Sacrificial limbs: masculinity, disability and political violence in Turkey

Abstract

The honorific term gazi has a significant place in right-wing politics in Turkey as a key symbol of Turkish nationalism and Islamism. Historically a title associated with Muslim warriors and Ottoman and Turkish sovereigns, it has gained a renewed visibility in everyday life and politics since the 1990s, when the Turkish state began to bestow this title on disabled veterans returning from the counterinsurgency war in Kurdistan. As the war's toll rose, thousands of young, lower-class men who were badly wounded during their mandatory military service ended up joining the ranks of the gazis, and their injured lives and honored status would go on to become an important point of nationalist rhetoric and action. In Sacrificial Limbs, Salih Can Aciksoz takes his readers deep into the world of Turkey's contemporary gazis, chronicling diverse aspects of their lives - from their memories of war and traumatic experiences of injury, to their everyday struggles in the intimacy of their homes, at healthcare institutions, at work, and on the streets. Traversing disabled veterans' social and political networks, Aciksoz lays bare a dangerously fragile masculinity and its constitutive interactions with state sovereignty, neoliberal governmentality, and ultranationalist politicization.