istanbul pride

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Yesterday saw İstanbul’s sixth LGBTT Pride March: from Taksim to Tünel, with a lingering presence in the square at the base of the Galata tower–some folks had planned to do a stealth rainbow flag drop from the tower itself, but were sadly foiled by the police.  All afternoon the weather had been humid and overcast, with the wind carrying a curtain of dark rainclouds from the Sea of Marmara towards the city.  I was worried it would end up like last year’s Dyke March in NYC (torrential downpour, effect somewhat leavened by the fact that several thousand queer women tramping through the streets of Manhattan in the rain can invent a remarkable variety of predictable but funny chants about liking it wet).  The rain came and went an hour beforehand, though, and the marchers brought the rainbow:

I took a lot of photos (most of which are crap: I’m learning my way around the manual settings via experimentation, and this time the experiment didn’t work so well) and copied down slogans: Susma, haykır, esçinseller vardir! (Don’t be silent, speak up: Queers exist!); Kurtuluş yok tek başına; Ya hep beraber, ya hiçbirimiz! (There is no liberation on one’s own–either all of us together, or none of us at all!) Ahmet’ler Mehmet’i, Ayşe’ler Fatma’yı sevebilir! (Mehmets can love Ahmets, and Ayşes can love Fatmas!); Eğer ahlak baskı ve şiddetse, biz ahlaksız! (If morality is repression and violence, then we are without morality!) and so forth.  The last is a reference to “genel ahlak”, or “general morality”, the phrase used in articles of the legal code that have featured in (unsuccessful) right-wing attempts to close down LGBT rights groups and publications in Turkey.  Hence also the phrase on many of the small round signs: Genel ahlaksız (“general morality-less”; -siz/sız is a Turkish suffix that denotes the lack or absence of whatever it’s attached to).  Those signs also read “We’re Gay, We’re Lesbian”, “We’re Bisexual”, or “We’re Trans*”, and on the opposite side, “We’re here, get used to it!”  Several people, like the woman in the headscarf above, carried signs from the Lambdaistanbul Aile Grubu (Family Group) that proclaimed they were there alongside siblings, or parents.

Some homemade signs: Eskişehir Yalniz Değilsin (“You are not alone in Eskişehir”); Türbanlıya Eğitim, Travestiye Çalışma Hakkı (To headscarf-wearing women, the right to education, to trans women, the right to work); Ben Ahmet Yıldız, Katilimi Bulun (I am Ahmet Yıldız, find my murderer–on men wearing masks of Yıldız’s face); Anayasada Cinsel Yönelim Cinsel Kimliği Tanınsın (Recognize Sexual Orientation and Sexual Identity in the Constitution); Join the Homosexual Intifada (that one was in English); Ne Yanlış Ne Yalnızız (We are neither wrong, nor alone); Anne Ben Biseksüelim (Mama, I’m bisexual) and that awesome Rumi one above (since, after all, Rumi was a homo….)

The marchers sang, danced, and chanted, smiled at the riot police, showed physical affection to their sweethearts in public, shook a block-long rainbow flag until it billowed up to the balconies of İstiklal Caddesi, climbed all over the Taksim-Tünel tram, and sat down en masse in Galatasaray Square.  It was a big (3-4 thousand, I think) march, and a cheerful one, although more militant than most of those in the US or the UK these days–too many victories are still as yet unwon for this to take on the celebratory, celebrity-filled, corporate-sponsored air of an NYC Pride.  But I’m impressed by how much the movement has grown since I was last here.  This was the 17th year that there have been pride week events in İstanbul, but the public marches began only in 2003, and the participants in early years numbered only in the tens.  Back in September, my friend Kerem wrote an excellent essay for MERO on queer politics in Turkey: “Another Struggle: Sexual Identity Politics in Unsettled Turkey.”  If the pictures and slogans above pique your interest, give it a read.  Also check out this story from Eurasia.net, about a football referee in Trabzon who was fired for being gay–and who’s since taken up the fight against employment discrimination in the national press.  And happy pride!

*travesti and transeksüel are both terms for mtf (generally) transpeople; the latter usually denotes those who’ve had sexual-reassignment surgery and are thus able to get recognition from the state in the form of women’s identity cards.  Deniz Kandiyoti’s article “Pink Card Blues: Trouble and Strife at the Crossroads of Gender” in this edited volume is useful, if a little outdated, for background on trans issues in Turkey.

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