Civil" wing of the Turkish Military Services in the context of collective memory: Wives of military officers

On the basis of deep interviews with married women to male military officers and non-commisioned officers, the present thesis has opened gender regime hierarchies up for discussion. The thesis is based upon the question "has a hegemonic femininity case corresponding to Connell's hegemonic masculinity concept in the collective memory been fictionalized?" The present study claims that the women who involve in the memory of a total institution like an army through their husbands ranks can produce a hegemonic femininity case. The women married to soldiers transform their daily life practices in the collective memory by creating a power domain which is the projection of the men's ranks and they produce empowerment and suppressing strategies which are dependent on their husbands' ranks and which are not independent of men's hegemonic domain. In the study, it was found out that there is no hegemonic femininity case in the sense which Connell attributes to the concept of hegemonic masculinity concept. The present thesis defines the relevant femininity case as the mutual hegemonic femininity. It was concluded that mutual hegemonic femininity empowers male-dominant society by turning into a mechanism which empowers the spire of masculine domination.