08/08/2024 | Writer: Yıldız Tar
Approaches that see the issue as a "culture war" become a bulwark of oppression. Why should LGBTI+s playing sports, producing art, existing without having to hide themselves, not being persecuted, being free and equal be something specific to some cultures?
The opening of the Olympics and the controversy over the boxer Imane Khelif has led to the shedding of the scales of many names in Türkiye who claim to be libertarian, who say they are liberal. Thank God, we have suddenly returned to our factory settings, to being local and national.
It was not hard to predict that government-controlled media such as Anadolu Agency and Yeni Şafak would jump on these issues. However, what was surprising was that when we look at the general editorial line, the institutions that publish on the axis of fundamental rights and freedoms, with the exception of a few casualties related to LGBTI+ rights; journalists, academics and writers who claim to look at the world from the axis of freedoms, all messed up.
At the moment when actors outside the government succumbed to conspiracy theories instead of rights and freedoms, this time the Instagram ban came. The ruling media has already started answering the question of why Instagram was banned with reference to the Palestine issue, moving on to "terrorism" and then to LGBTI+'s. They do not neglect to say LGBTI+ somewhere in every text about the Instagram ban. Hüseyin Yayman, the head of the Parliament's Digital Media Commission, also complains about LGBTI+ people posting on Instagram. We will see what they have to say at the commission next week. More precisely, what they will put on the table to clean up their mess.
Narrative of imposition
When we read these consecutive developments together, everything leads us to "culture wars". It is claimed that culture wars are one dimension of the conflicts between the West and the Russian and Chinese blocs. Countries in the Middle East are another front in these wars. For those who read all developments from the perspective of countries trying to defeat each other in the cultural field, LGBTI+ rights are also a part of this conflict. The West is imposing LGBTI+. The rest of the world resists.
What a useful narrative, isn't it? There is no problem except the truth that being LGBTI+ is not something to be imposed, that sexual orientation and gender identity are part of the diversity of humanity and nature! Truth is a small obstacle that needs to be overcome, ignored and distorted in such narratives.
Let us recall the words of Russian President Vladimir Putin when he launched the invasion of Ukraine:
“They sought to destroy our traditional values and force on us their false values that would erode us, our people from within, the attitudes they have been aggressively imposing on their countries, attitudes that are directly leading to degradation and degeneration, because they are contrary to human nature.”
Two years have passed and we are still playing on the same playground set up by Putin. Russia's treatment of its own children, LGBTI+s, as if they were an ideology continues to be a source of inspiration (!) for countries in the region. Russia's approach, which criminalizes the existence of LGBTI+'s and seeking their rights by calling it "propaganda", has already led to the passage of anti-LGBTI+ laws in Georgia and Bulgaria with local and national condiments. It has not even been ten years since LGBTI+s were massacred in concentration camps in Chechnya. In Türkiye, there are draft laws that started with the Constitutional debate and are currently being held in the government lobbies.
While the elephants are bickering...
And the excuse used to legitimize this wave of oppression is anti-Westernism. The discourse of "the West will make us faggots" has been refined a bit and turned into a "desexualization project". The fact that the West is also regressing in LGBTI+ rights is the cream of this bitter coffee...
While formations such as the Big Family Platform, which includes large and small pro-Russia and pro-China actors who have become the government's lackeys after 2015 in Turkey, have mastered the politics of copy-paste hate, approaches that see the issue as a "culture war" become the bulwark of persecution. Why should LGBTI+s playing sports, producing art, existing without having to hide themselves, not being persecuted, being free and equal be something specific to certain cultures?
Elephants are bickering. As the cliché goes, the cards are reshuffled every day. However, the damage is done to us, to LGBTI+ persons. When we perceive people's desire to live with dignity, without being persecuted and the struggle for equality from the perspective of "culture wars", we are left with attention-seeking personalities who are unaware of history, the solidarity of humanity's struggle for freedom and equality that transcends borders, and that we have rights, even if only a little, thanks to this struggle...
Tags: human rights
