Introduction

Militarism is everywhere. It is in our daily life, in our childhood memories and toys, and in the language we speak. Questions thus arise as to how militarism is normalised through establishing and maintaining gender roles. How is such normalisation being challenged? To forge the link between gender and militarism, this chapter studies women’s conscientious objection to military service in Turkey. It utilises Cynthia Enloe's (2004: 220) feminist curiosity, ‘a curiosity that provokes serious questioning about the workings of masculinized and feminized meanings’. Developing a feminist curiosity, while providing insights into the conscientious objection movement in Turkey, is crucial to making sense of women's conscientious objection in the male conscription system, understanding conscientious objection from a wider perspective and unveiling the tools used to integrate militarism into society.

Since women are not subject to conscription in Turkey, they are likely to be seen as irrelevant to the matter. They are ironically asked a common question: you are not conscripted, so why do you refuse? This cynical approach to women's objection not only creates a male-dominated environment around antimilitarist views but also ignores the multiple purposes behind the act of refusal. The aim of this chapter is, therefore, to discuss how the link between gender and militarism is understood in the context of Turkey, a country that still has a system of male conscription. It illustrates how conscription constitutes only one dimension of militarism and how militarism also affects women's lives, even though they are not subject to compulsory military service. In so doing, the chapter broadens the discussion on the right to conscientious objection by studying those who have previously been assumed to be ‘irrelevant’.

The analysis proceeds as follows: the first section presents the theoretical framework, first by engaging with the broad discussion on the normalisation of militarism through gender norms in general, then by exploring the link between gender and militarism in the context of Turkey. The second section provides empirical evidence coupled with a gender analysis to show how militarism is understood and challenged in Turkey.