Solidarity of Human Brothers and Sisters

Just imagine a table, and a table in Turkey for that matter, around which a Palestinian and an Israeli; a Turk and an Armenian; a Serbian and a Bosnia-Herzegovinian; an Iranian and an Egyptian are having a joyful discussion, addressing common problems and building bridges of solidarity; what would you think?

No, don’t just assume that the New Ottoman dream of Davutoğlu has come true. Last week, Ankara hosted a meeting which he could never dream of. He hasn’t even heard of that, most probably. Even if he has, he wouldn’t dare leave “the election arenas where foul-mouthed men fight” and join the meeting, not even for personal advantage.

There’s more! In addition to the participants listed above, Georgia, Lebanon, Macedonia, Montenegro and Greece were also seated around the same table.

Even though their states had been at daggers drawn for more than a century, people living within their borders ate at the same dinner table and had a heart-to-heart, sitting right next to each other.

The meeting embodied the evidence that such historical inter-governmental feuds might just carry no value in the eyes of their peoples. Furthermore, they came together to discuss how nationalism caused great distress to the world, to the people.

They voiced their shared views on how nationalism generated a hostile and vengeful culture that concealed the real problems of people, and how it set human brothers and sisters against each other in what has become a knife fight. Human brotherhood and sisterhood...

They saw how the powers that be pulled apart the ties of brotherhood and sisterhood grown from the root of merely being human only to maintain and regenerate their power and how these powers pursued no other aim but to secure their own governing status while pointing fingers at others.

And who were they? They were human brothers and sisters.

Within the scope of the International Meeting against Homophobia, organized this year under the leadership of Kaos GL for the sixth time, they gathered together for the initiative to establish a regional network among LGBTT organizations.

Homophobia means fear, with a tint of aversion, of all types of sexual orientation other than heterosexuality. This term defines the range of emotions experienced, when faced with a different type of sexuality, by those that assume sexuality to be an ‘intercourse’ that necessarily takes place between a woman and a man.

Due to reasons related to one’s upbringing, learning and education conditions, this is a situation potentially experienced by most people witnessing sexualities other than heterosexuality for the first time. Yet it is not that simple. The more determinant factor here is what people do after getting over that initial confusion.

Homophobia is one of the most commonly used tools by nationalists, racists and religious fanatics to set peoples against each other and against themselves.

As all authoritarian and totalitarian regimes uplift penis worshipping and masculinity and build their power on masculinity, they perceive sexualities outside the scope of heterosexuality as natural enemies of their power.

Since Hitler fascism, all types of authoritarian/totalitarian regimes have set off their pursuit of securing their power firstly by putting pressure on homosexuals. Even during the 1980 coup d’état, the military and police set to work by picking up homosexuals in Istanbul and taking them out of town. A similar strategy is pursued by the current government by its constant mention of “the family” and “three children”.

The Meeting on the Establishment of the Regional Network demonstrated once more how common current problems are. As human brothers and sisters, everyone saw how oppression did not differentiate between Kurds, Turks, Armenians, Greeks, Serbs or Bosnians.

The same is to be wished upon the other oppressed groups living in this geography to discover their common ground and find ways to come together.

 

Translated from Turkish by Gökçe Katkıcı

 

 

For its Turkish version:
http://www.kaosgl.org/icerik/insan_kardeslerin_dayanismasi

For BirGün newspaper:
http://birgun.net/writer_index.php?category_code=1187091205&news_code=1306151452