Indiana University doctoral candidate Aynur Onur, supervised by Dr. Nazif Shahrani and Dr. Sara Friedman, will conduct research on the relationship between gender equity goals, secularism, and military service in a secular Islamic state. The researcher will focus on women who serve in the military or who are part of military families in Turkey. Turkey is an appropriate site for the research because Turkish women appear to consciously seek military service to transform traditional roles.
The researcher's focal research questions are: How and why are women in particular mobilized to undertake military service? Do different recruitment discourses and other strategies have different consequences for women's lives and for the larger society? How do women reconcile military participation with personal goals? Data will be collected through archival research, participant observation, and interviews with a large sample (N = 192) of military women and men, women with family ties to the military, and civilian women and men.
The research is important because it will comprise the first systematic ethnographic investigation of the relationship between gender identity and military service in a predominantly Muslim nation. Findings from the research will help illuminate the gendered dimensions of women's military service in other contexts, as well, and will contribute to theorizing the relationships between state and personal ideologies. Funding this research also supports the education of a graduate student.
Indiana University doctoral candidate Aynur Onur, supervised by Dr. Nazif Shahrani and Dr. Sara Friedman, conducted research on the relationship between the military, gender identity, and secular modernity by using the Turkish example of integrating women in both combatant and non-combatant military units. The study focused on the Turkish women who serve in the military or who are a part of military families. This group of women seems to consciously seek military service to transform traditional roles. The project’s focal research questions are: How and why are women in particular mobilized to undertake military service? Do different recruitment discourses and other strategies have different consequences for women's lives and for the larger society? How do women reconcile military participation with individual goals? Data was collected through archival research, participant observation, and interviews with a large sample (N = 236) of military women and men, women with family ties to the military, and civilian women and men. The research comprised the first systematic ethnographic and historical investigation of the relationship between military service and gender identity, as well as citizenship rights in a predominantly Muslim society with a secular political system. Findings from the research will help illuminate the gendered dimensions of military service in other contexts, as well, and will contribute to theorizing the relationships between state policies and personal interests.
