Female Sex Workers Appearence in the Turkish Cinema After 1980

In Turkish cinema the prostitutes had generally been screened as “backsliders” until the 1980’s. The narratives of these films were also sexist and conservative. Especially these women, who were mostly shown at night clubs, had artificial and exaggerated gestures and laughs. But the problems of how prostitution was perceived by the community and the dilemmas concerning the body politics of the patriarchal system were not questioned. In the period that we call the post-1980, especially with the appearance of women’s films, female sex workers have been portrayed through a gender perspective in the Turkish cinema. This study focuses on how prostitutes in the Turkish cinema are represented in the post-80 period and aims to demonstrate its similarities and differences with the previous period. This article focuses on some of the films in which enslavement of female sex workers are depicted as lovers, mothers, or foreigners, but yet scrutinised the notion of freedom, even at the slightest. On the other hand, the representations of the parties who are the agents of the sex trade (the state, the dealer, the exploiter of the woman body) are questioned in the article. This study is in the search of presenting a periodic assessment including the years of 1980-2008.