Turkey's Pride struggling to survive amid LGBTQ+ crackdown

Turkish authorities have cracked down on Istanbul's Pride parade with dozens of arrests. Once one of the biggest events in the region, Pride is now struggling to survive, with newly re-elected President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accusing the LGBTQ+ movement of threatening Turkish society.

Revelers participate in Istanbul's annual Gay Pride Parade. © ASSOCIATED PRESS - STR

For three decades Istanbul Pride Week has been the focal point of the year for Turkey's LGBTQ+ community, attracting tens of thousands of people.

"It's super important because we don't have any other location or place where we can actually talk about these things," says Can Kortun, a member of the Istanbul Pride Committee.

"We don't have any location where we can talk about Muslim feminist LGBTQ+ people. We don't have any place to talk about immigrant LGBTQ+ people. We don't have any place we can talk about our civil rights.

"The other side is being able to show people that we are not a small number of people."

#pridecantbedetained #pridecantbedeported #freeistanbulpride #solidaritywithistanbulpride pic.twitter.com/6adDeHYZl9

— İstanbul LGBTİ+ Onur Haftası (@istanbulpride) June 27, 2023

Parade branded 'terror threat'

Relations between people of the same sex have been allowed – or at least not criminalised – in Turkey since the establishment of the secular republic in 1923.

But in recent years, the authorities have been cracking down on Pride week.

This year is no different. The centre of Istanbul was locked down after the local governor ruled that a planned parade by LGBTQ+ members was a terror threat.

Despite massive security, participants attempted to go ahead with their Pride march, which resulted in over a hundred arrests and heavily armed riot police chasing people through the streets.

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Last month Erdogan used his victory speech to ramp up his anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. He accused the community of posing an unacceptable threat to family values.

Oner Ceylan of Lambda, an Istanbul-based LGBTQ+ group, says Erdogan sees their movement as a political threat.

"The political spaces in Turkey have been immensely narrowing more and more. And the only people who can go out on the street and protest are women and they are being severely punished," says Ceylan.

"Because of that, Erdogan has chosen the LGBTQ+ community as a target consciously because I think he believes that it's the movement strong enough to be visible and disturbing to some people who are afraid of liberties in society."

Today #Turkey is holding a presidential election runoff. But what is at stake?

Read the interview with Murat Çelikkan, human rights defender from Turkey, about possible impact of the election outcome on #HumanRights:https://t.co/7a8HTEELUp pic.twitter.com/HKzv3gyHIU

— Civil Rights Defenders (@crdefenders) May 28, 2023

Pride struggling to survive

Many LGBTQ+ organisations that have developed over the past few decades in Turkey are now struggling to survive under increasing legal pressure.

"We have activists who are facing jail time," said Mustafa Sariyilmaz of the Turkish branch of the Sweden-based Civil Rights Defenders group.

"Many of those people who were sued, they have been banned to leave the country, and most of them are like youngsters, university students."

Sariyilmaz says the crackdown is undermining the effectiveness of LGBTQ+ groups.

"They are stuck in a corner. Every single step they want to take and every single thing they want to do is being investigated. So they cannot openly support many people.

"The cases against us are getting bigger and bigger every year, and we don't have enough lawyers to support us."

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Legal and political pressures are widely predicted to increase, and there's an expectation among LGBTQ+ members that things are going to get worse.

But there's also a belief their achievements can't be undone.

"I grew up in the 80s where there was next to nothing about queer issues in the media in the society'" recounts veteran activist Ceylan.

"It was not something that people discussed. It was very difficult for me to find my way around, and it took a long time. Now, thanks to the movements of 30 years ... there's a very different scene.

"No matter how hard Erdogan tries, he cannot squeeze us back in the closet."