Türkiye’deki LGBTİQ+ Hareketinin STK’laşması: Neoliberalizm, Sivil Toplum ve Cinselliğin Müzakeresi

Abstract

The interactivity of subjectivities and domains made possible by economic policies provides a suitable area to understand the transformation of social movements and the strategies they functionalize. The economic understanding of neoliberalism, its ideological reflections, and its transformative/disruptive power influence the understandings of struggle, strategies, and practices of social movements. When we consider the LGBTIQ+ movement(s) with its simultaneous transnational and local characteristics together with civil society possessing tools and resources for the consolidation of neoliberalism, we focus on an intersection where the influence of neoliberal rationality can be discussed. Focusing on this intersection, within the scope of this research, a reference point has been established by examining the discursive track related to the political positioning and adopted struggle practices of the LGBTIQ+ movement in Turkey through archival work on the Kaos GL Magazine. This point has been aligned with the data obtained from semi-structured in-depth interviews with LGBTIQ+ rights advocates who joined the movement between 1990-2003 and are over the age of 40, and those who joined the movement after 2010 and are under the age of 30. Thus, how the thoughts and experiences of rights advocates on joining the movement, perceptions of struggle, and practices shaped and changed in different periods of the LGBTIQ+ movement in Turkey, and to what extent this change was influenced by neoliberal rationality, was examined. It has been concluded that LGBTIQ+ individuals try to spread the struggle in every area where they can functionalize and increase their allies, the perception of neoliberal rationality towards individual empowerment and liberation is not fully embraced, but the practices performed due to the narrowing of the field of movement formally appear similar to this rationality, and the current goal focuses on not losing ground.