Cold War masculinities in Turkish literature

The military intervention of 12 March 1971 traumatized 1968 radicalism in Turkey “radically”. March 12 novels offer testimonies of the period disguised in imaginative stories about the sufferings and anxieties of individuals in 1970s Turkey. My hypothesis is that the March 12 novel is not simply a fallout from the military intervention but a complex mixture of sexual-social-political critique with a testimonial historiography of the events surrounding 12 March 1971. I argue that these novels carry out a critique of hypermasculinity, using excessive masculinity as a metaphor for the abuse of power that permeated the society. This aspect of the March 12 novel did not figure prominently in its reception in Turkey. What we have in March 12 novels is an image of manhood that is unquestionably impaired. This image links the questioning in the novels of corrupt state politics to the questioning of corrupt gender politics and the crises of 1968 radicalism to crises of gender. The March 12 novel critically examines the roots of the hunger for power and challengingly argues that the problem about recurring military regimes in Turkey is incorrectly conceived as the military question while the real problem is the tendency of people to go with power.