Tactical engagements: Queer anti-war politics between rights and refusal

Queer and liberal approaches to equality, peace, and justice are often conceived as distinct ethico-political positionings that engender mutually exclusive claims, tactics, and actions. This article argues that this distinction reflects a Western framework that emerges in a context where LGBTI+ individuals have acquired rights. In geotemporal settings where these rights have yet to be recognized, these positionings become entangled in the formation of political claims, tactics, and actions. The article demonstrates that gay and trans individuals and groups in Turkey seek creative ways to combine queer and liberal perspectives through their objections to war, the military, and conscription. These objections denounce the conditions of exemption and demand equal rights, while simultaneously refusing the prescribed roles that align them with the needs and imperatives of the military and war-making. This reading locates queer politics as an anticipatory perspective that is not in opposition to, but in dialogue with, LGBTI+ politics, despite the contradictions this framing entails. Only by recognizing the ambiguous, complex, and contradictory nature of claim-making and tactical manoeuvring can we acknowledge LGBTI+ individuals and groups in Turkey as political agents who do not simply mimic but negotiate Western liberal conceptions of rights, justice, and peace.