Kaos GL Magazine Asks ‘From Where to Where?’

 

 

Actually we exactly looked for the counterpart of this “from where to where” in our 125th issue on “migration and refuge”… During the call for participation to this issue, we said: “From the struggle in big cities due to having no way to live in a small town to the nostalgia of the lost and not being able to leave completely… From the fear of death to being enforced to live in a different country; our ways of having no country… From the train journeys of LGBT refugees starting from Iran to the stops in Turkey to “wait for feeling secure”… From worker’s migration and and “cheap workers” to “ignorant Turks” and finally evolved “terrorist Muslim” identity… From integration to assimilation… We are asking: Are the asylums and new living areas really freer? Here we are with a good collection:

 

Ayşe Parla reminding us of Festus Okey killed in Beyoğlu Police Station in 2007; Cavidan Soykan claiming “borders to define our life, language, beliefs and who we are”; Hande Öğüt showing to look at trans identities as a way of immigration and search for a community; Hayrettin Özen interviewing with the authors of “What Has Changed?”, a book conveying the experiences of Kurdish women who were forced to move; İmge Oranlı collecting three conversations from two scholars from Germany on Islamophobia and homophobia, Turkish activists organized around immigration and assimilation in Germany and the Swedish who say “No one is Illegal!”; Levent Şentürk telling about the immigration from inside out; Murat Çınar asking “What do Human and Europe Want?”; Nalan Özdemir mentioning the countries where refugee rights are being violated; Nevruz Aksu sharing priceless knowledge about the daily lives of lesbians; Osman Bulugil mapping immigration in soccer; Özge Arslan pushing the limits of social services to the LGBT refugees’ needs; Philip Eicker compiling the words of Ulaş Yılmaz regarding the homogenous perception in Germans’ minds; Poyraz Şahin telling about “the youngsters drowned in the calm sea of Europe” and Şenay Özden interviewing Umm – one of the residents of “the biggest Palestinian village out of Palestine” in Syria… Countless guests and stories in this issue edited by İmge Oranlı.

 

Out of the topic, this issue also covers Cenk Erdem following Madonna’s heart traces in İstanbul; Cihan Erdal conveying huge collection on queer from theory to literature, to cinema and to contemporary art practices and Hakan Bilge with his unique article on “testing Hollywood with homosexuality”...

 

Paintings that magnify the meaning of the articles are handcrafts by Gülçin Aksoy on the cover and the topic cover; and Serpil Odabaşı crowns UMUM.

 

126th issue is on the way… Wish to meet you again for our September-Ocotober issue “Bodily Resistance against Stigmatizing from Illness to Ideology”. For written and visual works to be submitted, the due date is 5 August!

 

To subscribe to Kaos GL Magazine: abone@kaosgl.org