The Sexual Politics of War: Reading the Kurdish Conflict Through Images of Women

Abstract

This article aims to dissect different representations of Kurdish women in order to illustrate how these representations correspond to different technologies of power. These three images are the joyful freedom fighter, the woman to be saved and the dishonourable terrorist. These three images, employed in contrast to each other differentially by different publics, however, have one thing in common: They are highly sexualised. Thus, the technologies they refer to and evoke address Kurdish women in their sexuality.While the image of the freedom fighter is much beloved by Western audiences, the historical conditions that have made it possible—the Kurdish women’s movement as well as the history of armed struggle—is largely overlooked. This image also brushes over the significance of the question of sexuality in the Kurdish political movement itself. The images of the woman to be saved and the dishonourable terrorist are in wide public circulation in Turkey. They build upon a technology of differentiation, which tries to single out politicised Kurdish women, and especially those who take part in armed struggle, as disgraced; therefore legitimizing sexual violence against them. The image of the woman to be saved is however equally sexualised, as it addresses Kurdish women in their reproductive capacities, which are to be controlled via various governmental technologies. The final argument of the article is that, when there is a state of exception in the Agambenian sense, this differentiation is held up and these two images start to overlap. This means a suspension of juridical order, ethical codes and everyday moral conduct, and use of technologies that address Kurdish women as a whole as dishonourable terrorists, upon whom sexual violence can be legitimately inflicted.