Browsing by Author "Onbasi, Funda Gencoglu"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5

Gezi Park Protests in Turkey: From 'Enough Is Enough' to Counter-Hegemony?
(2016) Onbasi, Funda Gencoglu; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8211-8624; AAR-7704-2020
This study aims at a critical analysis of the Gezi Park protests of 2013. Without denying the importance of understanding their 'before and after,' it tries to understand what happened 'during' the Gezi protests. It argues that the practice of Gezi can be understood via the theory of radical democracy, whose core concepts and premises are particularly appropriate for making sense of what happened during Gezi protests. Drawing on those concepts this study argues that (i) Gezi was a manifestation of the 'undecidability and contingency of political identities'; (ii) a highly suitable atmosphere developed during the protests for the emergence of a '(counter) hegemonic relationship' in the radical democratic sense of the term; (iii) Kemalism unsuccessfully attempted to act as 'the nodal point' to fix the free floating of ideological elements; (iv) ultimately, no particularity managed to take over the representation of 'the chain of equivalence' established among the elements excluded from the current neoliberal-conservative hegemony.
Moralism, Hegemony, and Political Islam in Turkey: Gendered Portrayals in A Tv Series
(2016) Cosar, Simten; Onbasi, Funda Gencoglu; 0000-0001-8211-8624; AAR-7704-2020
This article offers a feminist reading of the neoliberal-conservative hegemony in Turkey through one TV series, Yepren Dusler,Fler, broadcast on a prominent pro-Islamist TV channel, Samanyolu. Drawing on research into the political effects of storytelling through mass media, we reveal the gendered working of Turkey's neoliberalconservative hegemony, which has been in effect since the late 2000s despite various shifts and relocations. Our main argument is that the gendered subjectivities represented in stories told to the public through the mass media contain important clues for exploring hegemonic constellations. They also hint at possible breaches between hegemonic allies. This article takes issue with the basic assets of the neoliberal-conservative hegemony. It also considers the transitivity between the symbolic and the real by analyzing the connection between claims to moral improvement in this TV series and neoliberal preferences in real politics.
Paid Military Service at the Intersection of Militarism, Nationalism, Capitalism, and (Hetero)Patriarchy: Escaping without Leaving "Manhood'
(2016) Onbasi, Funda Gencoglu; 0000-0001-8211-8624; AAR-7704-2020
The variety of the political standpoints of governments that have initiated exempted military service for several times in Turkey is a sign of a general agreement on its legitimacy. However, Turkey is a country where conscientious objection is almost a taboo. I try to decipher the assumptions behind what is (il)legitimate, and their manifestations in the sociopolitical life from a gender perspective informed by the feminist theory. I argue that what lies behind these is the interconnection between militarism, nationalism, patriarchy, and capitalism. I show how they reciprocally support each other through a critical discourse analysis of the debate on legitimacy of paid military service and illegitimacy of conscientious objection. I conclude that the nature of these debates leads to a reproduction of the hegemonic definitions of manhood and womanhood, together with the reproduction of the masculinization of the political sphere at the expense of the exclusion of and discrimination against other identities.
'Radical Social Democracy': A Concept That Has Much to Say to Social Democrats in Turkey
(2016) Onbasi, Funda Gencoglu; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8211-8624; AAR-7704-2020
This article aims to link theory and practice by connecting the experience of social democracy in Turkey with the theory of radical democracy and thereby elaborate on the notion of radical social democracy' in the sense Chantal Mouffe used the term. Parallel to the repeated electoral successes of the governing Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalknma Partisi - AKP), the academic literature has become increasingly AKP-centred and, concomitantly, social democracy debate has become unproductive in Turkey. However, social democratic parties, notably the Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi -CHP), have been playing important roles in Turkish political life. Thus, this study endeavours to open a new window to the social democracy debate in Turkey by attracting attention to the central concepts of radical democracy such as anti-essentialism, hegemony, antagonism, collective identities, chain of equivalence, all of which are considered as functional for radical social democracy.
Social Media and the Kurdish Issue in Turkey: Hate Speech, Free Speech and Human Security
(2015) Onbasi, Funda Gencoglu; 0000-0001-8211-8624; AAR-7704-2020
Parallel to two intertwined processes of the politicization of ethnicity, religion and sexuality on the one hand, and the rise of the internet, on the other hand, hate speech has become one of the most topical issues of political debates. Academic interest on this topic has so far focused largely on the questions of (im)possibility of defining hate speech, on the hate speech/free speech dichotomy, and, thus on the possible ways of dealing with this big challenge of our times. This study tries to open a new window by resorting to the concept of human security. It argues that rival understandings of security (traditional or critical) lead to differences in perceptions of threats/harms which in turn lead to different conceptions of hate speech. This argument is illustrated through an analysis of the way the Kurdish issue in Turkey has been tackled in Eksi Sozluk, one of the most popular web sites in the country.