Reading and feeling gender in perpetrator graffiti and photography in Turkey
Reading and feeling gender in perpetrator graffiti and photography in Turkey

Summary/Abstract: During the urban clashes between Kurdish militants and Turkish state forces in 2015-2016, young politicized social media users in Istanbul witnessed and experienced political violence through their engagement with violent words and images on social media, without being anywhere near the armed clashes. These were photographs of militarized nationalist performances of masculinized domination and sexist graffiti, produced by the Turkish Special Forces and circulated in the cyberspace. Based on an ethnographic study among young educated pro-Kurdish viewers and an ethnographically situated textual analysis of the graffiti, this article illustrates the ways images are perceived in the particular cultural and sociopolitical context. It argues that the gendered meanings that relate to the core of the gendered and ethnicized structural violence in Turkey, enhance the affective cybertouchof political violence.

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