Turkey’s Queer Times

Abstract

Today Turkey is one of the few Muslim-majority countries in which same-sex sexual acts, counternormative sexual identities, and expressions of gender nonconformism are not illegal, yet are heavily constrained and controlled by state institutions, police forces, and public prosecutors. For more than a decade Turkey has been experiencing a “queer turn”—an unprecedented push in the visibility and empowerment of queerness, the proliferation of sexual rights organizations and forms of sociabilities, and the dissemination of elements of queer culture—that has engendered both scholarly and public attention for sexual dissidents and gender non-conforming individuals and their lifeworlds, while it has also created new spaces and venues for their self-organization and mobilization. At the point of knowledge production and writing, this visibility and the possible avenues of empowerment that it might provide have been in jeopardy: not only do they appear far from challenging the dominant norms of the body, gender, and sexuality, but queerness, in all its dimensions, has become a preferred target for Islamist politics, conservative revanchism, and populist politicians.

Doing Digital Migration Studies:

“…This was seen as a way to demonstrate that border regimes can be transcended, while making a genuine economic contribution that could help those suffering from the impact of the pandemic as well under the increasing authoritarianism in Turkey. All around the world, queer spaces such as nightclubs were struggling economically from the long lockdowns, but Turkey's queer spaces were also impacted by measures to repress queer public presence imposed by the increasingly authoritarian regime in Turkey (Özbay & Öktem, 2021;Yalçınoğlu, 2020).…”

Under the Shadow of Culture and Politics: Understanding LGBTQ Social Media Activists’ Perceptions, Concerns, and Strategies

“…For instance, President Erdogan has stated that the LGBTQ community is incompatible with Turkish cultural values (BBC News Türkçe, 2022). Such rhetoric encourages radical Islamists and conservatives to engage in online bullying, attacks, and discrimination against LGBTQ individuals (Özbay & Öktem, 2021; Parks et al, 2017). Numerous cases have been reported where trolls have targeted and threatened members of these communities on social media platforms (Gorkemli, 2012; Parks et al, 2017).…”

“…The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated these difficulties, with LGBTQ individuals navigating political homophobia and discrimination (Altay, 2022). However, despite the growing presence of discriminatory and authoritarian pressures, LGBTQ individuals in Turkey persist in developing and utilizing strategies to empower queer community members, enabling them to organize and actively resist such forms of discrimination (Özbay & Öktem, 2021; Parks et al, 2017). Overall, recent studies reinforce the notion that LGBTQ individuals in Turkey face discrimination and marginalization across different facets of their lives, and the situation of LGBTQ individuals in Turkey is complex as they navigate cultural, legal, and free speech hurdles.…”

State Homophobia, Sexual Politics, and Queering the Boğaziçi Resistance

“…I argue that state homophobia refers to a series of articulated hatred, fear, disgust, and dehumanization discourses regarding LGBTI+ and queer identities, communities, movements, and politics by various organs of the state and representatives of the government in an organized manner. Rooted in a secular policy and modernizing orientation, the Turkish Republic has never officially made queer individuals illegal or imposed punitive measures on their same-sex sexual acts despite its unquestionably heteronormative tendencies (Özbay and Öktem 2021;Savcı 2021). But public authorities have repeatedly rejected, marginalized, and condemned queer bodies, visibilities, and actions via religious, nationalist, fundamentalist, traditionalist, and statist grounds despite the fact that discrimination among citizens is forbidden by the constitution in Turkey.…”