An introduction to straight nation- building

In this chapter, I explore the genealogy of Turkish governmentality. I explore a genealogy that continuously produces a heteronormative, nationalist identity that disciplines unfitting subjects. I explore the formation of this governmentality in the context of the birth and development of the Turkish nation-state. Turkish governmentality, I will show, can be scrutinized along the lines of Dean's analytics of government (understanding how governance depends upon visibilities, technologies, populations, and knowledgeproductions (Dean, 2010, p. 33)). I argue that this governmentality in its current manifestation is heteropatriarchal, enforcing compulsory heterosexuality in contrast to a distinctive concept of an ‘other’, queer identity. There is not an essential body that precedes relations with the state and other socialities (Butler, 2011b, p. 382). Rather, bodies are unknowable outside of these processes. Such a hierarchal organization of the heterosexual/queer binary may correlate to other academic work in Queer International Relations, which seeks to understand how states, local, and transnational entities work together to materialize heterosexuality as normal in empirically visible acts and discourses (Berlant and Warner, 1998, p. 553; Wilcox, 2015, p. 26).

By looking backwards in time at specific key moments of the creation of Turkish governmentality, we can see that this is not an inevitable state of affairs. In witnessing the genealogical evolution of the heteropatriarchalnational governmentality of the Turkish state, and by highlighting specific points of change, resistance, and fluctuation, I show that these encounters between social entities, institutions, and Turkish citizens normalize a certain kind of heteronormativity, but that this governmentality is contingent and historical demonstrates that what is taken for granted is not the only possibility for sexual belonging.

In this chapter, I present a genealogy of how heteronormativity became an organizing principle in the establishment of Turkey, its institutions, international relations, and cultural milieu. I locate the roots of this governmentality in the context of the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. From there, I demonstrate how particular events, productions, and relationships through to the current day have normalized heteropatriarchal discourses, visibilities, knowledges, and technologies within Turkish institutions. It is key to understand that the state is not the sole institution involved in producing heteronormative citizenship.