“Milli etmek” [Making national]: masculinity, queerness and disability in Murat Uyurkulak’s Merhume

Abstract

ABSTRACT Murat Uyurkulak’s 2016 novel, Merhume, centers stories of queer, disabled and otherwise marginalized characters and embeds them within a real and imagined political history of Turkey. Through the narratives of Alper Kenan, a crime novelist with dwarfism, and Evren Tunga, a butch lesbian literary critic, Uyurkulak lays bare how national and familial belonging is predicated upon ableist, heterosexist and masculinist ideals of the Turkish nation state. In this article, I analyze how these characters’ lives are shaped by historical narratives of violence and masculinity, and argue that the ideals of masculinity and Turkish nationalism become inherited generational traumas that these disabled and queer characters must negotiate in order to survive. Drawing on scholars of queer and disability studies, I further argue how Uyurkulak himself replicates some of that sexist and ableist violence within the narrative and through his language, and dis-ables his characters by calling into question their narrative agency.