31/01/2024 | Writer: Tuğçe Yılmaz
The gun that rulers have kept for centuries is now pointed at Turkey’s most vulnerable groups: women, LGBTI+ people and stray dogs.
The term “ally” generally refers to someone who supports the rights of a group of people. And it is used for heterosexual and cisgender person who supports equal civil rights, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ social movements within the frame of LGBTI+ (referring to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and other gender diversities) terminology.
This support can take many forms, including raising awareness of sexual orientation and gender identity diversity, standing against discrimination, homophobia and transphobia, supporting LGBTI+ people for equal rights and opportunities, and empowering them and making life easier for LGBTI+ people.
Every day, allies of LGBTI+ people around the world are trying to find and develop different methods and tools to increase their solidarity with LGBTI+ people against the dominant right-wing populist movements and politicians. Unlike in Turkey.
The allies of LGBTI+ people in Turkey, who not so long ago, eight or nine years ago, appeared in every field and at every meeting, are now lapsed into a kind of secret silence. This, of course, has a lot to do with the attacks on the Turkish left, on women and on the Kurdish political movement. But this silence, or putting this problem on ice in order to solve it later with clichéd arguments (we will solve the women’s problem after the revolution), makes LGBTI+ people more and more isolated and vulnerable to attacks.
Yeniden Refah Partisi (New Welfare Party)
Two months left for the local elections planned to be held on Sunday, March 31, 2024. The parties, which took part in the People’s Alliance in the general elections of May 14, 2023, started their election campaigns very quickly. One of the main pillars of these parties’ election campaigns is LGBTI+ hostility. The New Welfare Party (YRP), which is a classic case of “coming events cast their shadows before”, is taking the lead in this process.
One of the conditions for the YRP to join and be included in the People’s Alliance was the abolition of Law No. 6284 (Law on the Protection of the Family and Prevention of Violence against Women). Another article in the 30-point text presented by the YRP for inclusion in the People’s Alliance was:
“Revision of Law 6251 and prevention of perversions.”
In line with this policy, the YRP announced that one of its local election promises was to “eliminate LGBTI+ people from the city”. “If there is no morality, there is LGBT! We will eliminate perverted organizations from our city!” the party said in a video, adding the enmity of the “stray dog” to its hostility towards women and LGBTI+ in order to find new allies. As a result, another of the party’s pledges was to ban dogs that live on the streets from the city and put them in animal shelters.
“We will not give them the right to live in this land”
The YRP is not alone in producing these discourses and policies. Announcing his party’s strategy for the local elections, Mustafa Destici, leader of the Grand Unity Party (BBP), said: “We will find the same solution for stray dogs as Atatürk did. If our people hand over the municipality of any city, district or town to us, no one will see a stray dog there a month after we take over the municipality. In a statement he made about LGBTI+ people after the parliamentary elections, Destici said with almost the same attitude: “We will not give them the right to live in this land.”
In terms of hostility towards women, LGBTI+ and animals, the other components of the People’s Alliance are in the same league.
The main problem is the silence and lack of policies of the opposition parties in the face of this deep discrimination and dehumanization. Let’s not forget that during the general elections, no opposition party spoke out against those who targeted LGBTI+ people from the highest positions and they continued with discriminatory discourses.
Ankara, İstanbul, İzmir
In his speech in Mersin, Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş gave a report card to the People’s Alliance and said:
“Minister of Interior has been telling fantasia stories for a while such as ‘If they are elected same sex marriage and human-animal marriage will be in force.’ His fantasia are really amazing! That’s why he doesn’t prefer us to be elected. A great number of LGBT associations had been established in Turkey since 2002. Exact number is 14. Seven of them were established under Soylu’s administration. LGBT hotel was opened. And the most remarkable one is the permission given for Muslim Homosexuals Association. That is the way it goes.”
On September 17, 2023, a hate rally called “Great Family Meeting” was organized in Istanbul’s Saraçhane Park, 500 meters away from the office of Istanbul Metropolitan Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu. İmamoğlu kept silent about this hate rally organized in the city he governs and attended the Ulugazi Grease Wrestling Festival held in Maltepe at the same time. Let’s go back in time. Imamoğlu did not make a single statement about the arrest of more than 300 LGBTI+ and their allies, including children, during the 2022 Istanbul Pride March, claiming to be the president of 16 million citizens living in Istanbul.
Regarding the march, only Izmir Metropolitan Mayor Tunç Soyer participated in the “Great Life Meeting” hosted by Kaos GL Editor-in-Chief Yıldız Tar and said, “This climate of hate speech and fear is not acceptable for our LGBTI+ citizens.”
Kurdish political movement
The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), now known as the People’s Equality and Democracy Party (HEDEP) or DEM Party by its new official acronym, a continuation of the Kurdish parties that are constantly closed and threatened with closure, has fallen far short of the promises it made in its 2015 declaration on LGBTI+ rights.
In its 2015 election declaration, the party had said: “All legal legislation will be comprehensively regulated with the principle of accepting LGBTI+s as equal citizens and protecting them against attacks, and social policies that will eliminate social inequalities will be implemented.” The party did not even say “LGBTI+” in its new by-law. LGBTI+ has been coded as a kind of difference and included in the by-law of the new party as “equality of differences in gender identity and sexual orientation.”
So, back to what I was saying… Ally. In the aftermath of the 7 October Palestinian-Israeli war, we witnessed solidarity protests in many parts of the world, where we once again saw the importance of intersectionality and solidarity. Thanks to this solidarity, we were able to hear the voices of the most vulnerable groups who were the first to be discarded and abused in the war: women, children and LGBTI+ people.
The gun that rulers have kept for centuries is now pointed at Turkey’s most vulnerable groups: women, LGBTI+ people and stray dogs. Unfortunately, in the near future, there will be no other way out for these groups than to stand in solidarity with them.
Landmines
With the solidarity during the process of withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, just as we were able to familiarize ourselves with the details of the Convention – such as the fact that a woman or an LGBTI+ can file a complaint against her partner without having to answer the detailed questions of the police if she is subjected to violence by her partner without having to be married – and we were able to protect the Convention more, we can now do the same for LGBTI+ people.
One of the responsibilities of local governments, especially in areas such as education, health, employment and housing, is to involve everyone in the city, district or town they seek to govern. During the general election process, İlhan Cihaner, former chief prosecutor and former deputy of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), made one of the most accurate analyses when he said that the government had pitted LGBTI+ people against the institution of the family, creating a new landmine around the opposition. It is not difficult for the opposition, which has been unable to speak out for almost nine years because of the attacks and has been trying to fit into the bag that the government has sewn for it, to tear the bag and throw it aside. As long as they have something to say and believe that they can blow up these mines one by one.
Protecting the rights of LGBTI+ people who work in precarious jobs - most of the time they cannot even work in them - whose lives are becoming more difficult every day due to the economic crisis, who cannot find shelter and cannot access health services, is an important duty and a legal obligation for all those who aspire to local governments. All the more so when the feeling of not being loved and not being wanted is so dominant in the hearts of LGBTI+s.
Translation: Selma Koçak
* This article has been produced with the financial support of the European Union as part of the SAHNE project implemented by the European Foundation for Europe in Turkey. Its content is under the sole responsibility of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
Tags: human rights, life, education, family, health
