The Turkish government declared the year 2025 as ‘‘The Family Year’’ which has been seen as an attack on the queer community
BY NAZ SAKICI, IMAGE BY PAVLIHA/GETTY IMAGES/CANVA
The LGBTQIA+ community in Turkey has a history of experiencing both physical and verbal violence. They have had their rights taken away or restricted for the past couple of decades as the laws against queer people keep on getting stricter while homophobia and transphobia rises among the people and the government.
The Turkish government declared the year 2025 as ‘‘The Family Year’’ and the next ten years ‘‘The Family Decade’’ which revolves around bringing back traditional values and punishing the ones who do not fit into the heteronormative standard. Many associations declare that people who will be affected most by this statement of the government will be women and the LGBTQIA+ community.
During the first week of Pride Month, a young transgender woman named Kayra from Edirne committed suicide while she was on livestream after she tried to reach out to her mother. The suicide was due to the loneliness, hate and harassment she got because of her gender identity. During the livestream, one of her last statements was that the government does not provide the same rights for trans people and commented that even her family was not supportive throughout her transition. After the event many people on social media took her story and stated that Kayra’s death was not a suicide, but instead it was a murder committed by the transphobia in Turkish society.
In the last week of Pride Month, the 23rd Istanbul Pride March was held in Istanbul’s Ortaköy neighbourhood on 29 June. This year’s theme was ‘‘persistence in living’’ which is a statement that was made in order to show LGBTQIA+ people’s strength towards life. During the event 53 people, including LGBTQIA+ rights activist Iris Mozalar and anchor Yusuf Çelik, were detained, while some of the people who were detained were not even in the neighbourhood where the march was taking place. Later 50 of them were let go of, while three of them got arrested.
According to sources trans women were held with handcuffs and were kept in the same jail cells as cis men. Another source reveals that two of the women who got arrested, named Sinem and Hivda, refused to get body searched while being naked by the police officers, thus they were held in a cell together which was designed to hold only one person. Friends of the two women stated that a naked body search is an act of sexual assault and must not be disregarded. Along with that one source states that they were not allowed communication with their lawyers, and were not allowed the privilege of clean water. Some of the detained protestors were in need of taking medication and the police did not allow access to them either.
As of recently, the Turkish Health Ministry has restricted the access to hormone replacement therapy for transgender, non-binary, and intersex youth as they raised the legal age of access to HRT from 18 to 21. Seventeen LGBTQIA+ organisations came together to criticize the risks the Turkish Health Ministry is now putting on queer youth through.
These organisations noted that hormone therapy is so much more than what it seems, and hormone medication is so much more than just medication. It allows the individual to experience social acceptance, gender euphoria and psychological health. People from the organisations’ voice their opinions by saying setting the age limit to 21 is a clear attack on the lives of trans, non-binary, and intersex youth as they are taking away opportunities for healthcare, employment, education, and housing. Queer activists are saying that they will not let go of this situation and continue to fight for the access of hormone replacement therapy.
With the rise of the government’s ‘‘The Family Year’’ policies the laws against LGBTQIA+ community keep on getting more strict, LGBTQIA+ people and allies keep on showing their resistance and telling that they are going to keep on fighting for their rights and get their strength from standing together, with activists commenting that they will not stay silent towards the injustice that is targeted towards the LGBTQIA+ community.
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