Knocking at Europe's door yet on the threshold of Asia,
Turkey is truly a land of contrasts. Here you can scale
the icy heights of remote Mount Ararat in search of
Noah's Ark, cross the historic Euphrates and Tigris
rivers, follow in the footsteps of St Paul or simply
relax on the golden Mediterranean sands of Patara beach.
Vibrant Istanbul, straddling the blue waters of the
Bosphorus separating Europe from Asia, beckons with its
skyline pierced by countless minarets, chaotic bazaars
and a history redolent with harem intrigue and despotic
Sultans.
In Turkey, you can also cruise along more than a
thousand kilometers of Mediterranean coastline, past
secluded coves, rocky headlands and pretty fishing
villages, or explore a hinterland rich in the
wonderfully preserved remains of Graeco-Roman cities
such as Ephesus. For the adventurous, the austere beauty
of the Anatolian plateau, the surreal rock-chimney
landscape of Cappadocia and the atmospheric ruins of the
enigmatic Hittites await discovery. Here, too, is the
unique experience of watching the dervishes whirl in
pious Konya.
With a code of hospitality nurtured by their Islamic
beliefs yet with a remarkable tolerance of other
customs, the Turks offer a warm welcome wherever you
travel - be it sipping sweet black tea or thick coffee
with friendly villagers or sharing a bottle of raki over
mezes (hors d'oeuvres) with cosmopolitan Istanbul 'city
slickers'.
Understanding Turkish Gay Culture
For the gay people who have not visited Turkey before,
the first step should be getting familiar with the gay
culture. The gay culture of Turkey is fairly different
than western countries, as is the case with the general
Turkish culture. Being situated at the intersection of
Europe and Asia geographically, Turkey was influenced by
both the Eastern and the Western civilizations. Turkey
is the only Muslim country in the world where
homosexuality is not illegal since the republic was
founded in 1923. There has not been any significant
political pressure on homosexuality during Ottoman
Empire period also. This makes Turkish gay life unique
in the world. This unique gay culture might be favorable
or aversive depending on expectations, but one thing is
for sure: It is very vivacious and very colorful.
It needs to be emphasized here that there is already a
misunderstanding about Turkish culture in the western
countries. Surprisingly, some people still think of
Turkey as a very typical and traditional Middle-Eastern
country and the religion is dominating
everything. In reality, Turkey is a fairly secular
country and has got a special culture of her own.
To understand the origins of gay culture in Turkey,
let's analyze two Turkish words: "ibne" and "oglan".
Actually, both words literally mean "boy" although they
are now being used as expressions of insult. "Ibne" is
originally exported from Arabic and it is being used
with a meaning very close to "fag" in contemporary
Turkish. Although "oglan" means exactly "boy" in formal
Turkish, it is often being used to mean something like
"gay" or "homo" in slang language. Their present
meanings got a historical background. As we know, a boy
is not a man, not hairy, without beard, has a
high-pitched voice, a smooth skin etc... As you can
easily notice, these are all characteristics of female
gender. It is usually expounded that, especially at
times when religion was stronger, a (gay) boy could
easily be a good substitution of a woman in man-to-man
environments (such as bath houses). So it was actually
pederasty culture rather than homosexuality. This might
be a key to understand the remains of the history in
modern Turkish gay culture.
Until just a few decades ago, the dominating life style for the gay people
living in Turkey was based on active-passive
relationships between two groups of people. The "active"
ones are called "kulampara" or "oglanci" both meaning
something like pederast but not necessarily older in age
than their partners and they would not even like to be
called "gay" and are probably bisexuals at varying
degrees. It is still a very possible that the
first questions you hear when you meet someone in a
cruising spot will be "Are you passive or active
(bottom or top)"?. The gay culture of Turkey, especially
Istanbul gat much more Europeanized since early 1990's.
Naturally there is also a big transgender culture in
Turkey, who are actually more visible than the gay and
lesbian people in metropolitan cities..
Development of Turkish Gay Life in Recent Years
Generations in Turkey grew up with the fabulous voice
and around 200 compositions of the classical Turkish
music performer
Zeki Muren, who dared to sing with a
man's body in women's clothes and make-up in 1950's
Turkey. Turks called their first Golden Record awarded
artist "the sun of art', never openly referring to him
as ‘gay' but rather as ‘extraordinary.' Muren was not
the only one with different sexual tendencies and was
followed by
Bulent Ersoy, whose approved talent in the
same art competed from time to time with her transsexual
identity.
The children of the country grew up unaware of the
existence of gays and lesbians, but they were condemned
by their parents - who rarely talk about sex- for not
enjoying Ersoy or Muren's calascal Turkish music. Just until the
development of Turkey's own gay-lesbian-transgender
movement, ‘extraordinary' sexual tendencies continued to
be lived behind four walls, as reflected in Ersoy's
choice to call the ban on her for taking stage because
of her transsexual identity after 1980 military coup as
‘the internal affairs of our country', in an interview
abroad.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement in
Turkey accelerated by the 1990s. Today, it has reached
to a level that gay and lesbian university students can
apply for an official student club. The movement itself
prefers to use the abbreviation LGBT, referring to
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender; instead of
‘homosexual', due to its negative connotation as a
disease rather than a sexual tendency.
Although Turkey's LGBT activists generally emphasize
that it is the patriarchal system behind sexual
discrimination, which is found worldwide, they mainly
acknowledge that Turkey stands at the beginning of the
road to gain LGBT rights, with a need to fight more
strongly against sexual discrimination than their
counterparts in the West. According to Turkish LGBT
people the way is more open in the struggle against
homophobia in the West and making society more
conscious, as they have gained legal rights. They
acknowledge the laws are important to transform the
society but the laws alone cannot eliminate homophobia.
They think it is more critical to break the prejudices
of the society.
Turkish LGBT organizations.
At the beginning of the 1990s, two local LGBT
organizations were founded:
Lambda Istanbul in Istanbul
in 1993 and
Kaos GL in the capital, Ankara in 1994. From
the beginning, these organizations worked to effect
changes not only in their immediate social environments
by organizing activities, publishing manifestos and LGBT
related information, but also in society at large
through their interactions with lawmakers and experts
from various fields.
Lambda Istanbul first came together
to organize the Gays Pride Week in Turkey in 1993. Not
giving up, the volunteers continued to meet for 9 years
and became officially registered last year. The aim of
Lambda Istanbul is to provide more visibility for LGBTs.
“You are neither alone, nor wrong,” is the slogan of the
organization.
Kaos GL, one among several LGBT organizations in Turkey,
publicized its struggle against homophobia in 1994 with
Turkey's first and only gay-lesbian magazine Kaos GL.
The organization stands out with its legal struggle for
LGBT rights. From opposing sexually discriminating court
decisions to proposing to add ‘discrimination of sexual
tendency' next to ‘gender discrimination' in the
criminal code, Kaos GL struggles
to prevent hate crimes against LGBT people. Starting its life through a photocopy machine,
Kaos GL
magazine has continued to survive since then years as a
ground for Turkey's LGBT's to say their own words.
“Those 16 pages, copied in a photocopy machine will be
remembered as a turning point in the lives of those
women and men, who will take a shelter under the love of
their own gender and stand with this love even a hundred
years later,” current columnist in daily Radikal
Yıldırım Turker wrote about Kaos GL magazine in the 66th
issue of the magazine Express in 1995.
After mid 2000's several other local gay,
lesbian and transgender organizations and groups emerged
in Turkey such as
Siyah Pembe Ucken in Izmir which was
formed by local LGBT people in Izmir and
Pembe Hayat
(Pink Life) in Ankara which is specifically fighting for
by transvestite and transsexuals rights. In Istanbul
another LGBT group was formed by people separated from
Lambda in 2007 and named themselves
Istanbul LGBTI. In
2011 a third LGBT organization called
SpoD was founded
in Istanbul. After 2010 many new LGBT groups and
organizations was formed in comparatively smaller cities
such as Adana, Diyarbakir, Malatya, Mersin, Kocaeli,
Trabzon etc. Many LGBT student groups was also
established in major Turkish universities some of which
were even officially recognized by the university
administrations. As of 2015 there are about 50 different
active LGBT solidarity groups in Turkey. You can see a
complete list of these groups with their websiteand
Facebook links
on our Turkish webpage
Turkish Transsexuals and Transvestites: No choice but
prostitution!
Transsexuals and transvestites feel the oppression much
more than gays, lesbians and bisexuals since they are
more visible. They are mostly not aware of the rights they
have, leading to a high degree of abuse and
discrimination. The struggle of transvestites and
transsexuals focusing on legal issues and the right to
work is now a main concern. The oppression from police
forces is overwhelming according to LGBT activists. They
sometimes raid homes of transvestites and transsexuals
on grounds of prostitution. Having more transgender
administrators and members.
Pembe Hayat in Ankara and
Istanbul LGBTI are focused on transgender
issues more than other LGBT associations.
Turkish Lesbians - Double discrimination against lesbian
women:
Gender roles make things more complicated for lesbians.
Women are already regarded as pretty much nonexistent,
but it is a double discrimination for lesbians. Gay
women have different problems and they took the back
seat in the LGBT struggle in comparison to male gays.
The pervasive prejudice within Turkish society puts
lesbians under a great deal of pressure. It is very
difficult for a lesbian, especially a young lesbian, to
‘come out’ to herself or to her family or friends. Each
lesbian has to find her own way, without the help of a
visible lesbian community or any sort of support
organizations. Forced marriages are very common,
especially in rural areas, and girls are brought up to
believe that there are no alternatives to heterosexual
marriage. In big cities, the incidence of forced
marriage is not as high, but younger lesbians are
frequently sent to psychologists to be ‘cured’
Lesbians who have managed to live independently have a
difficult time reaching other lesbians. The Sisters of
Venus, the first lesbian group in Turkey, began meeting
in July 1994. This group began with three lesbians; it
has grown to over 20 women, and the membership continues
to increase as more women learn of the group’s
existence. While the group is not yet strong enough to
be a political pressure, it is nonetheless able to offer
support to lesbians.
Queer Subjectivity and Mass Media in Modern Turkey
Discourses determine and reflect approaches to
homosexuality in modern Turkey, too. Just as other
monotheist religions such as Christianity and Judaism;
Islam also has injunctions against same sex desire.
Turkish collective family structure in traditional
families also discourage non-heterosexual orientations.
As such, homosexuality is viewed in general as a sin and
an aberration. In addition, it is common knowledge in
the queer community that when parents find out that
their children are lesbian or gay, psychotherapy is
usually their first recourse, which shows how much
medical view of homosexuality as a disorder is accepted
in the family. As for civic and legal positioning of
homosexuality, there is no statute that condemns or
outlaws it. However, parallel to social denial and/or
condemnation of homosexuality , there are no
anti-discriminatory laws that protect the rights of LGBT
people. In addition, being an out LGBT individual is
viewed as adequate grounds for dismissal from the
Turkish army and other civic service, and the local law
enforcement officials have also been known to be slow or
completely inept in handling violations of LGBT rights
and gay bashings.
Effects of Mass media on Homosexuality in Turkey.
An average, typical Turkish family's first encounter
with queerness is usually through Turkish mass media.
Media coverage of queerness usually takes two forms: 1)
sensational headline news about the fights between the
police and a group of people indiscriminately called
“transvestites” by the mass media maintaining the
traditional gender dichotomy; and 2) entertainment shows
that feature queer celebrities and entertainers in drag.
The very famous celebrities in Turkey appearing on TV
screens such as transsexual singer Bulent Ersoy,
drag-queen
Huysuz Virjin (Seyfi Dursunolglu), other
queer entertainment singers Fathi Urek and Aydin who all
had their own TV shows, besides numerous gay male
entertainers working in chic nightclubs in bigger cities
who also appear on TV programs targeted to the general
population.
In spite of such visibility in the mass media, the
queerness of these performers elicits a variety of
responses from the public. Some people either just do
not see it, or, they ridicule the person, or, even if
they recognize the queerness of a particular artist
implicitly, they might still prefer not to talk about it
at all for various reasons. Actually, there has been a
retrogression after 2007 about the visibility of these
queer shows and homosexuality on Turkish televisions,
because of the visible pressure by the bureaucrats
assigned to Radio Television Higher Commission (RTUK).
LGBT in Politics.
Although several small liberal and leftist parities have
been supporting LGBT rights since early 2000's LGBT
people have been ignored by the big political parties
holding seats in the Turkish parliament until 2010's. Since early
2010's both secularist and social democrat main
opposition party
CHP (Republican People's Party) and pro-Kurdish,
democratic socialist
HDP publicly supported LGBT rights and they
nominated few LGBT candidates in 2014 local election and
2015 general elections. The total votes of these 2
political party approaching to % 40's in June 2015 parliamentary
elections can be considered as a sign of increasing
acceptance of the LGBT people by the Turkish society. In
fact the other two big conservative parties including
the ruling
AK-Party did not abuse the opposition parties'
support for the LGBT people against them, except some
minor cases.
Gay venues and meeting points.
Parks, public baths, and other public places are
de facto meeting places, again mostly in big cities
which are listed on our website..
In metropolitan areas, such as
Istanbul , Ankara , and Izmir—the three largest cities
in the nation—there have been gay and lesbian bars, and
their numbers are on the rise recently.
Turkish Gays and Lesbians on Internet.
Internet has helped gay groups around the country
combine and expand their activism efforts and has
created a very liberal media for Turkish gays and
lesbians. The new generation Turkish LGBT people who
grew up with internet are much more open about their
sexual orientation compared to their elders. Internet
has also helped the rest of the society to get in touch
with gay culture more than ever before.
References:
http://www.bgsu.edu
http://www.iglhrc.org
Turkishdailynews.com.tr (April 9, 2007- Safak Timur –
Turkish Daily News)
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