Construction Of Masculinity In The Political Sphere: Re- Positioning Of Gender In Kurdish Political Movement

Abstract

This study aims to understandthe role of the Kurdish political movement that ask for “the women to liberate themselvesand the men to kill their masculinities” in the the constructing ofmasculinities and in the patriarchal bargains in the course of everyday lives.The main problematic of this study is to analyze the gender discourse of thePDP (Peace and Democracy Party, BDP), i.e., the legal representative of Kurdishpolitical movement in Turkey, from the view of the male politicians and in thecontext of the sociology of personal life. This thesis is mainly addressing these questions; how the men interpretthis libertarian discourse in their close relations with the women (theirwives, sisters, mothers and daughters), how relations between the men and thewomen are established during personal life practices and how the patriarchy ispositioned in the context of this libertarian discourse. So this study isdiscussing how and in what forms the patriarchal patterns overrun thelibertarian discourse and reverberate in domestic family life in terms ofethnicity, religion and social classes. For this research, I interviewed withten male politicians and five relatives of the politicians(wife, daughter,mother, sister, etc.). The reformation ofgenders and the change of patriarchal patterns in public sphere do not conformto patterns in private sphere. There are different variables that shape thegender relations in private sphere. It will not be wrong to assert that the menare not the agents of this change both in public and private sphere. At times,the transformation within the party was possible through the driving leaders ofthe movement and the perspectives of Abdullah Öcalan who they occasionally mayrefer on this issue. At other times, the female politicians who are wellorganized in the movement and have great influence on it, and the other womenwho are the close relatives of the male politicians are the real causes thattransform the male politicians.