26/06/2024 | Writer: Kaos GL
Human Rights Association Headquarters issued a statement for Pride Month. In the statement, it was stated that the pressure against LGBTI+s increased during the process of withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention.
In the statement titled “Biz Aykırıya, Ayrıntıya, Ayrıksıya, Azınlığa Tutkunuz”[1] (We are passionate about the outlier, the detail, the discrete, the minority), it was mentioned that the government’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention after the Human Rights Action Plan announced by the Ministry of Justice in 2021, along with the increasing state pressure targeting LGBTI+ community and the rise in trans murders, highlight the growing threats to marginalized communities.
The full text of the statement is as follows:
“As the Human Rights Association, we are well aware that the established official ideology pursues discriminatory policies in many areas and that its practices are highly discriminatory. These discriminatory policies, which have long been going on, are often emphasized in the reports and statements of our association. The Republic of Turkey has prohibited discrimination both in its domestic law and in international conventions it has signed. Despite these prohibitions defined by law, no measures are taken either in Article 122 of the Turkish Penal Code or in practices related to the prohibition of discrimination as defined in Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. As no measures are taken on these issues, the established state policies operate in a highly discriminatory, marginalizing, and even targeting direction, especially in terms of LGBTI+ rights.
As Human Rights Association (İHD) we aim to reveal the impact of the Human Rights Action Plan (HRAP), which was implemented between 2021-2023, on LGBTI+ rights and the violations of rights faced by LGBTI+ people. The HRAP was announced to the public in March 2021 promising a major reform in the field of human rights within the framework of 11 basic principles, 9 aims, 50 goals, 393 activities. In March 2021, when the Action Plan was announced, Turkey withdrew from the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (hereinafter referred to as the Istanbul Convention)of which it was the first signatory, by Presidential Decree No. 3718 dated 19 March 2021. During the process of withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, the political power and its partners in power frequently made statements that the Istanbul Convention abolished the family and provided legal protection for same-sex marriages and sexual orientations. The exclusion and state oppression to which LGBTI+ persons have been subjected has increased unprecedentedly, especially during the withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, and LGBTI+ persons have been targeted as an object of collective hatred like never before with the participation and encouragement of the highest authorities of the state.
Although there are regulations on discrimination in Turkey’s domestic law, there is neither a direct prohibition of hate speech in the Constitution nor in the Turkish Penal Code (TPC). Although Article 216 of the TPC, entitled “Provoking the Public to Hatred, Hostility or Degrading” is considered to be an article that can be used in the context of hate speech, this article is actually an extremely inadequate regulation as it does not include ethnic origin, color, language, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity. Further, although Article 122 of the TPC titled ‘Hatred and Discrimination’ includes discrimination based on gender, this article does not include sexual orientation and gender identity.
The media coverage of transgender murders also opts to legitimize hate crimes and blame the victims. News reports, which are often presented by including the statements of the perpetrator to justify their actions, use a homophobic, transphobic language that is tabloid and homophobic towards the existence of the victim of the hate crime. The language created through the assigned identity information and the existence of the victim of hate crime normalizes discriminatory discourse by trivializing violence against transgender people and creates a basis for the perpetrator to legitimize their acts in public space.”
Tags: human rights
