Zengin, Asli, PhD student

By Katherine Harrison on 11 May | 0 comments

GEXcel project: Sexual Plays of Intimate Power: The State, Violence and Sex Workers’ Subjectivities in Istanbul

This project aims to analyze a particular functioning of the Turkish state in its relation to prostitution. In Turkey, sex work is legalized and facilitated under the state rule according to a specific legal code of prostitution which permits only women to work as registered sex workers in the brothels. However, there is also an illegal sex sector where not only women, but also men and transsexuals are involved. In both environments of sex work, the state develops various modes of conduct specific to each sex worker group on the basis of legality/illegality and sexual identity.

Drawing upon a range of regulations, disciplinary mechanisms and various state practices regarding (un)registered women, men and transsexual sex workers in Istanbul, this research will excavate how the state establishes specific relations between its ordering functions, violence and sexuality, and operates its power in an intimate way. In this process, each sex worker group’s response to the state practices, as well as to each other will be examined. Hence, at the intertwinement of sex workers’ relations with the state and the other sex worker groups, my project will also investigate the investments they make to their bodies and spaces, and the involved embodied processes of subjectivity.

Biographical notes:

Asli Zengin holds a MA in Sociology from the Bogazici University in Turkey where she did research on the comparative relation of the registered and unregistered women sex workers with the Turkish state in Istanbul. Currently, Asli is a doctoral student at the University of Toronto where she is exploring the sexual and intimate politics of the Turkish state in relation to prostitution and different sex worker groups including female, male, transsexual, legal and illegal prostitutes. Her research, both past and present, draws on theories of the state, violence, space and subjectivity.