Construction Of Masculinity In The Political Sphere: Re- Positioning Of Gender In Kurdish Political Movement

This study aims to understand the role of the Kurdish political movement that ask for “the women to liberate themselves and the men to kill their masculinities” in the the constructing of masculinities and in the patriarchal bargains in the course of everyday lives. The main problematic of this study is to analyze the gender discourse of the PDP (Peace and Democracy Party, BDP), i.e., the legal representative of Kurdish political movement in Turkey, from the view of the male politicians and in the context of the sociology of personal life. This thesis is mainly addressing these questions; how the men interpret this libertarian discourse in their close relations with the women (their wives, sisters, mothers and daughters), how relations between the men and the women are established during personal life practices and how the patriarchy is positioned in the context of this libertarian discourse. So this study is discussing how and in what forms the patriarchal patterns overrun the libertarian discourse and reverberate in domestic family life in terms of ethnicity, religion and social classes. For this research, I interviewed with ten male politicians and five relatives of the politicians(wife, daughter, mother, sister, etc.). The reformation of genders and the change of patriarchal patterns in public sphere do not conform to patterns in private sphere. There are different variables that shape the gender relations in private sphere. It will not be wrong to assert that the men are not the agents of this change both in public and private sphere. At times, the transformation within the party was possible through the driving leaders of the movement and the perspectives of Abdullah ？calan who they occasionally may refer on this issue. At other times, the female politicians who are well organized in the movement and have great influence on it, and the other women who are the close relatives of the male politicians are the real causes that transform the male politicians