During his campaign, President Erdogan multiplied hate speech against sexual and gender minorities. While an unauthorized pride march is being held on Sunday June 25 in Istanbul, three women tell their fights and their fears to franceinfo.
Eda is 21 years old and has big hazel eyes with which she casts worried glances around her. Lesbian, she does not yet know if she will join the pride march organized in Istanbul on Sunday June 25. What worries him is not so much the police in charge of banning the gathering but rather the reactions of strangers in the street, at a time when homophobia has never been so encouraged at the highest level of the state.
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“I am more and more worried, says Eda. I don’t feel safe anywhere as an LGBT+ woman. As soon as I step outside, I feel like my life is in danger. It’s as if I was waging a daily struggle for my right to live, my right to exist. Yet that’s all I ask for: the right to exist. And that’s what we’re denied.”
LGBT+, a “poison” for Erdogan
In Turkey, a country with a large Muslim majority, homosexuality is not prohibited, but the situation of sexual minorities there is increasingly precarious and the official discourse is increasingly violent towards them. During his recent election campaign, President Erdogan called them “pervert”comparing them to the “plague” and to one “poison” for Turkish family.
Ilayda, a volunteer in an association for the defense of LGBT + rights, confirms that fear is increasing, including when it comes to denouncing violence. “Everyone who contacts us feels these concerns, she explains. They ask us: ‘And if the policeman who receives my complaint is homophobic? What if the judge is homophobic? What if the court-appointed lawyer is homophobic? What if I contact a lawyer and he refuses to defend me because of my sexual identity or orientation?’ Even among people who have not experienced violence, these concerns are increasingly common.”
Solidarity artists
In the last elections, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan formed an alliance with two small Islamist parties, one of the main demands of which is the total banning of LGBT+ associations. For Ezgi, a transgender woman, such a measure would only reinforce the isolation of people from the queer community: “Because I’m transgender, they don’t give me a job, they don’t rent me an apartment”.
“If it weren’t for the solidarity of my community, I would be on the street. A real estate agent said to me again recently: ‘I have apartments’, but not for you!'”
Ezgi, transgender womanat franceinfo
Turkish artists who show their solidarity are also ostracized. The town hall of Bursa, one of Turkey’s largest cities, recently canceled a concert by singer Melike Sahin. She dedicated a prize to women and LGBT+ people.