TURKEY

Turkey's economic crisis has become a masculine crisis in the most direct way possible. The lira's collapse means that Turkish men who were middle-class five years ago are now poor — their savings worth a fraction of their former value, their ability to provide eroded month by month. The provider identity is central to Turkish masculinity — a man who can't feed his family has failed at the most basic masculine mandate — and the economic situation has made millions of Turkish men feel like failures through no fault of their own. The suicide rate among men under 30 has increased significantly, though the government avoids publicizing exact figures.

The namus (honor) system creates a specifically Turkish masculine pressure: men are expected to be the guardians of female family members' sexual honor, and failures in this guardianship can trigger violence. But namus policing also traps men — the enforcer of honor is also its prisoner, unable to express any emotion that might be perceived as weakness by the family or community he's obligated to protect. Kurdish men in the southeast carry an additional burden: decades of military operations, village evacuations, and the criminalization of Kurdish identity have created a population of traumatized men whose struggle is officially denied by the state. Mandatory military service — which may involve deployment to Kurdish conflict zones — means Turkish men might be ordered to fight against communities that include their own ethnic kin.