Sex Reassignment in Turkey
What is the attitude towards sex reassignment in Turkey?
In all of the popular matters that are discussed in Turkey, nowadays sex reassignment surgery have the most attention both in media and in public with its cultural, traditional and sociological grounds. Before start analyzing the aspects of issue aspects of the issue a definition would be appropriate. Sex reassignment surgery is a sense of procedures, which change a person’s physical appearance by aiming the sexual existence. The idea and the action of transgender began in Germany in 20th century by Dr. Mangus Hirschfield -a gay German sexologist- who is described as most dangerous man in Germany by Adolf Hitler (New Republic). During all these procedures the most important part actually comes after the surgery. A person who changes his gender from one to the other, goes through a heavy psychological process. Sikandar Shah Haneef states that “Transsexuals do not consist of castrated male captives but are a genre of males or females who ‘feel trapped in the body of the opposite sex’ and thus either had already gone through the sex-reassignment process, or are inclined to do so at present, known as mukhannath in Islamic tradition” in The Dilemma of Transsexuals (2011).
On the other hand the history of sex assignment in Turkey has started with Bülent Ersoy’s sex reassignment surgery in 1981 in the UK. The operation was just after the written statement of government policy by the military government. This policy has forbidden men from wearing female clothes on the stage at the nightclubs. According to Law of Duties and Authorities as a female singer Ersoy needed permission to perform because such permission application was required for female singers in Turkey. Bülent Ersoy’s application was not only rejected, she was also banned from singing by the Security Department, because legally she was still a man and there was no way to change this in the state records (Fe Dergi, Kutoğlu).
A latest example from Turkey has brought sex reassignment to the agenda; Nil Erkoçlar being Rüzgar Erkoçlar. She was an actress has took parts in numerous TV series for ten years as a girl. In the Joseph McCormick’s interview Rüzgar Erkoçlar says “I felt as if I was born again after the operation. Nil was dead and Rüzgar was born instead.” Through the experiences he tells that hormone therapy made her angry and changed something in his mind. When compared, he feels far better than those days with help of her family and friends. Similar to Sikandar Shah Haneef’s statement Erkoçlar determines and says “ [The process] was very hard to endure, but I put up with all these things to get rid of the burden I had been carrying for 26 years.”
