Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Circuits of Law: Everyday Criminalisation of Transgender Embodiment in Istanbul

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Criminal Legalities and Minorities in the Global South

Part of the book series: Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies ((PSLS))

Abstract

Historically, trans women of Turkey have been frequent targets of torture and ill-treatment by the police forces. Since the early 2000s, however, the strategies of the police to control trans women’s existence within the city has moved away from inflicting direct physical violence towards employing ‘law’ and creating an omnipresence of law in their everyday lives. This chapter examines two specific instances of such legal deployments: Misdemeanours fines and criminal law trials. While on the surface, these deployments of the law result in a diminished number of reported cases of torture and violence, I argue that they reflect less of a change of the underlying normative concerns around sex, gender and sexuality than an enhancement and expansion of the punitive capacity of the neoliberalising state under the Justice and Development Party government. I will show the ways through which trans women’s bodies, marked as unlawful occupiers of the urban space, are expelled to spaces outside the ‘circuits of security’ (Rose 2000) by the applications of misdemeanours and criminal laws. I argue that these employments of the law (dis)place trans women into constant circulation within and between different circuits of the law that work on and through various jurisdictions (O’Malley and Valverde 2014; Valverde 2014) and that makes it possible to govern in certain ways at the intersections of the formal and the informal.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    I deploy the term ‘trans’ as an umbrella term to refer to people “who have undergone hormone treatment or surgery to reconstruct their bodies, and to those who cross gender in ways which are less permanent” (Hines 2007a, para. 1). As such the category denotes a wide range of diversity and difference of gendered embodiment and experience, including transgender, transsexual, cross-dresser, queer gender and other gender non-conforming identities (Whittle 2006, xi). ‘Trans woman’ addresses any person who was assigned male at birth and identifies as woman.

  2. 2.

    Justice and Development Party is the ruling party in Turkey that has maintained its control over Turkish politics in an increasingly authoritarian manner under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan since its coming to power in 2002 (Baykan 2018).

  3. 3.

    The spiritual leadership of the Muslim world that had resided with the Ottoman Empire since 1571.

  4. 4.

    Kolihouse (house of intercourse) in trans women’s slang refers to a flat (usually run by an elderly trans woman) that offers trans sex workers hourly rent rooms.

References

  • Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. State of exception. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arat, Yeşim. 1994. Women’s Movement of the 1980s in Turkey: Radical Outcome of Liberal Kemalism? In Reconstructing Gender in the Middle East: Tradition, Identity and Power, ed. M. Göçek and S. Balaghi, 100–113. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arat, Yeşim. 1997. The Project of Modernity and Women in Turkey. In Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, ed. S. Bozdağan and R. Kasaba, 95–112. Seattle: Washington University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Auyero, Javier, and Débora Alejandra. Swistun. 2009. Flammable: Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Babül, Elif. 2017. Bureaucratic Intimacies Translating Human Rights in Turkey. CA Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bahçecik, Şerif Onur. 2015. The Power Effects of Human Rights Reforms in Turkey: Enhanced Surveillance and Depoliticization. Third World Quarterly 36 (6): 1222–1236.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baykan, Toygar Sinan. 2018. The Justice and Development Party in Turkey Populism, Personalism, Organization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bentham, Jeremy. 1962. The Works of Jeremy Bentham: The Constitutional Code. New York: Russell and Russell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berghan, S. 2007. Lubunya. Istanbul: Metis Yayincilik.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berktay, Fatmagül. 2001. Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet’e Feminizm. In Tanzimat ve Meşrutiyetin Birikimi: Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düşünce Cilt 1, ed. M. Alkan, 348–360. İletişim Yayınları: Istanbul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brubaker, Rogers. 1992. Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Brubaker, Rogers. 1996. Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bussmaker, Jet, and Rian Voet. 1998. Citizenship and Gender: Theoretical Approaches and Historical Legacies. Critical Social Policy 18 (3): 277–307.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Calı, B. 2010. The logics of supranational human rights litigation, official acknowledgment, and human rights reform: the southeast Turkey cases before the European Court of Human Rights, 1996–2006. Law & Social Inquiry, 35 (2): 311–337.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chase, Susan E. 2003. The Way We Were, Are, and Might Be: Torch Singing as Auto Ethanography. In Turning Points in Qualitative Research: Tying Knots in a Handkerchief, ed. Y.S. Lincoln and N.K. Denzin, 276–296. Oxford: Altamira Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cindoglu, Dilek, and Didem Unal. 2017. Gender and Sexuality in the Authoritarian Discursive Strategies of new Turkey. European Journal of Women’s Studies 24 (1): 39–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Couch, et al. 2008. Transgender People and the Amendment of Formal Documentation: Matters of Recognition and Citizenship. Health Sociology Review 17 (3): 280–289.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Currah, Paisley, Richard M. Juang, and Shannon Minter. 2006. Transgender Rights. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edelman, Elijah Adiv. 2014. ‘Walking While Transgender’: Necropolitical Regulations of Trans Feminine Bodies of Colour in the Nation’s Capital. In Queer Necropolitics, ed. J. Haritaworn, A. Kuntsman, and S. Posocco, 172–190. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Engel, David, and Frank W. Munger. 2003. Rights of Inclusion: Law and Identity in the Life Stories of Americans With Disabilities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Evans, David. 1993. Sexual Citizenship: The Material Construction of Sexualities. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ewick, Patricia, and Susan S. Silbey. 1998. Commonplace of Law: Stories From Everyday Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Feeley, Malcolm M., and Jonathon Simon. 1992. The New Penology: Notes on the Emerging Strategy of Corrections and its Implications. Criminology 30 (4): 449–474.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Field, Ann-Marie. 2007. Counter-Hegemonic Citizenship: LGBT Communities and the Politics of Hate Crimes in Canada. Citizenship Studies 11 (3): 247–262.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, Michel. 1978. History of Sexuality, Vol. I: An Introduction. New York: Pantheon Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, Michel. 1991. Governmentality. In The Foucault Effect: Studies on Governmentality, ed. G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and P. Miller, 87–104. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, Michel. 2007. Security, Territory and Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–1978. New York: Palgrave Macmi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Franzosi, Roberto. 1998. Narrative Analysis: Or Why (and how) Sociologists Should be Interested in Narrative. Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1): 517–555.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • General Directorate of European Union. 2008. Avrupa Birliği’ne Aday Ülke Olarak Türkiye’de AB Uyum Yasalarının İç Hukuka Etki ve Katkısı. Available at: http://www.abgm.adalet.gov.tr/yayinlar/belgeler/ekutuphane/ABUyumYasalarininIcHukukaEtkisiVeKatkisi.pdf (accessed January 2018).

  • Göle, Nilüfer. 1997. Secularism and Islamism in Turkey: The Making of Elites and Counter-Elites. Middle East Journal, 51 (1): 46–58.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gönen, Zeynep. 2016. The Politics of Crime in Turkey: Neoliberalism, Police and the Urban Poor. London: I. B. Tauris.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harris, Alexes. 2016. A Pound of Flesh: Monetary Sanctions as Punishment for the Poor. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harris, Alexes, Heather Evans, and Katherine Beckett. 2010. Drawing Blood from Stones: Legal Debt and Social Inequality in the Contemporary United States. American Journal of Sociology 115 (6): 1753–1799.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hines, Sally. 2007a. (Trans)Forming Gender: Social Change and Transgender Citizenship. Sociological Research Online 12, no. 1 (2007a): 181–194.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hines, Sally. 2007b. Transforming Gender: Transgender Practices of Identity, Intimacy and Care. Bristol: The Policy Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ILGA. 2014. Human Rights Violations of LGBT Individuals in Turkey. Ankara: Ayrinti Basimevi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Joseph, Suad. 1996. Gender and Citizenship in Middle Eastern States. Middle East Report 26 (1): 4–10.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kandiyoti, Deniz A. 1987. Emancipated But Unliberated? Reflections on the Turkish Case. Feminist Studies 13 (2): 317–338.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kandiyoti, Deniz A. 1988. Slave Girls, Temptresses and Comrades: Images of Women in the Turkish Novel. Feminist Issues 8 (1): 35–50.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaos G. L. 2007. LGBT Bireylerin İnsan Hakları Raporu.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koğacıoğlu, Dicle. 2003. Law in Context: Citizenship and Reproduction of Inequality in an Istanbul Courthouse. PhD diss.: Stony Brook University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koğacıoğlu, Dicle. 2005. Citizenship in Context: Rethinking Women’s Relationships to the Law in Turkey. In Citizenship and the Nation State in Greece and Turkey, ed. F. Birtek and T. Dragonas, 144–160. London: Routledge.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Kohler-Hausmann, I. 2014. Managing Justice and Mass Misdemeanors. Stanford Law Review 66 (2): 611–693.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kmlicka, W. 1998. “Multicultural Citizenship” in Gershon, S. (eds.), Citizenship Debates, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Pressy.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lambdaistanbul LGBTI Association. 2010. “İt iti ısırmaz.” İstanbul: Lambdaistanbul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lister, Ruth. 1997. Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Marshall, Thomas Humphrey. 1964. Class; citizenship, and social development. Garden City: Double Day.

    Google Scholar 

  • Monro, Surya. 2005. Gender Politics: Citizenship, Activism and Sexual Diversity. London: Pluto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Monro, Surya, and Lorna Warren. 2004. Transgendering Citizenship. Sexualities 7 (3): 343–362.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Namaste, Viviane. 2005. Sex Change, Social Change: Reflections on Identity, Institutions and Imperialism. Toronto: Women’s Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Natapoff, Alexandra. 2015. Misdemeanor Decriminalization. Vanderbilt Law Review 68 (4): 1055–1116.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pat, O’Malley. 2009. Theorizing Fines. Punishment and Society 11 (1): 67–83.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Malley, Pat and Mariana Valverde. 2014. Foucault, Criminal Law, and the Governmentalization of the State Foundational Texts, In Modern Criminal Law, ed. in M. D. Dubber, 317–334.Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ördek, Kemal. 2014. “Kayıtsız” Alanda “Kayıtlı” “Soygun”: Trans Seks İşçilerine Yönelik Bir “Vergilendirme”. Aracı Olarak İdari Para Cezaları. Ankara: Kırmızı Şemsiye Derneği.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ördek, Kemal. 2016. Türkiye’de Trans Olmak: Dışlanma, Ayrımcılık ve Şiddet. Ankara: Kırmızı Şemsiye Derneği.

    Google Scholar 

  • Özar, Şemsa and Burcu Yakut-Cakar. 2013, November–December. Unfolding the invisibility of women without men in the case of Turkey. Women’s Studies International Forum, 41 (1): 24–34.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pateman, Carole. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Plummer, Ken. 1995. Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change and Social Worlds. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Richardson, Diane. 2000. Constructing Sexual Citizenship: Theorizing Sexual Rights. Critical Social Policy 20 (1): 105–135.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Riessman, Catherine Koher. 1993. Narrative Analysis. London: Sage Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose, Nikolas. 2000. Government and Control. British Journal of Criminology 40 (2): 321–339.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sarat, Austin. 1990. The Law Is All Over: Power, Resistance, and the Legal Consciousness of the Welfare Poor. Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 2 (2): 343–379.

    Google Scholar 

  • Selek, Pinar. 2006. Maskeler, Süvariler, Gacılar. Istanbul: Istiklal Kitabevi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sharma, Aradhana and Gupta, A. 2006. Introduction. Rethinking Theories of the State in an Age of Globalisation. In The Anthropology of the State: A reader, ed. A. Sharma and A. Gupta. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sharpe, Andrew. 2002. Transgender Jurisprudence: Dysphoric Bodies of Law. New York and Abingdon: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Sirman, Nükhet. 1989. Feminism in Turkey: A Short History. New Perspectives on Turkey 3: 1–34.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sirman, Nükhet. 2007. Constituting the Modern Family as the Social in the Transition from Empire to Nation-State. In Ways to Modernity in Turkey and Greece, ed. Ç. Keyder and A. Frangoudaki, 176–190. London: I. B. Tauris.

    Google Scholar 

  • Somers, Margaret R. 1993. Citizenship and the Place of the Public Sphere: Law, Community, and Political Culture in the Transition to Democracy. American Sociological Review 58: 587–620.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Soysal, Yasemin Nuhoglu, and A.J. Soyland. 1994. Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taşcıoğlu, Esen Ezgi. 2011. What Do Transgender Women’s Experiences Tell Us About Law? Towards an Understanding of Law as Legal Complex. Oñati Socio-Legal Series 1 (1): 1–25.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taşcıoğlu, Esen Ezgi. 2015. Violence, Survival and Knowledge in Trans Women’s Lives in Turkey. Oñati Socio-Legal Series 6: 1452–1470.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taşcıoğlu, Esen Ezgi. 2020. States of Exception: Legal Governance of Trans Women in Urban Turkey. Social & Legal Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/0964663920924780.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tugal, C. 2009. Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Turner, Bryan S. 1986. Personhood and Citizenship. Theory, Culture and Society 3 (1): 1–16.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Valverde, Mariana. 2009. Jurisdiction and Scale: Legal “Technicalities” as Resources for Theory. Social Legal Studies 18 (2): 139–157.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Valverde, Mariana. 2010. Practices of Citizenship and Scales of Governance. New Criminal Law Review 13 (2): 216–240.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Valverde, Mariana. 2014. Studying the Governance of Crime and Security: Space, Time and Jurisdiction. Criminology & Criminal Justice 14 (4): 379–391.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • West, Isaac. 2013. Transforming Citizenships: Transgender Articulations of the Law. New York: NYU Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Whittle, S. 2006. Foreword. In The Transgender Studies Reader, ed. S. Stryker and S. Whittle. New York and Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Young, I. M. 1998. Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship. In The Citizenship Debates, ed. S. Gershon. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zengin, Aslı. 2014. Sex for Law, Sex for Psychiatry: Pre-Sex Reassignment Surgical Psychotherapy in Turkey. Anthropologica 56 (1): 55–68.

    Google Scholar 

Laws Cited

  • Kabahatler Kanunu [Misdemeanours Law] No. 5326. Introduced in House March 30, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  • Türk Ceza Kanunu [Turkish Criminal Law] No. 5237. Introduced in House September 26, 2004.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Keele University, London, UK

    Ezgi Taşcıoğlu

Authors
  1. Ezgi Taşcıoğlu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ezgi Taşcıoğlu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    George B. Radics

  2. Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Liverpool, Singapore, Singapore

    Pablo Ciocchini

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Taşcıoğlu, E. (2023). Circuits of Law: Everyday Criminalisation of Transgender Embodiment in Istanbul. In: Radics, G.B., Ciocchini, P. (eds) Criminal Legalities and Minorities in the Global South. Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17918-1_12

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17918-1_12

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-17917-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-17918-1

  • eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation