Your body - my decisions

French philosopher, historian, and sociologist Michel Foucault, who lived between 1926 and 1984, argues that the suppression of the human body and behavior by political powers under the guise of social norms is, in fact, a political instrument, and that these pressures are intended to manage and control society.

In following in Michel Foucault's footsteps on this matter, we encounter the concept of biopolitics. Foucault first began to discuss the concept of "biopolitics" in the section titled La Volonté de savoir (The Will to Knowledge), the first volume of his book Histoire de la Sexualité, published in 1976. According to Foucault, the state attempts to keep the biological processes of the community—such as population, fertility, sexuality, and health—under control through social norms using biopolitical strategies. The importance of issues such as sexuality, birth control, and marriage naturally makes the young woman the focal point of political strategies.

UNLIMITED POWER IN THE HANDS OF AUTHORITIES USING SOCIAL NORMS

Continuing on this subject, Foucault says, "normality is a tool of discipline that brings society into order," and "social norms function as the most invisible but most powerful tools of power."

So, if the social norm patterns desired to be implemented by the state are not fixed by laws, who are the executors of the latent power behind society's disciplined insistence on applying these norms?

In fact, we are the owners of this powerful whisper we call social norms, which spreads from ear to ear, from house to house, from congregations to congregations, to neighborhoods, villages, large cities, and even countries. We pass our whispers to each other in the small circles we are in, at micro levels. Therefore, it is impossible for us to estimate the high and noisy pressure that a sentence whispered by tens of millions of people at the same time would create.

To visualize the subject a bit more in our minds; for example, a sentence whispered by an aunt in the neighborhood to another aunt while shelling beans: “What business does a girl have in school? You should marry her off before she gets any ideas; let her know her home and hearth. Sooner or later, it will become a matter of honor, and she will ruin her husband's and sons' lives,” appears to be harmless neighborhood chatter, but we can observe in the multi-digit figures in the country's statistics how many girls this whisper, accepted as a social norm, has prevented from being sent to school or caused to be married off at an early age.

Therefore, when a person from the state apparatus proclaims, “Young girls are now laughing in public; where are our old shy young girls! The wrists of married women cooking in YouTube videos are visible while they knead dough; where is modesty, decency, morality!” we know that this is not just a personal reprimand, but also a biopolitical, political attitude of control. This political attitude is a very serious precedent for us to understand the political stance that dictates what kind of world women should live in.

THE WAY TO LIBERATE A SOCIETY IS THROUGH LIBERATING THE WOMEN OF THAT COMMUNITY

While there are so many important issues in the country, we watch with astonishment as these individuals constantly try to bring young women under control within the framework of their own perverse norms; we should not overlook the detail that the current picture of the country before us is drawn with pens made from this chatter, and painted entirely black with the paints of these same whispers; in fact, we should really ponder this detail.

While the time has come, and indeed the time has never passed, it is worth remembering; Mustafa Kemal knew very well that the way to liberate a society is through liberating the women of that community, and he was building one of the most important pillars of the civilized and developed society he wanted to create upon this idea, which he worked on with sensitivity. In the past 80 years, however, within the framework drawn by the pen of so-called social norms, the young woman has been imprisoned inside a glass dome where she cannot breathe, with shackles on her feet and all her joy of living stolen.

THE SCENARIO WRITTEN FOR THE YOUNG WOMAN BY MALE NORM-MAKERS

So, what are the characteristics expected of a woman to remain within this framework?

Male moralizers, radical opinion-mongers, neighborhood mullahs, so-called family elders, journalists and politicians who profit from this environment, and many so-called male and female writers trample on this subject with all their hunger, taking a pathological pleasure in talking about the young woman.

When they leave the floor to the more skilled ones, the subject goes to unexpected places; they talk about the woman's sexual positions during menstruation, how she should obey her husband's sexual desires, and the curses she will face if she does not obey, with drool dripping from their mouths, with great relish and excitement.

After all boundaries of decency are crossed, it is time to define the slave-woman who will fulfill all these sick desires and to list their expectations. The profile of the woman that these wretched individuals strive with all their might to realize and wish to see is as follows:

She has no preferences of her own, her individual desires are filed down, honored by the presence of her father, and granted the right to continue her life with the presence of her husband; she has no claim of ownership over her own life, no claim to be visible, and is expected not to be assertive about any subject; she is not stubborn, does not make demands for qualifications by claiming to know, is aware that being too smart is a bad thing, cannot be rebellious, is afraid of traveling alone, and does not have the luxury of choosing the clothes she wants. Her sitting and walking are closed off, her shoulders are slumped, she constantly says "yes"; she competes to compliment her patriarchs when she finds the opportunity, sacrifices herself for their existence, and accepts that she is presented as a gift to a man, as they put it; she does not have the right to experience her sexuality without being wanted by a man's family and given by her own father; she cannot divorce the man she married, does not make claims to inheritance, and is ashamed of speaking loudly. In other words, they describe a voluntary slave woman...

THE PRESSURE OF SOCIAL NORMS ON WOMEN

In societies where such thought structures determine norms through neighborhood whispers, the woman has neither a name, nor an identity, nor a claim to existence.

In such a family structure, the young woman is the property of her father's house; the sign of the value of this property comes from her virginity and her capacity for service. Her father transfers the property to the husband's house without her virginity being harmed and by preventing her from suffering physical damage. This transfer process is contracted, signed, and paid for. Her father ties a red ribbon around his daughter's waist to certify her virginity, and she is sent from her first home to become a person of another house, wrapped in white tulle like a gift package, to be opened by her husband that night.

In the continuation of an act that was wrong from the very beginning, the young girl has been demoted in rank by moving from being a daughter to a new bride. The new duty she has undertaken, besides being responsible for all the personal services of a man of her own age, is to share her body. It is not even possible for her to know for sure whether she will love the husband she does not know well enough. It is unknown whether the sexuality that the young woman has to experience, based on the assumption that she consented amidst all the hustle and bustle of wedding dresses, weddings, and gold jewelry, is a truly consented sexual experience, or a forced situation that the woman experiences under the heading of social normals by being convinced that this situation is normal.

LOSS OF IDENTITY AND BELONGING OF WOMEN

The issue does not end here either. The young woman is also expected to give up the belonging she thought was hers until that day. She is made to give up the surname she carries in one fell swoop and takes the surname of her new owner. She will now continue the lineage of the house she went to. She is expected to forget who she is, and it is not even a question of her passing on her belonging to her children.

I know it is a very depressing picture. However, if we consider that the female population, which makes up half of the community, who are convinced to live this situation exactly as described, are called "normal" and "good women," I think we will not have difficulty in estimating that the issue does not remain at individual dimensions and that the figures could be at frightening levels.

WHO IS THE MAIN CULPRIT OF THE TABLE OF IGNORANCE DRAWN BY SOCIAL NORMS

So, is the only culprit of this picture the social norms that the people have created with whispers among themselves? Has the public brought this upon itself?

No, of course not. The public only continues to speak and practice traditional norms passed down from generation to generation with natural behavior. The only power that can control the ignorance tendency of these powerful norm transmissions is the state structure. The most powerful state instruments to be used in this regard are schools, higher education institutions, mosques, village rooms, public education centers, and associations. Only through these institutions can incorrect norm transmissions be broken away from an irrational line and raised to a modern, rational, and scientific level.

However, the opposite of this behavioral pattern is unfortunately also very possible. The state will can also support the dark whispers of social norms in the direction of increasing ignorance.

Developing and progressing is an act that is difficult by nature, as it requires serious resistance against ignorance and tremendous effort. If a simile is needed, the effort of development and modernization in an underdeveloped society can be described as trying to push a heavily loaded cart uphill with effort to bring it to level ground.

In the event that an effort is made in the opposite direction, that is, in a situation where it is decided to support ignorance with institutions, the braking system of the vehicle, which is already on a hill, is canceled. And such a miserable descent also takes place at a visible speed. The most prominent signs of this situation are severe economic hardship and, subsequently, the dramatic screams caused by unimaginable criminal incidents. Although the public, through newspapers and news channels, is gripped by fear as they witness the trap they are struggling in more closely every day, there is unfortunately nothing they can do. Although the source of the dramatic issues seems to be the people themselves, the culprit of the situation is not the people, but the official authority that cannot perform its duty properly.

If we recall Durkheim's book Suicide here, it will not be very difficult to hit the nail on the head: “Suicide is not an individual responsibility; it is a result of the social structure and state policies,” says Durkheim. In such sociological collapses, what drives the individual to suicide is the disintegration and state of anomie in the integrity of society.

What is the solution? I don't know! It is said that however long it takes for a system to break down, it takes just as long to recover and make it functional. I hope this is not a correct thesis. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk proved to the whole world that this thesis is not always valid. The main issue is for the people and the country's administration to decide to climb uphill together. Otherwise, we will live in the same country as children raised by mothers who feed their children the ablution water of cult sheikhs for healing. Instead of climbing the hill of civilization and becoming a developed country at the level of contemporary civilizations, we will turn into a tribe of eighty million struggling in a pit of ignorance. Amulet writers and faith healers will replace doctors; fraudulent contractors will replace engineers and architects; charlatan astrologers and fortune tellers will replace astronomers and meteorologists, and it will be a great, great pity for our country.