ABSTRACT
Labour migration from Turkey to Germany has been an essential social-cultural phenomenon since the 1960s. Among the discourses on the feminine aspect of migration, there have been depictions of the sexual reputation of Turkish migrant women. Thus, it is necessary to analyse the portrayals of “emigrants” in audiovisual platforms in the country of origin (Turkey) that encode, decode, and recode gender alongside those in the host country (Germany). This discourse analysis-based study discusses the (re-)construction of the sexist immoral image by focusing on the reception of a young Turkish migrant woman (Shirin) pushed into prostitution in Shirins Hochzeit [Shirin’s Wedding]. Portraying labour exploitation, women’s solidarity, forced marriage, rape, male violence, and prostitution, the film tells Shirin’s story of escaping from Turkey to Germany and the problems she faces due to patriarchy, misogyny, and capitalism. However, only prostitution was at the centre of its homeland reception from Occidentalist and misogynist perspectives, condemning and demonising the heroine with marginalised ‘Self’ discourse. Such receptions that caused mass outrage in the 1970s, and the media slander against emigrant women in the 1960s, have been absent in Turkey for a long time. However, misogyny has continued to be experienced in various sending countries in the millennium, and women’s bodies and souls crossing borders have been denigrated and sub-nationalised due to gender-based and anti-feminist double standards of sexuality.
