The Emergence of Gay Identities in Contemporary Turkey

Abstract

The recent emergence of gay ( gey) identities raises core questions implicating globalization processes with the diffusion of models of sexual identity from other countries, and enjoins a vigorous debate on how and why gay identities are gaining increasing circulation around the world, challenging longstanding traditions of sexual organization. Relying on the voices of 20 Turkish men in Ankara, we argue that there is no one-way determinism in the adoption of sexual identity from the global to the local and that the meaning of gey is variable, entailing diverse ways of imagining, portraying, and seeing oneself. Turkish society today shows a heterogeneous set of co-existing and shifting social forms of inter-male connection, including some men who act consistently in terms of one or the other social form, and others who tack between them according to situation or personal preference.