of Turkish modernization, in which divisions between rural and urban, and between Islamic and secular elements have superseded divisions of gender. I agree with Jenny White (2002) that “Islamist” parties’ modes of popular mobilization and provision of social services have, at least on the surface, overturned the top-down bias of republican politics. By playing into migrants’ sense of alienation and disenfranchisement, the Islamist parties, including the ruling Justice and Development Party have been extremely popular in the last two decades. On the other hand, an elite entrepreneur Islamist group has also come into being, threatening the success of Islamist populism. The Islamist elites are seeking to transform the structure of the field of power, and thus the republicans are under the threat of losing their monopoly over the economy, culture and politics. I have argued that WV programs are spaces where the “subaltern” speak in their own voices for the first time on Turkish television, and reveal the space of possibles in their lives. In this way, they leave “openings, sometimes tiny, sometimes rather gaping,” for real circumstances of people to appear in the public sphere (Gamson 1998, 94). As I showed

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in Chapter 4, viewers’ identification with the narratives that appear on WV suggests that the stories are not isolated instances that affect only a few. The programs are not without their problems and, through production techniques, render the situations of the women who appear on them even more impossible, as shown in Chapter 5. On the other hand, as I argued in Chapter 4, the elite’s distancing from the stories they present renders the programs insignificant forms of lowbrow culture, and precludes the possibility of addressing the issues politically. Today, Turkish society seems more divided than ever before. Most secularists rightly criticize the JDP’s conservative, neoliberal, and antidemocratic policies and rhetoric. This would be welcome if the secularists could produce an inclusive counter-discourse. In contrast, as Jenny White writes, “Kemalist secularism has taken on aspects of the sacred” (2013, 6). Indeed, in reaction to the JDP, many republicans have re¨ and everything he stands for. This creates an turned to deifying Ataturk atmosphere in which it becomes impossible to criticize the shortcomings of the Kemalist revolution in granting equal rights and statuses to women, such as the symbolic, iconic role of “mother” assigned to women, and discriminatory clauses embedded in Turkish law from the first decades of ¨ alienates many ethnic the Republic. Moreover, the idolization of Ataturk minorities who, for example, remember the brutal treatment of minorities such as Alevi Kurds in the Dersim Massacre, which happened under ¨ Ataturk’s auspices. Secularists’ emphasis on nationalistic militarism also makes solidarity with ethnic minorities impossible. Thus, while dialogue between conservatives and secularists is becoming increasingly difficult, dialogue among secularists is also divided along ethnic lines. The media have made violence against women more visible. The challenge now is to turn this visibility into a political movement in which a dialogue between elites and masses is finally established.

Appendix 1 Respondents Name

Age

Sex

Residence

Education

Employment

Marital status

Ayla Ayse Aysel Barıs Birkan ¨ Buket (Gulten’s daughter-in-law) Derya Didem Dursun ¨ Ertan (Ruya’s husband) Esin (Servet’s daughter) Filiz

55 38 42 18 17 29

F F F M M F

Gated comm. (EUD) Gebze (STR) Gebze (STR) Dudullu (STR) Gebze (STR) Gebze (STR)

College Elementary school Unknown Middle school High-school student Associate degree

Unemployed Unemployed Unemployed Hairdresser Unemployed Unemployed (looking)

Married Married Widowed Single Single Married

29 36 28 60

F F M M

Gated comm. (EUD) Dudullu (STR) Gebze (STR) Gated comm. (EUD)

College None Elementary school College

Public relations Domestic servant Worker Retired engineer

Single Married Married Married

20

F

Gebze (STR)

College student

Unemployed

Married

22

F

Dudullu (STR)

Middle school

Manicurist

Single

Funda (Ayse’s daughter) ¨ (Reyhan’s Gul daughter-in-law) ¨ Gulay ¨ Gulin ¨ Gulten Hatice Ibrahim (Ayse’s husband) ¨ Inci (Gulin’s mother) Kemal Meltem (Remziye’s daughter) ¨ (Ayse’s Muge daughter) Nur Nuray Nuriye

20

F

Gebze (STR)

High-school

Unemployed

Single

29

F

Gebze (STR)

Associate degree

Unemployed (looking) Married

29 52 45 40 46

F F F F M

Gebze (STR) ¨ ¸ ukyalı ¨ Kuc (EUD) Gebze (STR) Gebze (STR) Gebze (STR)

Unknown College Unknown Elementary school Unknown

Unemployed Retired travel agent Unemployed Unemployed Worker

Married Divorced Single Married Married

83

F

¨ ¸ ukyalı ¨ Kuc (EUD)

None

Unemployed

Widowed

30 20

M F

Dudullu (STR) Gebze (STR)

Elementary school College student

Hairdresser Unemployed

Married Single

21

F

Gebze (STR)

College

Unemployed

Single

29 44 20

F F F

Gebze (STR) Gebze (STR) Gebze (STR)

High-school High-school College student

Unemployed (looking) Married Unemployed Married Unemployed Married (continued)

Name

Age

Sex

Residence

Education

Employment

Marital status

¨ Ozkan Pelin Rabia Remziye Reyhan ¨ Ruya

18 20 40 41 65 56

M F F F F F

Dudullu (STR) Dudullu (STR) Gebze (STR) Gebze (STR) Gebze (STR) Gated comm. (EUD)

High-school Working on GED Unknown None Elementary school College

Single Single Married Married Married Married

Seda Selma Serap Sermin ¨ ¨ Sukran (Suleyman’s wife) ¨ Suleyman Tolga Tuba ¨ Tulay Tuncay Yasemin ¨ (Suleyman’s daughter) Zehra

40 40 45 40 63

F F F F F

Gated comm. (EUD) Gebze (STR) Gebze (STR) Gebze (STR) Suadiye (EUD)

College Elementary school Unknown Elementary school College

Hairdresser Manicurist Unemployed Unemployed Writer/ folk artist Retired college instructor Unemployed (looking) Unemployed Unemployed Domestic worker Teacher

Married Married Widowed Married Married

75 29 12 50 39 40

M M F F M F

Suadiye (EUD) Dudullu (STR) Gebze (STR) Gebze (STR) Gated comm. (EUD) Suadiye (EUD)

College Elementary school Elementary school Unknown College College

Retired architect Hairdresser Unemployed Retired worker Businessman Lawyer

Married Married Single Married Engaged Single

40

F

Gebze (STR)

Elementary school

Unemployed

Married

Appendix 2 Media Professionals and Feminist Activists

Interview Date

Name

Institution

Position

15 September 2005 Nursel T.

Kanal 7

¨ 15 September 2005 Suleyman C ¸. 15 September 2005 Sulhi D. (e-mail) 22 September 2005 Hatice S.K. 23 September 2005 Birsen C ¸. 26 September 2005 Ahmet B. 26 September 2005 Kayhan H. 5 October 2005 Banu K. 5 October 2005 Yes¸im Y. 6 October 2005 Melis C. 11 October 2005 Yıldız T.

Kanal 7 ATV Kanal D Show TV Samanyolu TV Show TV TGRT Star TV ATV ATV

12 October 2005

Ahmet S.

TGRT

12 October 2005 13 October 2005

Inci Ertuˇgrul TGRT Attila A. ATV

Entertainment programming director Program director Screenwriter of Yabancı Damat Program director Head of research News coordinator Program director Program director Program director Program director Screenwriter of “Aliye” Producer of Your Voice Host of Your Voice Screenwriter of Avrupa Yakası (continued)

Interview Date

Name

Institution

10 November 2005 Yasemin Flash TV Bozkurt 14 November 2005 Mor C ¸ atı Mor C ¸ atı (Purple volunteers Roof) 15 November 2005 Liz A. Women’s Human Rights-New Ways ¨ ¨ E. 18 November 2005 Ozgur Cumhuriyet ¨ 18 November 2005 Melek O.

Filmmor

Position Host of Woman’s Voice Volunteers Feminist activist

Reporter, feminist activist Feminist filmmaker/ Co-founder of MEDIZ

Notes

Introduction 1. All interview excerpts and all WV transcripts have been translated by the author. 2. Town in Eastern Turkey. 3. I would like to acknowledge here that the term “Islamist” is problematic. There are various groups with “Islamist” characteristics in Turkey that differ from each other considerably. I will lay out some of these differences throughout this work. 4. Among Ourselves with Serap Ezgu¨ continued on Show TV until May 2008. Inci Ertugrul has transferred to Star TV with the same format, and also continued hosting Your Voice until May 2008. Yasemin Bozkurt’s program was cancelled in 2007. 5. I borrow this term from Peter Dahlgren (1995, 148). 6. This concept will be discussed in detail below. 7. Using residential district as a “class” indicator is justified “because in Turkey the residential areas are relatively homogeneous and distinguished according ¨ to social class” (Ozyegin 2001, 225).

Chapter 1. Public Discourse: Republican Capital and Women 1. Pierre Bourdieu argues that one’s position in the field of power depends not only on the size of the economic capital one holds but also on the cultural, social and symbolic capital one possesses, the relative significance of the combination of one’s capital in the fields one operates in, as well as the relative positions of the fields to each other (Bourdieu 1996).

229

230

notes to pages 14–19

¨ identified the Turkish nation’s elevation to the levels 2. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk of contemporary civilization, i.e. Europe, as the most important goal of the nation. 3. Habitus is a set of bodily dispositions, or the way individuals place themselves in the universe through the choices they make over what to say, what to wear, what to eat, and so on, as well as what to aspire to, what to expect and not to expect. They make their choices not because they are objectively situated in the universe, but because they have a history and a future as individuals, and also as members of social groups (clubs, worker’s unions, social classes, which have their own history as fields). Thus, while they are making conscious choices, they are directed by (mostly) unconscious predispositions, which originate from family background, education and the countless other things that they have been exposed to thus far in their lives (Bourdieu 1990a). 4. This type of integrated entertainment was also single-handedly promoted by the founding fathers through state-sponsored balls for the anniversary of the founding of the Republic (Cumhuriyet Balosu), for example. 5. See Bourdieu (1986) for conversions between economic, cultural and social capital. 6. Education was a defining factor for state officials as well. The majority – 62 per cent of all 2,210 deputies serving between 1920 and 1957 – were university educated (Frey 1965, 43). As a measure of comparison, it should be noted that out of a population of 21 million, a mere 3,107 students ¨ received university or other higher education diplomas in 1950 (TUIK). 7. During the 1950s religious conservatism was tolerated under the auspices of the Democratic Party. This period was short-lived, however. 8. Wives of military officers who covered their heads would not be admitted into the officers’ clubs, for example. Public servants and their wives were only allowed to attend official gatherings (as well as unofficial social gatherings with the wives of their superiors) if their wives were willing to attend uncovered. 9. The state emerged as the sole provider of credit in the absence of other options due to the lack of the possibility of borrowing from national or international finance institutions at that time. 10. The practice of a man marrying multiple women, sanctioned in some Muslim countries. ¨ 11. Iran’s Reza Shah Pahlavi took Ataturk’s modernization reforms as a blueprint. Although a new criminal code was drafted based on European codes, “the civil code (which included family laws, inheritance, etc.) remained Islamic” (Najmabadi 1991, 55). In Lebanon, the civil code was left to the discretion of each religious sect (Joseph 1991).

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12. Sirin Tekeli goes as far as to argue that the granting of women’s suffrage ¨ in the 1930s was an attempt by Ataturk’s single-party regime to distinguish itself from the fascist regimes of Europe (Tekeli, cited in Kandiyoti 1987). 13. I borrow this term from Nisbet (1994). 14. See Mardin (1973). 15. Anatolia is the western part of Asia surrounded by the Black, Mediterrannean and Aegean Seas. All of the territory of Turkey is on the Anatolian peninsula, with the exception of Thrace. ¨ 16. Umraniye is a district of Istanbul, which has received high levels of ¨ rural–urban migration since the 1950s (for more on Umraniye, see Erder 2001). 17. An informant who has worked at the executive level at a manufacturing company for 35 years told me that this practice was considered self-evident, and was commonly used by him and his staff in deciding who was going to be dismissed in times of economic crisis, which happened quite often. 18. Article 105, paragraph 2, of the new Turkish Penal Code which went into effect in 2004 criminalizes “sexual harassment in the workplace.” “The sentence can be up to three years if it entails the abuse of the work or hierarchical relationship” (WWHR-NEW WAYS, 2005). 19. Doorkeepers and their families live in basement apartments in middleclass buildings, and are charged with duties regarding the maintenance of the building as well as service to the residents (they distribute bread and newspapers in the morning and groceries for residents on demand). 20. The names of all respondents have been changed to keep their identities anonymous. 21. Bulas¸ık means “smudgy, dirty.” In another context, it also means “dirty dishes.” 22. The “wheel of power and control” is available at www.theduluthmodel.org/ training/wheels.html. 23. As a point of comparison, in the US, one in every five women is estimated to be a victim of domestic violence at least once in their lives (Mooney et al. 2007). 24. One also needs to bear in mind that underreporting always tends to be an issue when it comes to family violence surveys. 25. It must be emphasized here that although honor killings are often associated with the Muslim Middle East, they are found to cross cultural and religious boundaries. For example, “in Brazil, until 1991, wife killings were considered to be noncriminal ‘honor killings’ . . . Similarly, in Colombia, until 1980, a husband legally could kill his wife for committing adultery” (Wilets 1997, 2). Also, some scholars categorize sati, the Hindu practice of burning widows, as a form of “voluntary” honor suicide. For a discussion see Hawley (1994)

232

26.

27.

28.

29.

30. 31.

notes to pages 30–36 and Mani (1998). Moreover, there is nothing in Islamic teachings (including the Qur’an) that justifies honor killings (Kuraner 2002). Especially in cases where the birth happened at home, some families opt not to have birth certificates issued for their daughters. This means that officially she does not exist: the state cannot track whether or not she is being sent to school, a religious marriage is possible, and if she is killed in an honor killing the family may avoid having to deal with the authorities. ¨ unya ¨ The rape first came to light when it was discovered that Guld was pregnant. The family first brokered a deal where by she would be married to her rapist as his second unofficial wife (kuma), and they would leave ¨ unya ¨ the village. However, Guld did not want that. Instead she was sent to Istanbul to stay with an uncle. It was there that her brother Irfan tried to kill ¨ unya ¨ her for the first time. Guld escaped and took refuge in a police station. ¨ unya ¨ The officers later surrendered Guld to her family after her father and ¨ unya ¨ brother promised they would not kill her. Guld went to stay with the family of a friend, which is where she gave birth to her child, who was then ¨ unya ¨ given up for adoption. In 2004, the tribal leaders decided that Guld needed to be killed to clean the family’s honor. She was shot by her brother Ferit in Istanbul and hospitalized. The next morning, at around 3:45 a.m., ¨ unya ¨ Ferit entered her room in the hospital as a “visitor” and shot Guld in the head twice, killing her. Ferit, who was sentenced to 23 years, died ¨ unya’s ¨ in prison from a heart attack in 2012. Guld rapist, Servet Tas¸, was gunned down in the street in the Istanbul suburb of Sultanbeyli in 2011. ¨ unya’s ¨ The police investigation revealed that he was killed by Guld father (Aydemir 2013). In interpreting these numbers, one also needs to keep in mind that it might be more difficult to keep an honor killing hidden from the authorities in urban areas. Second, honor killings could also have spilled over from rural areas to cities as a result of rural–urban migration. The report makes an ambiguous distinction between feudal (t¨ore) and honor (namus) killings. While 23 per cent of killings are assigned to “internal family conflicts,” it is not clear what is meant by this. Seven per cent of all reported killings are assigned to family feuds (kan davası) and 13 per cent to “other” reasons. With 56 per cent, violations of the gender honor code seems to account for the majority of these so-called feudal and honor killings. Private correspondence. See Aktas¸ (2005) for an example of Islamist feminist rhetoric. It is also important to note that Turkish Islamist feminists only constitute one branch of global Islamic feminism. Iranian publishers of the now defunct Zanan, as well as their mentor Dr Abdulkarim Soroush, constitute a separate branch

notes to pages 36–50

32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41.

42. 43.

44.

45.

46. 47. 48.

233

in their efforts at reconciling Islam with feminism through a fresh reinterpretation of Islamic scripture. See Ahmedi (2006) for a discussion. Indeed, many of these activist women contributed to the rise of an “Islamist discourse” from a woman’s perspective through their writings. This is evidenced by, at the everyday level, the reciting of the call to prayer in Arabic from the 1950s onwards, in contrast to the Turkish used prior to the 1950s. For an example, see Ghosh (2011). Town in the east of Turkey. Konya is a Central Anatolian city known for its conservatism. I borrow this concept from Laura Mulvey (2000). Author’s translation. It should be noted that some gated communities, such as S¸ehrizar Konutları, serve a predominantly “Islamic” clientele. Siteler, as they are called in Turkish, are mostly gated communities, which means that access is only allowed to confirmed visitors of residents and service personnel. Most of them have been built on the outskirts of the city and on previously uninhabited land. They are connected to the city by highways, which makes car ownership a prerequisite for site living. Some of my interviews were conducted with site dwellers and the service personnel who work there. Buˇgra (2012) reports that the proportion of formal-sector employees covered by collective bargaining rights in Turkey went down from 46.9 per cent in 1985 to less than 15 per cent in 2003. Misleading because it does not guarantee “universal” coverage. “Erdoˇgan: 3 c¸ocuˇgu vatana hibe edin.” Radikal. 8 August 2013. See www .radikal.com.tr/politika/erdogan 3 cocugu vatana hibe icin istemis1145379. ¨ “Saˇglık Bakanı ’imam‘a uydu: ‘Tecavuze uˇgrayan doˇgursun, gerekirse devlet bakar.”’ Sol Portal. 30 May 2012. See haber.sol.org.tr/devlet-vesiyaset/saglik-bakani-imama-uydu-tecavuze-ugrayan-dogursun-gerekirsedevlet-bakar-haberi. Abortion is legal in Turkey up to the first ten weeks. For Bianet’s article on the “abortion protest,” see bianet.org/bianet/kadin/146346-kurtaj-yasadahak-hastanelerde-yasak. Within the new healthcare system, every family is connected to a family practitioner. For example, the ban on the sale of alcohol in stores after 10 p.m. One of the consequences of which has been the displacement of large segments of the urban poor.

234

notes to pages 51–70

Chapter 2. The Public Sphere, Mass Media, and Talk Shows 1. What holds for all speech acts is that they can be accepted or rejected based on three kinds of “validity claims”: 1. the truth of what is said with regard to the objective world; 2. its appropriateness, rightness or legitimacy with regards to the social world; 3. the sincerity or authenticity the speaker claims for her subjective experiences, to which she has privileged access (McCarthy 1984, xii; Habermas 1984, 307). 2. These might include: objectivity; force of the better argument; disembodied and dispassionate speech; mastery in articulation, and so on. 3. For an example, see Veysel’s case below, “Among Ourselves,” 27 October 2005. 4. The top university hospital in Istanbul. ¨ 5. I referred to Uˇgur Dundar’s Arena above, in the context of transgendered Bahar’s appearance on WV. 6. Topics covered by “Political Arena” between 1996 and 2000 include: “Terrorism,” “Turkish-Greek Relations,” “Freedom of Expression,” “Censorship,” “the Susurluk Affair” (twice, on 22 December 1996 and 6 February 1998), ¨ ¨ “Autonomy of the Judiciary,” “1 Minute of Darkness,” “RTUK,” “The Ocalan Trial,” “the Earthquake,” “Islam and the European Union,” “Where Did the Media Go Wrong?” “Is Adultery a Crime?” “Rating Wars,” and “Turkish Islam” among others. (Source: The Political Arena Public Relations Department.) 7. For example, the program on the “Susurluk Affair” in 1998 received a 27.7 per cent rating, the program on the “One Minute of Darkness” in 1997 received a rating of 28.9 per cent. (Source: Piramit Advertising.) 8. As TGRT program director Banu K. explained to me in our interview, in 1998 TGRT underwent a complete transformation and became a “family channel.” At the time of the interview, the channel was on the brink of being sold, and it was related to me that things were very uncertain. 9. The Uzan family was accused of fraud following the collapse of their Imar Bank. As a result, their assets, including Star TV, were seized by the Savings and Deposits Insurance Fund (TMSF) (Turkish Daily News, 25 September 2004). To recover the losses, Star TV was auctioned off in September 2005. The Doˇgan Group placed the highest bid, offering $306.5, and acquired Star TV (Cumhuriyet, 27 September 2005). 10. “Yasemin’s Window” was a successful talk show in the 1990s, in which Bozkurt researched celebrities’ pasts and invited long-lost loved ones, such as the celebrities’ elementary school teachers or old friends, to the program.

notes to pages 73–84

235

11. Bozkurt’s Woman’s Voice temporarily began at 6 p.m. at the time of research. 12. This program could not be studied since it was cancelled the day I intended ¨ un ¨ also refused my request for to begin taping episodes. Consequently, Ozg an interview. 13. These are Medya Takip Merkezi (“Media Watch Center”) estimates. Reported at www.dorduncukuvvetmedya.com on 25 June 2005. 14. “Share” indicates the percentage of people watching a given channel out of all people watching television at that moment. For example, a share of 25 per cent indicates that out of every four people watching television during that time, one person was watching the said show. “Rating,” on the other hand, is the rate of audience per minute of a given show at a given time. I will report shares rather than ratings throughout this study, since they indicate how many viewers actually preferred to watch a given show over other shows on other channels at that time. 15. As per the contract signed with the Television Audience Research Committee, AGB Nielsen Media Research (Turkey) has been conducting TV Audience Measurement Research in Turkey since 1989. Today, the panel represents the urban Turkish population with 2,201 households. ¨ un ¨ has spent many years in the United States. She hosted a program 16. Ozg called People to People on a cable network between 1991 and 1992, presenting world cultures to an American audience. She may have been inspired by the American issue-oriented talk shows during that time. 17. Please see Adaklı (2009) for an alternative reading of the Doˇgan case. 18. The CEO of C ¸ alık Holding, Berat Albayrak, is Prime Minister Erdoˇgan’s son-in-law. ¨ 19. “7 Gazete 1 Genel Yayın Yonetmeni,” Bianet, 7 June 2013. See bianet.org/ bianet/siyaset/147327–7-gazete-1-genel-yayin-yonetmeni. 20. See: en.rsf.org/spip.php?page=classement&id rubrique=1043.

Chapter 3. “Woman’s Voice” as Text: Stories and Structures Underneath 1. Article 182 of the Civil Code stipulates that “men do not have any superiority over women” with respect to custody (WWHR-New Ways 2005, 37). “The judge grants custody of the children to whichever parent he or she believes will look after the children better . . . The spouse who has not been awarded custody is expected to share the financial burden of bringing the children up, in a manner commensurate with his or her financial means. The court will also rule on his or her visitation rights” (ibid.)

236

notes to pages 85–107

2. It must be noted that transgendered individuals do not enjoy the same sense of security. They are often harassed, and fall victim to murder and suicide, as a result of such harassment. 3. The program was interrupted between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. for the evening news. 4. In this, they follow Foucault’s concept of a “multiplicity of discourses,” and the idea that power is diffused throughout those discourses (Foucault 1991). 5. Here, the children are imagined to be male, and references are made to “honor” since the male child is also a guardian of his mother’s honor. 6. “Falling into the swamp” has the connotation of “becoming a prostitute.” It is considered that when a woman leaves the surveillance of male relatives and her husband, her trajectory will inevitably lead to prostitution. His expression “another swamp” indicates that Fatma’s father already considers her to have metaphorically “become a prostitute.” 7. See Bourdieu for more on the “space of possibles” (1996). 8. It seems that Dilek’s father is deceased. Therefore, the house to return to is her mother’s. 9. “Being bad” refers to leading a dishonorable life, such as prostitution. 10. Bursa is Turkey’s fourth-largest city. It is located in the more developed and affluent north-west region of the country, where Istanbul is also located. Konya is a central Anatolian city known for its conservatism. ¨ 11. Gulseren later explained that the family spoke Kurdish, which she did not understand. 12. Women are “taken” by husbands and “given” by fathers. 13. Earlier Cengiz told the audience that his wife had been raped before she married him. By “knowingly,” he means the fact that he married her knowing that she was not a virgin. I will discuss Cengiz’s case further below. 14. Ironically, appearance on WV makes “dishonorable” acts even more public, which may increase the family’s obligation to do something to restore their honor. ¨ 15. Sezen Aksu’s famous song “Geri Don.” 16. A cell-chat group seems similar to an Internet chat group, where strangers can meet, except that participants meet each other through cell-phone messaging. In my understanding, it is not an open platform, but participants’ cell phone numbers are distributed to other members by the organizers. Thus, one needs a referral to join. 17. T¨ore (custom, tradition) and asiret (clan) refer to feudal or honor killings. 18. Gelin means “bride” or “daughter-in-law.” 19. Both Bourdieu and Delaney observe that the most perfect marriage is one with the patrilateral parallel cousin (father’s brother’s daughter or son),

notes to pages 107–113

20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27.

237

in which an alliance will be forged with a family who “already share the collective honor of the patriline” (Delaney 1991, 101), and consequently “the resulting children can be attached to the same lineage through their father and their mother” (Bourdieu 1990a, 185, italics mine). Among those families who possess land and wealth, the threat of division of family land is also avoided through a patrilateral cousin marriage. “All means were justified when it came to protecting the integrity of the patrimony and preventing the potential division of the estate and the family which every marriage can threaten to bring about” (Bourdieu 1990a, 151). Among the dispossessed, an appropriately upward marriage (though not too high) is to be effected to ensure the family’s upward economic trajectory. While, in urban contexts, the division of the family land may no longer be a concern, marriage is still a strategy for moving upward on the social class ladder. Adding the word Bey to a man’s first name is a formal way of referring to or addressing a man. Ezgu¨ usually uses the formal form when referring to men or people that she considers of high status. With women, especially those who speak with rural accents, she reverts to the informal “you” form sen, and use of the first name only. ¨ There was a devastating earthquake with its epicenter near Duzce on 12 November 1999. Mehmet and Pembe were cousins, so her family is his family too. “The female bird makes the nest” is the direct translation of a Turkish proverb. The expression “man like a lion” (aslan gibi adam) signifies a strong, healthy man. Indeed, Tanyeli and her husband divorced in May 2006. The “free woman” always wants to become “the respectable housewife.” Employment, especially a profession in entertainment, can be very problematic. When a female actress, singer or belly dancer exhibits her body and her voice to a male audience, she virtually violates the codes of honor in violating, first and foremost, the principle of gender segregation, as well as the stigma of the female voice and appearance in entertainment in Muslim ¨ umcer, ¨ societies (Van Nieuwkerk 1995). Another celebrity guest, Serpil Or also commented in a similar vein about her marriage to a singer: “I always waited for him to make me a housewife. I wanted him to have a job, to sing, so I could sit at home. I always longed for that.” Van Bruinessen writes that the Alevi population is estimated to be between 4 and 5 million, although recent data indicate a population between 4.5 and 18 million (1999, 13). According to van Bruinessen, “Alevi” is a common name referring to heterodox groups whose beliefs and languages show a great variety. Their rituals and religious practices differ from those of Sunnis,

238

28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

44.

notes to pages 113–134 exemplified by worship in mixed gender groups in places called “cemevi,” rather than the sex-segregation of mosques. Partly because of this, but also because of the emphasis on “morality” in their beliefs, instead of allegiance to Shari‘a, which subordinates women to men, Alevis are considered to be more egalitarian in their approach to women and liberal in male–female relations. Article 124 of the new Civil Code. The so-called “religious marriage,” imam nikahı, is a religious ceremony conducted by an imam. Unless accompanied by civil marriage, it has no legal bearing and has been banned by the state (Article 230 of the Penal Code). See Chapter 1 for a discussion. See also Kandiyoti’s concept of the “stranger bride,” discussed above. City in central Anatolia. It seems that Erkan’s grandparents found it appropriate to claim their daughter as Erkan and Fatma’s mother for the purposes of obtaining a birth certificate for him and his sister. This explains why her aunt’s name appears in place of his mother’s name on his identity card. It is believed that a “dishonorable man” can sell his wife into prostitution. That is what Veysel said his in-laws alleged. We also saw a similar case of alleged infidelity and a plea for divorce by Pembe, above. Ayıp means “embarrassing” or “an embarrassment.” Aile means “family.” However, Duben (2002) shows that aile could mean just “wife” or “husband” in certain contexts as well. Even though allegations of women’s infidelity due to their employed status come up often on WV, as is exemplified by Zuhal’s case, above. Adding the word Hanım to a woman’s name is a formal way of referring to or addressing a woman. She is referring to a classic Yes¸ilc¸am movie from the 1960s which was about a female taxi driver. In the eyes of the viewers, they are “spinsters.” About $3,000 – a relatively high amount. This should probably read as “she shouldn’t have any children,” or, even if she does, they should be adults who do not depend on her and who do not live with her. The expression aynı yastıˇga bas¸ koymak, literally “putting one’s head on the same pillow with someone else,” means being married to someone. Bozkurt is referring to that expression when she says “partnership of the pillow.”

notes to pages 137–149

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Chapter 4. The Audience: Watching Woman’s Voice 1. See Fiske (1987) for a comprehensive overview of “active audience” arguments. 2. I also noticed that, in the STR households, television sets can be very mobile. They are moved from dwelling to dwelling according to need, and they often move from room to room. Due to the unstable financial conditions of the family, and their inability to buy new appliances, an old television set can break and need to be fixed or replaced. In the meantime, the family does not have a set, or can only receive channels with an antenna. 3. “Obsessed with the news,” or, literally, “sick about the news,” haber hastası, was a common way of indicating that somebody likes something very much, especially among STRs. 4. Mirac¸ Kandili is a holy day in Islam. 5. Usually on Muslim holidays, some (especially religious) television channels air readings from the Qur’an. The hoca Barıs¸ refers to are the people who recite the Qur’an. 6. The process of brewing Turkish tea is somewhat lengthy and arduous. It requires the person in charge of tea to make several trips to the kitchen to refill empty glasses, and to make sure that there is enough tea in the upper and enough water in the lower pots for the next rounds. Kuruyemis¸ are roasted mixed nuts such as hazelnuts, almonds, and pistachios, that are consumed in Turkey as snacks. 7. Modified Turkish version of the reality format Bachelor. 8. Aliye was an immensely popular show in 2005 about a woman whose husband abducts their two children after her separation from him. 9. Ramadan, the holy month in Islam, affects social and cultural life in the city even though not everybody fulfills the demands of the faith, such as fasting. Rather, families of high socioeconomic status invite each other to iftar dinners held at the break of the fast, at dusk during Ramadan. 10. Military service is mandatory for all male citizens ages 18 and over, and lasts from eight to 15 months, depending on education and rank. 11. He is referring to the construction of his brother’s unit on top of his parents’ gecekondu. 12. Dursun’s discourse is a good example of men using the first-person plural to refer to themselves. This plural pronoun indicates the representation of the family collective by the male head of the household. 13. This might be explained by their relative distance from the city proper, compared to the Dudullu residents.

240

notes to pages 153–171

14. As argued above, there is also a different kind of hierarchy between femaleand male-coded shows. According to that categorization, Kurtlar Vadisi assumes a higher status because it deals with a “masculine” topic. 15. In the squatter towns, especially during home visits, privacy was hard to attain. Often, daughters, daughters-in-law, grandchildren or neighbors were also present, and contributed to the interview. Although this probably skewed some of the results, I believe that it also helped create a naturally safe atmosphere in which people felt they were participating in a regular conversation. Thus, I did not always demand privacy, fearing that it would interfere with the natural social nature of the interaction and would result in awkward social situations that respondents did not feel comfortable with. 16. This had to do with my clear identification as an EUD based on my outward appearance, clothing and speech patterns (with the dominant Istanbul accent). 17. “Turning the corner” is a colloquial term meaning becoming rich quickly ¨ and easily. It was commonly used in the 1980s to refer to Turgut Ozal’s 18.

19.

20.

21. 22.

policies to promote entrepreneurial success. It was speculated by TV executives that men watched WV at the workplace. Considering that television sets are turned on during the day in some familyowned stores, this does not seem too implausible. It is also possible that men watch WV in coffeehouses. If true, this would be an interesting subject of study. However, I found no evidence for that in my research. Due to Yaysat’s (Doˇgan Holding’s distibution company) almost complete monopoly over distribution, it was difficult to find independent publications like Cumhuriyet in some neighborhoods, where they do not have a high circulation. Identity cards are issued by the Office of Population upon the family’s declaration of a new birth. Many families fail to obtain an identity card for the newborn children; however, they need one to enroll the child in school. It seems that Didem’s daughter has two identity cards – one obtained by her mother and one issued to her paternal relatives, who wanted to claim her as part of their lineage and not her mother’s, and for the purpose of enrolling her in school. Konya and Niˇgde are towns in Central Anatolia. Statistical evidence shows that, even if their mothers had no schooling (48.7 per cent of all migrant women in Istanbul were illiterate in 1976), almost all daughters of migrants achieved elementary schooling, with some continuing on to high school (Kandiyoti 1997b). Thus, there is an emerging generation consisting of young residents of squatter towns who were born in the city and have higher levels of education than their rural–urban parents, and habitus resembling that of the republicans.

notes to pages 182–192

241

Chapter 5. Behind the Cameras: Production of Woman’s Voice 1. I will only use their first names, to protect the respondents’ identities. However, since Inci Ertuˇgrul, Serap Ezgu¨ and Yasemin Bozkurt are the shows’ hosts and are known publicly as such, I will use their full names. 2. Mehmet Ali Erbil, a popular actor and presenter, was hosting a game show called Ya Sundadır Ya Bunda on ATV between 4:45 and 7:00 p.m. at the time of research. 3. This set visit occurred during Ramadan. 4. There was also a sense that these women’s attendance at these programs interfered with their housework. During her welcome speech on 24 October 2005, Serap Ezgu¨ asked her audience: “Have you all finished doing your holiday cleaning?” referring to the custom of housewives performing an intensive clean before the holidays. As the audience members responded in the negative, Ezgu¨ jokingly asserted: “You’re missing out on your cleaning because you come to these shows. Stay at home one day and finish your cleaning!” 5. Flash TV’s January–March 2005 revenue was 1.7 million YTL, while Kanal D’s (the network with the highest revenue) was 51.1 million (Karatas¸ 2005). 6. I was also identified as someone who did not fit the audience or guest profile of WV by the security guard in the lobby. In disbelief, he asked if I had come to watch “that show.” 7. Many networks present special iftar programs before the fast is broken at sundown. 8. Since 1998 the Social Services and Child Protection Administration – SHC ¸ EK – has run “guesthouses” for victims of domestic abuse and their children. 9. I could not find any other evidence for audience members being invited to the program based on the topic. However, it is an interesting claim indicating that the TGRT team knows the individual audience members so well that they even know what topics they have a special interest in. 10. Daytime entertainment and talk shows. 11. Biz bize literally means “us to us,” although “among ourselves” conveys the meaning of the expression better. 12. The close-ups were attained through a jib camera, which allowed the camera to move vertically, horizontally, forwards and backwards. 13. Turkish law (law 2828 regulating the functioning of the Social Services and Child Protection Administration) distinguishes between orphanages, c¸ocuk yuvaları, where children of up to 12 years of age are cared for, and “foster homes,” yetis¸tirme yurtları, where adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18 stay. However, these foster homes are not actual family homes, as in the

242

14. 15. 16.

17. 18.

19. 20. 21.

22. 23.

notes to pages 192–215 USA and UK, but institutions where children stay and are cared for by state employees. There is evidence that these foster homes are sometimes used to protect potential victims of “honor killings.” For example, MEDIZ (Women’s Media Watch Group) reacted to the insensitive coverage of a fire that broke out in a foster home for female children. Cameras were apparently allowed to shoot footage of some of the residents escaping the fire. The female residents reacted negatively by screaming at cameramen to stop them from filming. The anchor of Kanal D reportedly made a negative comment on the girls’ behavior. However, MEDIZ pointed out that the young women’s reaction was understandable, since some of them were hiding from relatives trying to harm them, and thus broadcasting the footage might potentially endanger their lives by exposing their domicile. She is referring to the revolutionary changes in the Civil Code that were ratified by the Turkish Grand National Assembly in 2001. Town in the East of Turkey. The tradition where by the wife of a deceased man is married to his brother, so that once again the woman remains within the patrilineage of her husband. I wondered if the other two hosts modified their off-camera behavior in the presence of the researcher, me. ¨ Ozkan has defended many wealthy clients close to the mafia in controversial ¨ cases. Ozkan’s website cites over 100 newspaper articles about him and his celebrated trials. Children (before puberty) are not required to fast during Ramadan. An expression indicating that a person is indecisive, and in this case “moves quickly from husband to husband.” This expression is used to refer to men engaging in extramarital relationships. Extramarital relationships are considered “dirt in the hand” that can easily be washed off. Gamson (1998) also notices this in his study of talk shows. In the Turkish press, the “third page” is usually devoted to violent events such as murders, accidents and suicides. Under the leadership of Chairwoman Vuslat Doˇgan Sabancı, the daily Hurriyet has begun a campaign called Aile ¨ ˙ ¸ i S¸iddete Son (“End Domestic Violence”), in which the campaign’s logo is Ic placed next to third-page stories and some helpful information is provided to readers. For more, see their website: aileicisiddeteson.com/.

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Index

References to figures and their captions are indicated by page numbers in bold. In all instances, EUDs refers to “established urban dwellers”; STRs refers to “squatter town residents”; and WV refers to Woman’s Voice programs abortion, 49–50 Ackerly, Brooke, 53, 82 activism feminist, 1–2, 13, 19, 20, 33–36, 175, 227–228 Appendix 2 Gezi, 50 Adorno, Theodor, 149 advertising, television, 60, 70, 74, 150 ˙ ¸ i S¸iddete Son (“End to Aile Ic Domestic Violence”), 242n. 4.23 Aksoy, Asu, 67 Albayrak, Berat, 235n. 2.18 Alevi, 113–114, 223 Aliye, 146 alphabet revolution, 62 Anatolia, 20–21, 171 Ertuˇgrul, Inci, home of, 199, 208, 212 “Anatolian tigers,” 18 Andersen, Benedict, 62

Ang, Ien, 137 Ankara, 26, 32, 41, 49, 214 Appadurai, Arjun, 67 arabesk, 45 Arat, Yes¸im, 33 Arena, 59, 67 Arena of Politics see Siyaset Meydanı (“Arena of Politics”) argumentation, 53 arts appreciation, 147, 149–150, 152, 155 Association of Independent Industrialists and Businessmen ¨ IAD), ˙ (MUS 18 ¨ Mustafa Kemal, 37, 62, 64, Ataturk, 223, 230 n. 1.2, 230n. 1.11, 231n. 1.12 ATV Arena of Politics, 67, 74 ¨ un, Ays¸e Ozg ¨ 75 Yalnız Degilsin (“You Are Not Alone”), 73

261

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audience, television home, misrepresentation of viewing patterns, 139–147, 148–149, 159–160, 161–162 home, and the talk show format, 57–58 home, and WV, 5–7, 136–137, 164–178, 178–180, 224–226 Appendix 1 measure of, 234n. 2.15 studio, WV, and guests, 53, 75–76, 87–90, 108, 109–111, 202–209, 213–214 studio, WV, and hosts, 199–200, 241n. 5.4 studio, WV, recruitment and production, 184, 186–187, 188–189, 190–191 ¨ Avs¸ar, Hulya, 112 ¨ un, Ays¸e Ozg ¨ 75 behavior, modes of, 81–82 Benhabib, Seyla, 54 Beyaz, Zekeriya, 134 Bianet, 77 birth certificates see identity documents Bora, Aksu, 41, 195–196, 197, 207 boundary work, 2–3, 11, 43–45, 64, 138, 147, 204–205 Bourdieu, Pierre capital, on forms of, 15, 28, 107, 220, 229 n. 1.1 Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, 149 on illusio, 79–80 “Lecture on the Lecture,” 53 Logic of Practice, The, 210

on structuralism and phenomenology, 209–210 on taste, 3, 154, 221 Bozkurt, Yasemin on benefits of WV programs, 198–199 host, Kadının Sesi (“Woman’s Voice”), 3, 86, 162, 191 interview with, 185–186 “inventing” WV format, 70, 72–73, 74, 136, 159 in Kadının Sesi (“Woman’s Voice”) episode narratives, 58–59, 87 table 2, 90, 98, 100–101, 110–112, 113, 125–126, 128–129 matchmaking episodes, 130–134 and social distance from guests, 200–201 women’s issues, understanding of, 133, 170, 200 on Yasemin’in Penceresi (“Yasemin’s Window”), 70, 186, 200 Brunsdon, Charlotte, 55, 180–181 Buˇgra, Ays¸e, 18, 49 Bursa, Turkey, 94 ¨ ukc ¨ ¸ ekmece (Istanbul Buy neighborhood), 190 C ¸ alık Holding, 70, 72 table 1, 76 Can I Call You Mother? 157 capitalism, 36, 46, 221 Carpignano, Paolo, 57 celebrities, 70, 110–112, 134, 156–158, 202 Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Media Group of the (Birmingham, Ala.), 55

index children care of, and women’s worth, 106, 132 child protection law, 241–242n. 5.13 custody of, 84, 86–99, 120, 122–124, 126, 167–169, 193, 203, 213–214 education, 19, 172 missing or eloped, 112–116 orphaned or abandoned, 116–117, 118–122, 122–123, 124, 192–193 television programming and, 156–157, 167 Civil Code, Turkish, 19, 25, 33, 84, 114, 197–198 class, 229n. 7 1980s–present Turkish class system, 68, 151, 220–221 and boundary work, 2–3, 11, 44–45, 64, 138, 147, 204–205 division depicted on WV, 119, 126, 195–196, 199–200, 204–207 rural-urban migration and, 43–45, 81–82 speech acts and, 51, 52, 54, 58 television viewing patterns and, 2–3, 138–139, 149–150, 159, 223 Turkish bourgeois, 16 and veiling, 41, 47 see also elites; EUDs; social class structure; STRs coaching, 4, 60, 78, 195 Coleman, Steven, 9 collectivities, 53, 62, 89–90, 115, 126–127

263

Collins, Patricia Hill, 201 Colombia, 231n. 1.24 Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), 16 commonality, 208–209 communication revolution, 68 communicative action, 52 conservatism, 11, 38, 42, 47–50 Constitution (1961), Article 121, 63, 65 Constitutional Eras, First and Second, 61–62 C ¸ ukurova Holding, 70, 72 table 1 cultural capital, 15, 147–148, 220 cultural citizenship, 7–10, 159 political participation and, 10–11, 42, 45–47, 51–52, 55–56 WV as instrument of, 42, 74, 136, 137–138, 159, 164–180, 222 cultural consumption, 7–8, 149, 150–152 Islamist, 47 political citizenship and, 51–52, 55–57, 221 women’s, 51, 55 see also television, viewing patterns Delaney, Carol, 27, 40–41, 108, 128, 236–237n. 3.19 thesis of the “seed,” 92–93, 106 Demirel, Kadriye (honor killing victim), 32 ¨ Demiroren Holding, 76 democracy, 37–38, 51, 52, 54, 57 Democratic Party (Turkey), 37 Dertler Derya (“Sea of Troubles”), 73 Des¸ifre, 116–117 Dillon, Elizabeth Maddock, 13

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discourse, talk show alternative, 4, 58 analysis, 86 WV, filtered by production, 182 Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Bourdieu), 149 divorce, 84, 90–96 passim, 110, 132, 203 pleas for, 124–127, 128, 206–207 Diyarbakır, Turkey, 35 documentaries, 152–154 Doˇgan Holding, 69–70, 71 table 1, 76, 240n. 4.19 Doˇgan, Aydın, 76 Doˇgus¸ Holding, 69–70, 71 table 1 domestic violence see violence domestic work, 26, 41, 142, 145–146, 196–197, 207 doorkeepers, 26 Dot, Dorothy (romance fiction critic), 146 dramas, 141, 145, 146–147 Dudullu, Turkey, 137, 138, 148 dul divorced woman, 94 see also divorce widow, 91, 124–125, 168 ¨ Dundar, Uˇgur, 59 ¨ Duzce, Turkey, 109 Ecevit, Yıldız, 23, 24 economic capital, 15–18, 148, 220 economic liberalization, 3, 17–18, 64–69, 220–221 education emphasized in media, 63, 75, 144–145 gender, 211–212, 219 history of, in Turkey, 12, 16–17

religious, 37, 47 and screaming, 196, 199, 201 in television programs, 75, 152, 156, 170–173, 195–199, 201–203, 219 violence and, 29–30 women’s, 7, 12, 19, 21–23, 24, 26–27, 171–172 Eˇgrisiyle Doˇgrusuyla (“Right or Wrong”), 75 Egypt, 19 Elazıˇg, Turkey, 2, 185 elite see EUDs; Islam; elite class; republican elite elopement, 113, 114–116 mentions in WV episodes, 110, 123, 125, 192 employment male unemployment, 107, 128 mentions in WV episodes, 89, 90, 95, 102, 112, 128, 133–134, 211 millet system, 61–62 neoliberalism and, 48 professional, 16–17 women, domestic work, 26, 41, 142, 145–146, 196–197, 207, 237n. 3.26 women, in workforce, 17, 22–26, 26–27, 39, 49, 84, 98, 129–130, 163 enculturation, problem of, 67 End to Sexism in Media (MEDIZ), 216 endogamy, 95 Erbakan, Necmettin, 37 Erdogan, Recep Tayyip, 46, 48, 49, 76–77 Ertuˇgrul, Inci

index host, Inci Ertuˇgrul Sizin Sesiniz (“Inci Ertuˇgrul, Your Voice”), 73, 78, 86, 189, 190–191, 193, 208 229 n. 4 Inci Ertuˇgrul Sizin Sesiniz (“Inci Ertuˇgrul, Your Voice”) episode narratives, 87–88, 87 table 2, 93–95, 101–102, 108, 115, 124 interview with, 159, 171, 183–184 on mission of Inci Ertuˇgrul Sizin Sesiniz (“Inci Ertuˇgrul, Your Voice”), 173, 196, 197–198, 200–202 social distance from guests, 163–164, 199, 205–206 women’s issues, contextualizing, 210–213 ¨ Erturk, Yakın, 21 Erzurum, Turkey, 39–40, 198 EUDs (established urban dwellers), 7 cultural activities of, 147–148 distancing from WV programs, 2–3, 11, 64, 136, 154–155, 159–164, 181, 222–223 family life, 83–84 television viewing patterns, 5–6, 138–139, 140, 146, 150–153, 160, 177, 221 exogamy, 113–114 experts, 9–10, 58, 75, 158, 202, 214–215 ¨ glu, Ays¸e, 75, 196, 200 Eyuboˇ ¨ Serap, 72–73, 74 Ezgu, host, Serap Ezgu¨ ile Biz Bize (“Among Ourselves with Serap ¨ 3, 86, 129, 159–160, Ezgu”), 187–189, 192, 237n. 3.20, 241n. 5.4

265 on Kadının Sesi (“Woman’s Voice”), 188 in Serap Ezgu¨ ile Biz Bize (“Among ¨ Ourselves with Serap Ezgu”) episode narratives, 87 table 2, 103, 105–106, 108–110, 116–117, 119–121, 122–123, 128 social distance from guests, 119, 199–200 women’s issues, contextualizing, 119–120

false consciousness, 79, 160, 196, 210 family, 83–84 as criteria for marriage, 123 husband’s family, 84, 95–96 in episode narratives, 88–89, 92, 93–94, 97–98, 99–100, 105–106, 118–119, 126, 167–169, 210 laws, 19, 33, 91–92, 98, 193 as private sphere, 137, 178 relocation of, 104, 114 and social conservatism, 11, 38, 42, 46, 47–50, 66 as television topic, 180, 199 as television viewing unit, 138, 139–142 wife’s family, 123 woman’s return to natal home, 89, 90, 100–101, 102, 104, 115–116 see also patriarchy feminism activism, 1–2, 13, 19, 20, 33–36, 175, 227–228 Appendix 2 history, in Turkey, 19–20

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feminism (cont.) independent feminist movement, 33–36, 69 Islam and, 35–36 state feminists, 32–33, 35 and Woman’s Voice, 180–181 finance network profits, 60, 70, 74, 156, 157, 219, 241n. 5.5 personal, 24, 26, 107–109, 127–128, 130–134, 157 first-person narration, 9–10, 27–28, 194, 195, 201–202 Fiske, John, 173 Flash TV, 3, 73, 86, 87, 185, 186, 187, 228 Kadının Sesi (“Woman’s Voice”), 3, 73, 86, 185–187 ¨ Forbidden Modern, The (Gole), 38 Foucault, Michel multiplicity of discourses, 236n. 3.4 “What is an Author?” 53 Fraser, Nancy, 54 Freaks Talk Back (Gamson), 10, 211 Gamson, Joshua, 8, 60, 137, 194–195, 201–202 Freaks Talk Back, 10, 211 Gans, Herbert, 221 gated communities (siteler), 44, 137 Gazali, Abu Hamed Mohammad, 121 Gebze, Turkey, 137, 138, 149 WV episode narratives set in, 26, 142, 171 gender Habermas’s theory of public sphere and, 51 structure, 4, 39, 82, 195, 221–222

television viewing patterns, 143–147 gender discrimination, 24–25 gender education, 211–212 gender equality see women’s rights gender honor code see honor code Germany, 48, 65, 74 Gezi Park (Istanbul), 50, 76–77 Giddens, Anthony, 10, 59 Goffman, Erving, 80 ¨ Gokalp, Ziya, 19 ¨ ¸ ek, Melih, 49 Gokc ¨ Gokler (Turkey), 128 ¨ Nilufer, ¨ Gole, 36, 47 Forbidden Modern, The, 38 gossip and social embarrassment, 84–85, 91, 101–102, 104, 114, 163 group dynamics, of studio audience, 190–191, 205 guests, talk show on Arena of Politics, 74 celebrity, 110–112, 134 decision to appear, 173–174, 175–176, 192–194 hosts’ treatment of, 119, 195–196, 199–201, 212, 213 recruitment and preparation, 183, 187, 189–190, 195 repeated expressions of, 104–105 STRs as, 78–79, 85, 169, 171–174, 195, 201, 204, 222 studio audience and, 53, 75–76, 87–90, 108, 109–111, 202–209, 213–214 ¨ Gulalp, Haldun, 68 ¨ Gulen, Fethullah, 37–38 ¨ Gurler, S¸enay host, Sen Olsaydın (“If It Were You”), 73

index ¨ Habermas, Jurgen public sphere theory of, 9, 10–11, 22, 51, 52–56, 60–61 Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, The, 52 Theory of the Communicative Action, The, 52 habitus, 230 n. 1.3 female, 145 Islamic, 42, 155 republican, 14–17, 147–148, 151–154 of STRs, 44, 172 hacıaˇga, 44–45 Hall, Stuart, 137 Hanım, Fatma Aliye, 19 Hanım, Semra, 157, 166 Hartley, John, 7 health insurance, 48, 233n. 1.46 Heide, Margaret J., 137 Hermes, Joke, 7, 55, 56 homosexuality, 66, 84–85 honor code challenged on WV programs, 8, 30–32, 134–135, 199, 210 class status and, 206–208, 213–214 cultural citizenship and, 9 Islam and the, 82 as justification for confinement of women, 171–172 marriage and, 126–127 men’s responsibility for women’s honor, 7, 30, 99, 179–180, 236n. 3.5 mentions in WV episode narratives, 89, 97, 108, 112, 121–122, 123 missing women, 99–100, 101, 103–104, 105–106, 114, 115–116, 192

267

modernization and, 81–82 as structural construct, 4, 126, 210 honor killing alternatives to, 106, 114, 121–122 ethnicization of, 31–32 family and, 49, 101, 179, 192, 194, 232n. 1.25, 232nn. 1.27–28 feminist activism and, 1 incidents of, 2, 32, 232n. 1.26 Islam and, 231n. 1.24 and the law, 30–31 marriage and, 115 media coverage of, 32 honor suicide, 31, 231n. 1.24 Horkheimer, Max, 149 hosts, talk show author’s interviews, 4, 159, 171, 183–184, 185–186 as elites, 60, 196, 199, 200–201 guests, relationship with, 119, 195–196, 199–201, 212, 213 preparation, 189 role in shaping WV discourse, 182 speech, 64, 104–105 studio audience, relationship with, 208–209 turnover rate, 72–74 women’s issues training, 5, 119–120, 133, 170, 209, 210–213, 219 see also Bozkurt, Yasemin; Ertuˇgrul, ¨ un, ¨ Serap; Ozg ¨ Ays¸e Inci; Ezgu, Hotham, David, 14 households, 138–139 power in, 139–143 Human Rights Directorate, of Turkish Prime Ministry, 32

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Hurriyet newspaper, 157, 242 n. ¨ 5.23 identification, process of, 180 identity documents, 168, 238n. 3.33 birth certificates, 31, 33, 115, 203 Ihlas Holding, 68 Ilkkaracan, Ipek, 21 Ilkkaracan, Pınar, 21, 34 illusio, 79–80 import-substitution industrialization (ISI), 17–18, 65 Inci Ertuˇgrul Sizin Sesiniz (“Inci Ertuˇgrul, Your Voice”), 3, 86, 87 table 2 experts on, 202 law enforcement and, 192–193 missing men episodes, 107–108 missing women episodes, 101, 105–106, 114–115 outcomes of, 176, 193, 197–198, 216 pleas for divorce on, 125 pleas to see children episodes, 86–90, 91–92, 93–96, 97, 124 producer, 176, 182–185, 189, 192–194, 197–198, 203, 205, 208 ratings, 160 studio audience, 184, 187, 190–191, 202–206, 207–208 title, 191 viewers, 163 violence against women on, 28–29, 202–203 Incirlioˇglu, Emine Onoran, 107

infidelity alleged, 104, 238n. 3.38 female, 87–89, 99–100, 207, 213 male, 107–108, 108–112, 125, 126, 242n. 5.21 interview technique, 136, 153, 183 setting, 152, 182–183, 240n. 15 Iran, 19–20, 36, 230n. 1.11 Is¸ık, Nazik, 35 Islam, 229 n. 3 elite class, 46, 47, 233n. 1.39 feminism and, 35–36, 232–233nn. 1.30–31 fundamental, 39, 41–42, 50 honor code and, 82, 231n. 1.24 Islamist National Order Party (Milli Nizam Partisi), 68 Islamist television programming, 155, 159, 239n. 4.5, 239n. 4.9 in the Ottoman Empire, 61, 62 political mobilization, 3, 16, 36–38, 42, 45–47, 220–221 public sphere, access to, 37, 38–41, 41–42, 47, 68–69, 221 women, and role of, 19–20, 121 Islamist Welfare Party, 35–36, 45–46 Istanbul field research in, 1, 5–6, 136–137 Gezi protest (2013), 50, 76–77 honor killings in, 32, 232n. 1.26 mentions of, 40, 46, 62, 193 population, 43 STRs of, 44–45, 78, 85, 190, 204–205 Istanbul Bar Association, 215 Izmir, Turkey, 32 journalism coverage of honor killings, 31–32

index coverage of WV programs, 2 print, 34–35, 43–44, 61–62, 68–69, 76–77, 242n. 4.23 Justice and Development Party (JDP), 37–38, 41, 46–47, 47–50, 76–77, 223 mentions, 11, 32, 68, 155, 222 Kadınca magazine, 34–35 Kadının Sesi (“Woman’s Voice”), 3, 86, 87 table 2 cancellation of, 1–2, 73, 162, 185, 200 ¨ 188 host Serap Ezgu, matchmaking episodes, 130–134 missing women episodes, 100–101, 106, 110, 113–114 plea for divorce episode, 125–126 production of, 185–187 ratings, 159, 161 studio audience, 191 title, 191 transgender episode, 58–59, 69 women’s employment episode, 129–130 see also Bozkurt, Yasemin kahve (coffeehouse), 22, 141–142, 240n. 4.18 KAMER (Women’s Center), 35 Kanal D, 1–2 Arena, 67 Kadının Sesi (“Woman’s Voice”), 72–73, 161–162, 185, 200 program director, 155, 158, 162–163 ratings and revenue, 157–158, 159, 161, 241n. 5.5 Kandiyoti, Deniz, 14–15, 20, 39, 69

269

on patrilocally extended households, 28, 93, 95–96, 97–98 Kardam, Filiz, 30, 101, 104, 115 Katz, Elihu, 137 Kayseri, Turkey, 107 Kemal, Namık, 61 Kemalism, 12, 18–19, 36, 223 Kern, Roger, 152 Keyder, C ¸ aˇglar, 43 Keyman, Fuat, 67 killings see honor killings Kırıkkanat, Mine (journalist), 43–44 kırolar, 204 see also migrants; STRs (squatter town residents) Koc¸ Holding, 17 Koˇgacıoˇglu, Dicle, 32, 49 Konya, Turkey, 40, 236n. 3.10 ¨ ¸ ukyalı ¨ Kuc (Istanbul neighborhood), 6, 137, 138 Kurds, 21, 31–32, 35, 67–68, 223 Kurtlar Vadisi (“Valley of Wolves”), 141, 153 Labor Code (2003), 24–25 Lamont, Michele, 2–3 language alphabet revolution, 62 Kurdish, 67–68, 236n. 3.11 Turkish, 21, 67 law broadcast, 65–66 child protection, 241–242n. 5.13 Civil Code, 19, 25, 33, 84, 114, 197–198 colonial, 82 custody, 91–92, 98, 193 honor code and the, 31 Islamic, 38, 82, 230n. 1.11

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law (cont.) Labor Code (2003), 24–25 legal marriage, 115, 125, 161, 201, 203, 212 Penal Code, 21, 31, 231n. 1.18 of social collectivity, 126–127 Turkish as official language, 67 women’s rights, 19, 33, 83, 89, 223 law enforcement, 166, 175, 192–193 “Lecture on the Lecture” (Bourdieu), 53 Lerner, Daniel, 62 Liebes, Tamar, 137 Life Health Center (family services), 202 literacy, 21, 23, 62 live television, 78, 184–185, 189, 194–195 Livingstone, Sonia, 57, 58 Logic of Practice, The (Bourdieu), 210 Lull, James, 137, 138 Lunt, Peter, 57, 58 maganda, 204–205 see also migrants; STRs (squatter town residents) Malatya, Turkey, 116–117 manufacturing, 16, 23, 68 Mardin, S¸erif, 39 Marmara region, Turkey, 32 marriage arranged, 21, 83–84 criteria for, 107, 123, 126, 127–128, 130–132 elopement, 113, 114–116 employment and, 25, 26 endogamy, 95 exogamy, 113–114

honor code and, 115, 126–127 intersecterian, 113–114 legal vs. religious, 21, 115, 125, 161, 201, 203, 212 matchmaking, 3, 130–134 minors, 114–115 missing wives, 99–106 patrilineal, 93, 123, 236–237n. 3.19, 237n. 3.22 polygyny, 19 press for reconciliation of, on WV programs, 129, 175 remarriage, 90–91, 92–93, 94–97 passim, 123, 125, 131, 168, 206–207 “stranger bride,” 28, 95–96 Marshall, T. H., 56 Marx, Karl, 221 matchmaking programs, 3, 130–134 McLuhan, Marshall, 137 media conglomerates and monopolies, 69–70, 71–72 table 1, 150, 164, 197 Islamist, 68 liberalization, 3, 64–69 print journalism, 34–35, 43–44, 61–62, 68–69, 76–77, 242n. 4.23 private, 65–66 public service, 63–64, 65–66, 150 and the public sphere, 54 radio, 63, 65–66 Turkish, history of, 13–14, 60–64, 76–77 women employees, perception of, 163 women’s organizations, relations with, 219

index women’s rights violations in, 215–216, 223 yandas¸ medya (partisan media), 76–77 media executives, 182, 195 Kanal D, 155, 158, 162–163, 190–191, 196–197, 216–217, 227–228 Appendix 2 Show TV, 153 MEDIZ see Women’s Media Group, The men and financial responsibility, 107, 126, 127–128, 130–132 military service, 239n. 4.10 missing husbands, 107–112 pleas to see children, 122–124 and power in the household, 139–143, 239n. 4.12 responsibility for women’s honor, 7, 30, 99, 179–180, 236n. 3.5 television viewing patterns, 146, 161–162, 178–179, 240n. 4.14 womanizing (c¸apkınlık), 110–112 see also patriarchal system Mernissi, Fatima, 121 Meyrowitz, Joshua, 164 migrants, 2–8 passim, 20–21, 42, 43–45, 220–221, 231n. 1.16 women, 2, 23, 24, 104, 204–205 military service, 239n. 4.10 Miller, Toby, 7–8, 56 millet system, 61–62 Milliyet newspaper, 76 misrepresentation of viewing patterns, 139–147, 147–159, 159–160, 161–162 missing persons, 189

271

children, 112–116 men, 107–112 women, 99–106, 110, 113–116, 192–193 modernization, 14–15, 18–20, 61–63, 220, 222 forms of modernity, 81–82 “knowing subject” and “asking object” in, 75–76, 82, 159, 162, 195–196 Modleski, Tania, 55, 147, 180 monopoly, 9, 13, 63–65, 70, 150 Moorti, Sujata, 55, 211 Mor C ¸ atı (Purple Roof Women’s Shelter Foundation), 33, 175 Morley, David, 137, 138, 139, 152, 180 mother-in-law, 95–96, 97–98, 167, 210 Muhittin, Nezihe, 20 Muhtar, Reha, 158 Mulvey, Laura, 233n. 1.37 Murdock, Graham, 7, 9 ¨ IAD ˙ MUS see Association of Independent Industrialists and ¨ IAD) ˙ Businessmen (MUS music, 45, 63 nationalism, 35, 37, 61–63, 67, 147 National Outlook Movement, 37 neoliberalism, 45–47, 47–49 New Ways: Women for Women’s Human Rights, 193 news, 137, 140–141, 152, 164–165 newspapers see journalism, print Niˇgde, Turkey, 171 Nurcu sect (Islam), 69

272

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objectivism, 80–82 ¨ u, ¨ Ays¸e, 16–17, 44–45, 64, Onc 164–165, 204–205 ¨ Onel, Mehmet Ali, 116–117 ¨ Oren, Enver, 68–69 orphanages, 116–117, 118–122, 122–123, 124, 192–193 ¨ umcer, ¨ Or Serpil, 237n. 3.26 Ottoman Empire, 61–62 ¨ Ozal, Turgut, 65, 67, 240n. 4.17 ¨ Ozbek, Meral, 45, 63 ¨ Ozdalga, Elisabeth, 38 ¨ un, ¨ Ays¸e, 73, 74–75, 184, 234n. Ozg 2.12 ¨ un, Ays¸e Ozg ¨ 75 ¨ Ozkan, Rahmi, 202 ¨ ¨ 26 Ozyeˇ gin, Gul, Pahlavi, Mohammad Reza Shah, 230n. 1.11 paparazzi television programs, 156–157 patriarchal system, 5, 38 feminist movements and, 34 in the household, 138, 147, 239n. 4.12 patriarchal bargain, 98, 210 patrilocally extended family, 93, 95–96, 97–98, 236–237n. 3.19, 242n. 5.16 thesis of the “seed,” 92–93, 106, 124 women’s education and, 21, 22, 23, 26–27 WV hosts and, 133, 211 Penal Code Article 38, honor killing by minor, 31

Article 105, sexual harassment, 231n. 1.18 (25) Article 230, religious marriage, 21 Article 462, honor killings, 31 phenomenological perspective, 80, 82, 209–211, 212–213 political participation cultural consumption and, 10–11, 42, 51–52, 55–56 female, 21–22, 222 Habermas’s concepts of power and public sphere, 9, 53–55, 137 and the headscarf problem, 38, 42 in history of Turkey, 36–38 male, 22 Islam, political-economy of, 3, 42, 45–47, 49, 220–221 WV programs and, 8, 9, 180, 219, 223 polygyny, 19 Poniewozik, James, 11 population Istanbul, 43 Turkey, 23, 49, 230 n. 1.6 populism, 45–46, 48–49 power, field of 1990s transformation, 65 Habermas’s concept of, 51, 54 80 republican capital and, 14–17, 28–29, 36, 220–222 Wheel of Power and Control, 28, 29 power relations, household, 139–143 Presidential Symphony Orchestra, 63 Press, Andrea L., 137 private sphere, 51, 57, 137, 164, 177–178 “privatization of femininity,” 13

index producers, 182 on Inci Ertuˇgrul Sizin Sesiniz (“Inci Ertuˇgrul, Your Voice”), 176, 182–185, 189, 192–194, 197–198, 203, 205, 208 maternalism, 195, 197 on mission of WV programs, 192–194, 197–198, 201–202 ¨ Onel, Mehmet Ali (Des¸ifre), 116–117 women’s issues training, 182, 209–210, 219 production, talk show costs, 70, 74 guest preparation, 183, 189–190, 192–193 of Kadının Sesi (“Woman’s Voice”), 185–187 and public sphere access, 182, 222–223 research on media production, 4–5 of Serap Ezgu¨ ile Biz Bize (“Among ¨ Ourselves with Serap Ezgu”), 187–189, 189–190 shaping WV discourse, 60, 135, 182–183 prostitution, accusations of, 99–103 passim, 104, 105–106, 236n. 3.6, 236n. 3.9, 238n. 3.34 public sphere Habermas’s theory of, 9, 10–11, 22, 51, 52–56, 60–61 history of Turkish, 60–64, 66–69 Islamic access to, 37, 38–41, 41–42, 47, 68–69, 221 republican capital and access to, 13, 56, 78–79, 220

273

talk shows as access to, 4, 9–10, 57, 65, 137 women’s access to, 8, 13–14, 22, 36, 38–41, 41–42, 122, 164–165 WV production patterns and access to, 182, 222–223 Purple Roof Women’s Shelter Foundation see Mor C ¸ atı (Purple Roof Women’s Shelter Foundation) Radikal newspaper, 44 radio, 63, 65–66 Radio Television Supreme Board ¨ (RTUK), 65–67, 153, 216 Radway, Janice, 143, 145–146 Ramadan, 148, 188 rape, 30–31, 32, 49–50, 211 in episode narratives, 106, 120–122, 236n. 3.13 ratings and shares, 60, 70, 74, 197, 234n. 2.7 Kanal D, 157–158, 159–161, 241n. 5.5 (185) reality television, 58–59, 144, 157–158 Arena, 59, 67 Can I Call You Mother? 157 Would You Be My Daughter-in-Law? 157 Reisigl, Martin, 86 religiosity media liberalization and, 68 Turkish political history and, 16, 36–37, 47, 49, 62 see also veiling Religious Affairs, Directory of, 37

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religious marriage, 21, 115, 125, 161, 212 Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index, 77 republican capital class status negotiation, 44–45, 68, 147–148, 159, 195 power, and the field of, 14–18, 36, 80, 220–221 women’s status and, 4, 12, 20 WV consumption and, 2, 11, 221–222 of WV producers, hosts, and guests, 78, 195 republican elite, 7 boundary work, 6, 14, 44–45, 81–82 distancing from WV programs, 2–3, 42, 51, 220–221 family life, 83–84 feminist movements and the, 32–34, 36 honor killing, view of, 31 television viewing of, 147 women, 13, 17–18, 84 WV hosts and experts as, 60, republican habitus, 14–17, 147–148, 151–154 Republican People’s Party (RPP), 37 republican revolution, 12, 13, 32–33 Robins, Kevin, 67 romance reading, 55, 145–146 Ross, Karen, 9 ¨ see Radio Television Supreme RTUK Board Sabah newspaper, 76 Sabancı Holding, 17

Sabancı, Vuslat Doˇgan, 242n. 4.23 S¸afak, Elif, 75 S¸ahin, Haluk, 64 Saktanber, Ays¸e, 34–35 Samanyolu TV, 69 secularism, 16, 36, 41–42, 147, 220, 223 Selim III, 61 Sen Olsaydın (“If It Were You”), 73 Serap Ezgu¨ ile Biz Bize (“Among ¨ 3, Ourselves with Serap Ezgu”), 86, 87 table 2 experts, 214–215 missing women episodes, 103, 115–116, 127–128 orphanage episodes, 116–117, 118, 120 outcomes of, 170 pleas to see children episodes, 122–123 production of, 187–189, 189–190, 191 ratings, 159–160 title, 191–192 sexism, 133, 163, 200, 216 sexuality active, 91, 121–122 control of women’s, 30, 39, 82, 84 nonconformity, 58–59, 69, 84–85, 211 perceived, 207 premarital, 84, 106 sexual harassment, 25, 27, 33 see also infidelity; rape shelters, 1, 33, 34, 175–176, 189 Show TV programming director, 153 Sen Olsaydın (“If It Were You”), 73

index Serap Ezgu¨ ile Biz Bize (“Among ¨ 3, Ourselves with Serap Ezgu”), 72, 86, 188, 190 Siyaset Meydanı (“Arena of Politics”), 67, 74 snowball sampling, 6–7, 136, 224–226 Appendix 1 soap operas, 55, 173 social capital, 15, 16–17, 18 social class structure individual agency and, 79–82, 120, 209–219 reshaped on WV programs, 134–135 transformation of, 3, 180 social disappearance, 90 social media, 50, 76, 105 social responsibility, 192 Social Service and Child Protection Administration (SHC ¸ EK), 189, 241n. 5.13 social services, 174–176, 189, 215, 219 Soroush, Abdulkarim, 232n. 1.30 S¨oz Sizin (“You Have the Word”), 75 speech acts, 51, 52–54, 57, 58 speech, freedom of, 77 sports television, 146, 152 Springer, Jerry, 60 squatter towns (gecekondus), 43, 137, 138 see also Dudullu; Gebze; STRs (squatter town residents) Star 1, 65 Star TV, 70, 73, 229 n. 4, 234n. 2.8 State Opera, Turkish, 63 State Planning Institute (SPI) of Turkey, 22–23 Stevenson, Nick, 7, 56

275

“stranger bride,” 28, 95–96 STRs (squatter town residents) distanced by EUDs, 43–45 education, 26, 39–41 habitus of, 44, 83, 172 Islamist Welfare Party, support of, 45–46 WV consumption, 2, 6–7, 136–138, 139–143, 148–159 passim, 164–167, 177, 178–180 as WV guests, 78–79, 85, 169, 171–174, 195, 201, 204–205, 222 see also migrants Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, The (Habermas), 52 Suadiye (Istanbul neighborhood), 6, 137 subjectivism, 81 suicide, 189 see also honor suicide Sultanbeyli (Istanbul suburb), 46 Sunni, 113–114 ¨ Surmeli, Tanju, 117, 202 symbolic capital, 15, 18, 28 talk shows democracy and, 57–60 as first-person media, 9–10, 201–202 history, in Turkey, 64–65, 67, 73–75 scholarship on, 4, 55, 201 see also WV programs Tanyeli, 110–112 Tanzimat period, 19 Tas¸, Servet, 232n. 1.26 taste, 149–150, 154–155, 159, 221

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Tekeli, S¸irin, 231n. 1.12 television criticism of programming, 155–158, 178–179, 180 discourse about, 165 as educational, 75, 144–145, 152, 156, 170–175, 195–199, 201–203, 219 history of Turkish broadcasting, 13, 65–66, 69–70, 73, 150 live, 78, 184–185, 189, 194–195 network profits, 156, 219 programming and children, 156–157 reality, 58–59, 67, 144, 157–158 viewing patterns, EUDs and STRs, 148, 150–153, 155–159, 160, 164, 165 viewing patterns, gender, 143–147, 161–162, 240n. 4.14 viewing patterns, household, 136–137, 138–147 viewing patterns, misrepresentation of, 139–147, 147–159, 159–160, 161–162 see also WV programs Tepebas¸ı, Turkey, 186 time-space distanciation, 59 TGRT, 68, 192, 194 Inci Ertuˇgrul Sizin Sesiniz (“Inci Ertuˇgrul, Your Voice”), 3, 86 Kadının Sesi (“Woman’s Voice”), 72–73, 185, 188 programming director, 182, 190–191, 196–197, 216–217 Theory of the Communicative Action, The (Habermas), 52 ¨ ¨ unya, ¨ Toren, Guld 31, 32 Trabzon, Turkey, 199

traditional mode of behavior, 30–31, 81–82, 195–196 transgender, 58–59, 69, 211, 236n. 3.2 ¨ ¨ Tufan-Tanrıover, Hulya Ugur, 75, 142, 163, 196, 200 Tuˇgal, Cihan, 46 Tuna, Derya Dertler Derya (“Sea of Troubles”), 73 Turam, Berna, 42 Turkey 1980s, change since, 3, 11, 14–16, 37–38, 223 history of public sphere in, 60–64, 66–69 media history in, 13–14, 62, 150 political history of, 36–38, 61–62, 63, 65 population of, 23, 49, 230 n. 1.6 pre-1980s field of power, 220–222 religious sects in, 113 women’s status in, 12–14, 17–18, 18–20, 20–22, 222 Turkish Islamic Synthesis (TIS), 37–38 Turkish Journalists’ Union, 76–77 Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) ¨ un ¨ on, 75 Ays¸e Ozg commercialization of, 155 164 monopoly, 9, 45, 63–64, 65, 145, 150 Turkiye newspaper, 68–69 ¨ ¨ Umraniye (Istanbul district), 21, 39, 45 unemployment, 59, 90, 128–129 urban areas, 5–6, 20–21, 43, 137, 232n. 1.27

index urbanization, 23, 42–43, 97

277

Will You Marry Me? 144 Winfrey, Oprah, 200, 211 Van Bruinessen, Martin, 237n. 3.27 Wodak, Ruth, 86 varos¸, 43, 159 womanizing (c¸apkınlık), 110–112 veiling and headscarves, 27, 230 n. WV programs 1.8 criticism of, 175, 177, 178–179 and access to public sphere, 36, discourse analysis of, 4 38–41, 42, 47 as educational, 170–175, 195–199, Verstehen, 79 201–203, 219 violence field research, 3 against children, 116–117, 119, format, 70–76, 83 124 guests’ characteristics, 85, 87, against men, 185 104–105, 163–164, 169 against women, 8, 9, 27–30, guests during production, 78–79, 34–36, 42, 178, 210, 215, 223 183, 186–187, 189–190, against women, in episode 192–196, 199–201, 202–209 narratives, 88, 91, 94–95, 212–214, 222 99–100, 116, 128, 169, 203, 209 law enforcement and, 192–193 ˙ ¸ i S¸iddete Son (“End Aile Ic missing men episodes, 107–112 Domestic Violence”), 242n. 4.23 missing women episodes, 99–106, audience experiences, 5, 6 114, 115–116, 127–128, education and, 29–30, 173 192–193 first-person narration, 8, 9, 28–29 mission of, 191–195, 197–198, laws regarding, 33 201–202 as topic, 189 outcomes of, 169–170, 173–178, Wheel of Power and Control, 28, 29 178–180, 189, 198–201, see also honor killing; rape; shelters 215–217, 219 visibility, paradoxes of, 8 production of, 4–5, 60, 74, 135, “voice” metaphor, 191 182–183, 219 voting, 36, 37, 45–46 public sphere, and access to, 42, women’s suffrage, 21–22 51, 78–79, 137–138, 182, 222–223 Weber, Max, 79, 221 starting point, in Turkey, 64–65 Westernization, 14–15, 19, 62–64, titles, 191–192 147–148, 220 topics, 85, 87 table 2 “What is an Author?” (Foucault), 53 viewing patterns, 5–6, 136–137, White, Jenny, 22, 36, 39, 45–46, 222, 138–139, 139–147, 147–159, 223 159–162, 164–167, 178–179, widow see dul 180, 221

278

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“Woman’s Voice” see Kadının Sesi (“Woman’s Voice”) women and care of children, 84, 86–99, 106, 119–120, 126, 132, 167–169, 193, 203, 213–214 cultural activities, 51, 55, 145, 164, 165 education of, 7, 12, 19, 21–23, 24, 26–27, 171–172 employment, domestic work, 26, 41, 142, 145–146, 196–197, 207, 237n. 3.26 employment in workforce, 17, 22–26, 26–27, 39, 49, 84, 98, 129–130, 163 employment, mentions in WV episodes, 89, 90, 95, 102, 112, 128, 133–134, 211 as materialistic, 127, 134 migrants, 2, 23, 24, 104, 204–205 missing, 99–106, 110, 113–116, 192–193 and power in the household, 96, 139–143 public sphere, access to, 8, 13–14, 22, 36, 38–41, 41–42, 122, 164–165 republican capital and, 4, 11, 12–14, 17–18, 20–22, 84, 221–222 sexuality, 25, 27, 30, 33, 39, 82, 84, 91, 106, 121–122, 207 and space of possibles, 90, 159, 222 television viewing patterns, 143–147, 165–167 unmarried, 127

violence against women, 8, 9, 27–30, 34–36, 42, 178, 210, 215, 223 violence against women, in episode narratives, 88, 91, 94–95, 99–100, 116, 128, 169, 203, 209 Women’s Media Watch Group, The (MEDIZ), 215–216, 241–242n. 5.13 End to Sexism in Media, 216 women’s movements, in Turkey independent feminist, 13, 32–36 and WV programs, 4–5, 173–174, 215, 219 women’s organizations, 20, 33, 173–174 KAMER (Women’s Center), 35 and the media, 219 Mor C ¸ atı (Purple Roof Women’s Shelter Foundation), 33, 175 New Ways: Women for Women’s Human Rights, 193 shelters, 1, 33, 34, 175–176, 189 Women’s Media Watch Group, The (MEDIZ), 215–216 Women’s Rights Implementation Center, 215 Women’s People’s Party, 20 women’s rights history of, 19–20, 69 status of, 12–14, 17–18, 18–20, 20–22, 41–42, 47–50, 81–82, 160, 222–223 suffrage, 21–22 WV hosts’ and producers’ knowledge of, 5, 119–120, 133, 170, 182, 193, 209–213, 215–216, 219

index

279

WV programs, learned from, 75, 169–170–173, 195–199, 201–203 see also women’s movements; women’s organizations Women’s Rights Implementation Center, 215 Women’s Solidarity Campaign Against Battery, 33 World Bank, 22–23 Would You Be My Daughter-in-Law? 157

Yalnız Degilsin (“You Are Not Alone”), 73 yandas¸ medya (partisan media), 76–77 Yasemin’in Penceresi (“Yasemin’s Window”), 70, 186, 200 Yaysat, 70 Yazıcı, Ays¸enur Yalnız Deˇgilsin (“You Are Not Alone”), 73 Young, Iris Marion, 53–54 Young Turks, 19, 61 ¨ Yuksel, S¸ahika, 34

Yabancı Damat (“The Foreign Groom), 152

Zaman newspaper, 69 Zanan publication, 232n. 1.30