Istanbul Pride Was Legal Once. Now Marching Gets You Detained
At least 50 people were detained in Istanbul on 28 June when they marched in a Pride event the state had banned. Police sealed Taksim Square behind iron barriers and shut parts of the metro.
People marched anyway, in scattered neighbourhoods across the city. In much of the world Pride is a party. In Istanbul it is still a risk, and that is the whole point.
Istanbul once had one of the biggest Prides anywhere
This was not always the picture. Istanbul Pride began in 2003 with about 30 people. By 2014 it drew more than 100,000, the largest LGBTQIA+ gathering in Turkey’s history, and it was completely legal.
Then in 2015 the governor pulled the permit hours before the march, citing security, and the ban has never lifted. A celebration more than a decade in the making was gone in a single summer.
What is left now is nerve
Eleven years on, marching takes real courage. This year police detained at least 50 people, among them the journalist Müberra Ünsal, who held a press card and identified herself repeatedly before being taken into custody, according to the Turkish Journalists’ Union.
At one gathering, marchers chanted, “My love, today isn’t over yet. In fact, we’re just getting started. We’re not giving up.”
Read that line again and remember it is being shouted at a wall of riot police.
Freedom is not a finish line
Being LGBTQIA+ is not illegal in Turkey. Same-sex intimacy was decriminalised back in 1858. Yet there are almost no protections, and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has named LGBTQIA+ people one of the “biggest threats against the family.”
In May, ILGA-Europe ranked Turkey 47th of 49 European countries for queer rights, ahead of only Azerbaijan and Russia. Istanbul is proof that a right can be granted and then clawed back.
Turkey Pride 2022 (Shutterstock). This pic shows that expressing Pride in Turkiye has long came with risks of physical violence, either from anti-gay protestors or the state authorities themselves.
That is why Pride still matters, even in cities where it comes with corporate floats and a hangover the next morning. Somewhere not far away, people are being loaded into police vans for the same act.
At DNA, we cover the glitter and the parties, but this is the part we will not file under background noise. The marchers in Istanbul are not giving up.
The least anyone watching from somewhere safer can do is refuse to look away.
