The Role of Homeland Concept as a desideratum in the Construction of Tanzimat Era’s Masculinity

This study explores masculinity and the ideology of nationalism during the Tanzimat era. I analyze Namık Kemal’s literary piece, Vatan yahut Silistre, by contextualizing it within the Tanzimat period of Turkish literature. Pursuing Deleuzien analysis of desire, as a simultaneous production of the desire and the object of the desire, I explore masculinity as an object of desire which is deemed as a part of homeland. I also underline the importance of the homeland, as the very determining concept for society’s masculinist hierarchy. Using the methodological tools of textual analysis, I show mutually constitutive characteristics of the relationship between nationalism as a power discourse and gender. By this, I emphasize the gender dimension of nationalism, which exists at irritating levels with its racist reflections in contemporary discourses.