04/12/2012 | Writer: Ali Erol

The speech I have given during the ceremony for 2013 David Kato Vision & Voice Award on 29th November at the Pan-African Parliament in the South African city of Johannesburg.

The speech I have given during the ceremony for 2013 David Kato Vision & Voice Award on 29th November at the Pan-African Parliament in the South African city of Johannesburg: 

Many thanks to the Steering Committee of the David Kato Vision & Voice Award for selecting me as its second recipient.
 
It has been 20 full years since I have met my lifelong companion, my fellow, my only love and my family Ali Özbaş in Ankara, at the corner of a park.
 
Twenty years ago when we said “Not only the heterosexuals but also we live in this society!”, what we did was merely claim our own lives and expand a free space for ourselves. In Turkey being gay was supposedly not a crime but the state ideology tried to treat gays as the “criminals without a crime”.
 
Founded on the denial of diversity, Turkish society was banning gays from life completely, stigmatizing them as “immoral”, “sick” and “perverted”. People imprisoned to dark cruising parks and a few abandoned baths did not have a means to express themselves. Heterosexist state ideology seized the self-respect and pride of people.
 
People had no one to depend on, look up to or struggle together with, even within their own families or in their social and political circles. In the middle of such a big loneliness, gays had this “Nothing’s ever going to change in this society!” disbelief, and they did not even claim their discreet lives.
 
We needed to do something. People who were never respected, never listened to by their families, teachers or friends, started to speak up. Our house turned into a meeting point and our conversations went on for weeks.
 
And then the question came up: “OK, we get together and share our problems but what next?” Then we said that we can take care of our very own problems. Words fly away, writings remain… So we started to write down our own sentences, stories and experiences and published our magazine called Kaos GL, as a photocopy at the beginning. Just like society did not trust in gays, gays did not trust in one another, neither! To end this bad luck, we worked so hard and published Turkey’s first gay magazine regularly every month.
As we came out and expressed ourselves, our gay beings have transformed the Turkish society. During our organization process, which started as informal home meetings and achieved being Turkey’s first registered LGBT association- we tried to make connections between different types of discrimination.
 
We worked hard to point at the connections between homophobia, transphobia, sexism, nationalism, racism and militarism and finally our struggle practices against homophobia and hatred went beyond the borders of Turkey and reached to the LGBTs in the Balkans, Caucasia and the Middle East. It is a great pleasure and honor to see that our ideal to strengthen one another and get liberated together was also the wish of others!
 
Of course we are aware! Homophobic hate aims to choke our voices and blockade our lives on a global scale by imprisoning us in invisibility. Against the denial policies, which carry homophobic hate all the way into violence by monopolizing religion and politics, we must establish local, regional and global networks of solidarity and empower each other in the fight against homophobia and hate. Only such an insistent work will stop the hatred spiral which took David away from us.
 
20 years ago when we made our very first steps in Ankara, we were sure of these two things: Liberation of homosexuals will also free heterosexuals! And undoubtedly, if no struggle, then no freedom!
 
The David Kato Vision and Voice Award that I am proudly receiving will make me stronger and give me more courage in improving our struggle and politics in continuing for the cause of liberation of all of us.
 
I dedicate this Award to the millions of silent LGBTI voices around the world who are confronting hatred and persecution.

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