Counterinsurgency against queers in Turkey

Anti-LGBTI+ campaigns in Turkey have been part and parcel of regime-building since 2015. This article asserts that sexual politics in contemporary Turkey should be studied through the lens of a ­population-centred counterinsurgency paradigm, which calls upon the citizens to actively mobilise against queers as geopolitical threats. The article analyses the discourses of two ideologues of political queerphobia with significant stakes in the informal reconfiguration of the deep state: (1) Nevzat Tarhan, a military psychiatrist and advisor to Turkey’s first private military security company SADAT, which was founded by retired soldiers with Islamist leanings; and (2) Doğu Perinçek, leader of a former Maoist movement, which is densely networked among retired Eurasianist soldiers. While Tarhan articulates an Asricanist geopolitics and a medical theory of sexuality, Perinçek defends a Eurasianist geopolitics and a cultural theory of sexuality. Comparison of the two ideologues demonstrates that current queerphobia should not be treated as a monolithic single issue presumed by modernisation theory and electoral studies, but rather as a product of the cartellisation of diverse interests in regime-building.