Gendering Political Power: Performing and Resisting Sovereign Masculinity This paper analyzes political power in Turkey through the analytical lenses of body and masculinity. Examining President Erdogan’s masculine statesman persona that is expressed through his bodily comportment, affective presentation, and language use, and projected through propaganda, masculinity is revealed to be a resonant cultural repertoire for the performance of political power. While President Erdogan’s incessant comments regarding women’s bodies such as his repeated calls for at least three children or condemnation of caesarian births do attract critical attention, Erdogan’s own embodiment of masculinity as a statesman is largely ignored. Actually, Erdoğan’s gendered political persona, a synthesis of Islamist and urban, tough masculinities, has been one of the main pedestals of his political charisma and career. Erdogan’s continuous insistence on passing judgment on and aspiring to control over women’s sexual and reproductive behavior is a central part of Erdogan’s performance of sovereign masculinity. This paper also posits that Erdogan’s masculinity is central to not only his exercise of political power, but also to the resistance against it. Discourse analysis of both feminist and popular masculinist opposition to Erdogan demonstrates that political opposition to Erdogan is articulated in gendered terms targeting his masculine sovereignty. Whether through feminist slogans that “divorce” the president and ask him to take his hands off of women’s bodies or through heterosexists swearwords that question his impenetrability, political opposition challenges Erdogan in terms of his masculinity.