Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, this paper offers an account of transfeminine resistance in contemporary Turkey, focusing on its core demands and how it is continually shaped by the precarity surrounding transfeminine lives.

Paper long abstract

Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, this article offers an account of transfeminine resistance in Turkey as both historically rooted and dynamically enacted. Ethnographic research with a community of trans sex workers examines how resistance unfolds in everyday life and how it is continually shaped by the precarious conditions under which transfeminine people live. Archival research traces transfeminine struggles from the 1970s to the present, examining the relationship between lived experience and practices of resistance across decades. Together, these analyses demonstrate that transfeminine struggle has been fundamentally organized around securing the material conditions necessary for a livable life. While shared precarity—produced by intersecting forms of violence, spatial exclusion, policing, and economic marginalization—provides a basis for collective action, resistance under these conditions also entails heightened risks of harm. Resistance thus emerges as an urgent yet fragile terrain for transfeminine people, who are pushed to the furthest margins of social, political, and economic life in Turkey.