ABSTRACT
Women’s writing from Turkey is imbued with memorable female protagonists whose complex relationships with their embodied selves facilitate a site of resistance where different wielders of power are strictly scrutinised. My chapter, in introducing the context in which representations of the female body can be read as a site of resistance in Turkey, focuses on Turkish writer Pınar Kür’s three significant novels: Yarın Yarın (Tomorrow, Tomorrow), Asılacak Kadın (A Woman to Hang) and Bitmeyen Aşk (Unending Love). I argue that in these novels the female body becomes a thematic and narrative device that brings forward the complexities of female bodily experience and invokes resistance against mechanisms that rid the female body of agency and control. The subversion in Kür’s novels also comes from their critical stance towards others issues such as hypocrisy about sexual oppression and violence. In their formal and thematic aspects, Kür’s novels demand liberation for Turkish women and remind readers of the need to challenge different power dynamics and the injustices caused by them.
