Paper short abstract:

In this presentation, I will share a series of images from Turkish newspapers (1985-2002) and discuss how the media, politicians, and doctors invented the Turkish patient-zero whose dead body was washed with bleach before he was wrapped in plastic bags and encased in concrete.

Paper long abstract:

“Representation,” writes Stuart Hall (1982, 64), “is a very different notion from that of reflection. It implies the active work of selecting and presenting, of structuring and shaping: not merely the transmitting of already-existing meaning, but the more active labor of making things mean.” This explains how the media representation, especially the printed press, has played an enormous role in the making of HIV/AIDS epidemic. This is particularly true in a country such as Turkey where government’s strategic ignorance and the manufactured silence made sure that the public turned to the press to be informed about HIV announced to be “the plague of the era.” There are no oral histories, no books, no articles, or no exhibitions that would help create an archive of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Turkey. There are, nevertheless, a plethora of newspaper articles and images through which we can uncover the not-so-scientific meanings attributed to HIV and write the history of Turkish HIV epidemic, while creating a “simulacrum” of an archive. This presentation will focus on the nationalist, heteronormative, sexist, and xenophobic representations of HIV/AIDS which took their power and authority from blaming the epidemic on a wide range of others, varying from Western queers to Eastern European prostitutes to tourists. In this presentation, I will share a series of images from Turkish newspapers (1985-2002) and discuss how the media, politicians, and doctors (1) invented the Turkish patient-zero whose dead body was washed with bleach before he was wrapped in plastic bags and encased in concrete; (2) put the responsibility of the epidemic on the shoulders of Eastern European sex workers and women tourists, who were likened to “ticking bombs ready to explode” and “a danger larger than the Chernobyl explosion”; (3) and, used the HIV epidemic to construct and strengthen the figure of “virtuous Turkish women” whose code of honor was deemed sufficient to protect Turkey from HIV.