Transsexuals and the urban landscape in Istanbul

Middle East Report

Volumn 28, Issue 206, 1998, Pages 20-25

  Robert, Mary ^a   Kandiyoti, Deniz ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 27844578446     PISSN: 08992851     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3012476     Document Type: Article

References (9)

1. Tim Kelsey, Dervish: The Invention of Modern Turkey, (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1996).
2. Oya Özdilek, "Muazzam bir escinsel kültür, sanat ve geçmis," Kim 47 (February, 1996), pp. 98-101.
3. This vocabulary is claimed to be based on gypsy dialect with traces of Spanish, Latin and possibly Armenian. The word lubinya is used as a self designation by transsexuals but they are more commonly referred to by others as travesti or dönme.
4. Amendment to the 29th Clause of Law no. 743, Turkish Civil Code, May 12, 1988.
5. Ilmi ve Kazai Içtihatlar Dergisi 22/253 (January, 1982), pp. 911-13 provides the details of a ruling stating that the decision of whether the complainant, who merely has the appearance of a woman, really is a woman is a medical matter. The complainant's appeal was therefore rejected on the grounds that further medical examinations were necessary. Two dissenting opinions to this ruling were recorded noting that there could be no question of a sex change for someone who had lived as a male beyond puberty. Interestingly, a June 1988 fatwa issued in Egypt by the Mufti of the Republic on the question of Sayid 'Abd Allah, alias Sally, who had also undergone a sex-change operation concluded that the operation could only be justified on medical grounds, although the debate that followed condemned such deviations in gender identity as abominations.
6. Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, "Never Change Your Sex in Cairo," paper presented at the workshop on "Cases and Contexts in Islamic Law," December 3-4, 1994, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
7. Sakiha Yüksel, Cumhuriyet, February 13, 1988, p. 2.
8. An article titled "Butcher of Travestis" in the popular weekly Aktüel 202 (1995) revealed that some transsexuals were subjected to castration rather than vaginal reconstruction and that operations were performed under local anaesthesia in hurried and unhygienic conditions. The victims refer to themselves as duvar (literally meaning walls) and consider their sexuality as irreversibly blighted.
9. I was surprised, for instance, to be asked for back copies of Roses, a Manchester-based transsexual magazine, even though few could read or speak English.