Examining HIV in Turkey as a biopolicy field

The human body is as social as it is individual, and this sociability can express that the body is not independent of power relations, cultural productions, and cultural discourses. However, it is important to question, scrutinize, and research how the body is controlled, disciplined, and tried to be made appropriate or acceptable in the context of social or power relations. Subjects who are forced to act in the context of power relations in society can enter a body clamp through their bodies through biopower. In the context of this biopower clamp and power relations, some social groups that hold power in society, which we can also define as the majority, can be formed. Social groups or subjects other than those who are members of the social group holding the power can be subjected to marginalization, stigmatization, or deprivation of rights by the group or subjects, which we can also define as the majority. For this reason, it may be sufficient for them to be excluded from powerful subjects or social groups. The aim of this research is to leave the definition of "healthy body", which covers the majority, at this point and include subjects diagnosed with HIV who have a "health problem". This research, which examines the power relations of the diagnosed subjects in society as well as the bodies that have been clamped, abused, marginalized, and stigmatized by biopower, was conducted using the ethnomethodological research method in conjunction with the subjects' own discourses. This research, which includes both the social interpretation of numerical data and research done in the field, has shown how people with HIV live their daily lives, how they see their place in society, and how they feel about their bodies, all of which are ignored by sociology. This thesis, which consists of interviews with a total of 25 individuals and theoretical readings conducted concurrently with these interviews, reveals the link between being diagnosed with stigma and HIV/AIDS, which is widely believed to be true but is actually false.