Istanbul Pride

Daniel Metz
Aug 28, 2017 · 5 min read

The municipality of Beşiktaş, one of the central districts on the European side of Istanbul, hung a rainbow flag from its government office on Monday, June 19th. Its official Twitter account published an image of the flag with the caption (in Turkish) “We are Freddie Mercury’s Army #WhatIsBetweenUs.” The historical significance of the first time the rainbow flag was hung in Beşiktaş was not lost among the numerous responses, both on and off the social media platform.

What Is Between Us is the theme of this year’s Gay Pride month in Istanbul, but the irony of those words resonated in the cavernous differences represented in the image’s comments and replies. They ranged from outright support to frequent uses of the work sapık, “pervert,” and expressions of disgust. However historic the occasion, only hours after the post was published was it deleted from the Beşiktaş municipality’s Twitter page, and a series of messages were broadcast directly from the Beşiktaş mayor’s account.

“I apologize to all of those who follow and love us and to our fellow citizens… To show respect to people’s values, cultures, beliefs and preferences is of the highest importance for Beşiktaş and the Beşiktaş municipality … and for this reason the Tweet, which represents neither myself nor the Beşiktaş municipality … was deleted.”

“Our respectful manner cannot give rise to the encouragement of homosexuality…”

It just so happened that the day after these Tweets were shared I met with a woman named Yeşim Selçuk, a psychotherapist who traditionally specializes in treating those dealing with addiction but recently started working at an organization that provides psychological and social support services to the LGBT community of Istanbul. The organization’s name, the Social Policies, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation Studies Association, is known by its Turkish acronym, SPoD. Yeşim is one of the two trained psychologists that head the division of the organization that works with LGBT refugees. We met over tea at noon on Tuesday.

I left my apartment about 30 minutes before the interview wearing a pants and a button-up shirt that I was inevitably going to sweat through. Contrary to my experiences of traveling miles and miles across multiple modes of transportation to reach meeting points, SPoD’s office was only a couple of blocks from my apartment on a side street tucked between two main avenues. The office was on the third floor of a building, but the entrance was tucked in between a café and a cheap, knock-off clothing shop. Realizing I had arrived much too early, I sat down at a table right outside the café and ordered a glass of tea.

Yeşim walked up after a few minutes, having spotted me as the only foreigner around, and we made our way to a less crowded café on the other side of the street; somewhere away from the noise of traffic and pedestrians. We sat down and began talking about SPoD and the kind of work it does for refugees.

One big problem with trying to provide support to LGBT refugees and Turks in Istanbul is access, Yeşim said. The two most common ways that individuals find SPoD is through the private Facebook group, full of members from all over the country and even outside of Turkey, and being directed from another organization that deals specifically with resettling refugees.

Each Sunday, the organization hosts meetings called Tea and Talk. The point is to establish consistent communication between LGBT refugees and to help form a net of support for individual members. She explained some of the activities they have worked on before, ranging from HIV/AIDS prevention to what Yeşim referred to as “peace-building” and “empowerment” exercises. “These are activities to bring the Syrian refugee community into the Turkish LGBT community because it isn’t very easy to get in contact with individuals like themselves in the LGBT community,” she said. “They don’t have control over these resources in Turkey. They don’t know how to improve their self-confidence. Most of them live a life without ever leaving the region or the neighborhood that they live in. Because of this we aim both to create a community for themselves and also to include them in the larger LGBT community in Turkey.”

Yeşim briefly told the story of a young gay Syrian who had found their organization: “An 18-year-old refugee fled the war and claimed asylum in the southeast with his family. His family learned that he was gay and began to threaten to kill him. He got on a bus and escaped all the way to Istanbul and found us on the internet and got in contact with us.” She recalled the young man being in such bad shape when he found them that they had to take him to the hospital. “Their families react excessively because they are LGBT,” she said. “These kinds of problems are piled on top of the war. They have to face these problems by themselves, they live alone. This is why we really value the importance of having a community: to form a family, to support each other.”

There are close to 150 refugees in communication with the organization via the Facebook group, most of whom are gay Syrians. “We generally can’t work with trans Syrian individuals,” Yeşim said. She noted that getting the participation of trans individuals is incredibly difficult under their current conditions. It is legal to receive gender reassignment surgery in Turkey, and there is a relatively significant trans population in Istanbul. But with no laws protecting trans individuals from discrimination, work and housing opportunities are virtually unattainable. They are forced to turn to prostitution as a means of survival. “We’re thinking about opening a shelter for trans individuals,” Yeşim said. “We’re thinking about doing group activities, typically in the evening before they go to work.”

We talked more about SPoD’s relationship to the government and what they were doing to stay in the ruling party’s favor. After about an hour of chatting, we got up and paid for our coffee. The sun was at its peak in the sky, and I broke a sweat walking back to my apartment.

Story originally published 06/24/2017 on my personal blog: https://danielsmetz.wordpress.com/2017/06/24/pride-in-istanbul/

)
Daniel Metz

Written by

Mostly just eating kebab. Occasionally writing. Always in Istanbul | English, Türkçe

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade