ABSTRACT
This chapter, focuses on the gendered cultural memory of leftist women incarcerated during the military regime in Turkey between 1980 and 1983 and conduct a gender analysis at the intersection of patriarchy, nationalism, and leftist opposition. sexual violence aimed at subduing women into the norms of passive femininity by transforming an autonomous female political subject into a male dependent one, stripped, so to say, of political agency. Feminist struggles all over the world attempt to rewrite the hegemonic patriarchal codes of feminine respectability which perceive rape as a source of humiliation for the woman. In Turkey, too, drawing on feminist contestations of hegemonic codes, women like Asiye Gzel manage to transform rape from a silencing mechanism, a gendered punishment, into a topic of discussion and a re-evaluation of the concept of honor. A feminism which simultaneously rejects patriarchy, militarism, and nationalism would pinpoint and challenge masculinized and militarized constructions not only within the political left but in society at large.
