The LGBT+ population in Turkey is facing a dire situation, Pink News reported on Tuesday.
Abuse and restrictions against the community in Turkey are increasing, led by prominent public officials, Pink News said.
The website drew attention to comments last year by Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, who labelled students at an Istanbul university “LGBT+ perverts”. His comments earned a reprimand from Twitter, which flagged them for hateful content.
In September last year, a traveller was told by the Lujo Hotel in Bodrum, a resort town on Turkey’s southwestern coast, that a booking for two men to stay in the same room was not allowed. Fabien Azoulay, 43, a French Jewish gay man was harassed, beaten and burned with boiling water in a Turkish jail before being released in August.
It was not always like this in Turkey – back in 2012 a newspaper was punished with a 4,000 lira fine for described LGBT+ people as perverts. In 2014, Turkey’s top court ruled that such terminology amounted to hate speech. Still, the situation in Turkey was already growing increasingly bleak, the news website said.
The government cracked down hard on protestors demonstrating across the country against its rule in 2013. A failed military coup in 2016 led to purges and a state of emergency being declared.
Increasing restrictions on civil liberties led to Istanbul Pride being banned in June 2015. In 2016 and 2017, it was outlawed again, with police intervening against protesters violently.
The capital city of Ankara banned all LGBT+ or LGBT+ rights related events in 2017. The 27th annual Istanbul Pride was banned in 2019, as was the 7th Izmir Pride, the 3rd Antalya Pride and the 5th Mersin Pride Week, Pink News said.
“I wasn’t so surprised when I heard. I have participated in gay pride in Istanbul since 2009. The atmosphere was always really peaceful but, in the last years, it became a tour de force of the police,” said Idil, 25, who lives in a small city in southern Turkey. “Brutal attacks have already given a clue about what we were going to experience. I think that this is just a start.”
The U.S. State Department has strongly condemned anti-LGBTQI rhetoric in Turkey, saying freedom of expression was “a critical component of a vibrant, functioning democracy that must be protected”.
Pink News said it would continue to monitor and write about the situation in Turkey as it developed. It cast doubt on whether such statements in support of the community in Turkey would have any perceivable impact on the ongoing crackdown.
Ahval