Sunday (June 25) saw this year’s Istanbul Pride march take place in the central Beyoğlu and Şişli districts. As has been the case in recent years, the march encountered heavy police presence attempting to shut down the demonstration. Police blockades resulted in the splintering of the main march into several smaller groups after which over 60 demonstrators were taken into police custody.
Early in the day, Istanbul police had established a heavy presence in the areas where the march was expected to take place. All roads leading to Taksim Square, the traditional site of the yearly demonstration, were cut off by police barriers. Two metro stations serving the area of the expected demonstrations, Şişhane and Taksim stations of the M2 Hacıosman-Yenikapı metro line, were cut off from service from 10:00 Sunday morning onwards, as was the funicular line which connects Taksim Square to Kabataş station on the shore of the Bosphorus Strait.
Protestors gathered in the Teşvikiye neighborhood of the Şişli district just north of Taksim, where the Pride Week Committee made the following statement regarding the Pride March and ongoing restrictions:
“Despite all the prohibitions, criminalizations, oppression, and policies of intimidation, we will continue to defend a humane life for everyone and to insist on a democratic way of life. You have targeted us from the highest to the lowest levels of the state. But here we are today. You have been unable to suppress us, and you won’t.”
Protestors participating in the march held signs satirizing the government’s continued repression of Turkey’s LBGTI+ citizens and their demonstrations. Participants held signs displaying such slogans as “Run Tayyip [President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan], the gays are coming,” “You will go crazy as long as I am living,” “The horny minority is here,” and “After every storm comes a rainbow.”
Under pressure from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government for years, Turkey’s LGBTI+ community has become increasingly targeted during Turkey’s recent election cycle, in which Turkish voters went to the polls to vote for president and members of parliament. Leading up to the election, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and other AKP members ruthlessly targeted the LGBTI+ minority in speeches, accusing the main opposition leader and alliance parties of supporting the LGBTI+ cause and even being LGBTI+ themselves. In a speech in early May in Mersin, the president said: “The CHP [Republican People’s Party] is pro-LGBT. The IYI Party is pro-LGBT. All those around them are pro-LGBT. But you cannot force these values on the AK Party…Because for us the family unit is sacred.”
The victory of President Erdoğan and an overwhelmingly conservative parliament voted in last month have ignited fears that the new government may attempt to close down Turkey’s remaining LGBTI+ civil society organizations. A proposed constitutional change expected to come before parliament in July would designate “Marriage as a union established by a man and a woman.” The new proposed change reportedly aims to prevent “the deterioration of the Turkish family structure” allegedly caused by same sex marriage. It is believed that such a constitutional amendment could lead to the eventual closure of Turkey’s LGBTI+ organizations.
Written for Medyascope by Leo Kendrick
