by Kostis Koutalidis
“It is a must that homosexuals, too, within the framework of their own rights and freedoms, be brought under legal protection. The kinds of treatment that we at times see them endure on TV–we do not see those as humane.”
Few followers of Turkish politics would attribute the quote above to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan; but the words are his. He spoke them on national TV in 2002, the year when his Justice and Development Party (AKP) first gained its longstanding parliamentary majority and Erdogan began his ongoing mandate as Turkey’s prime minister.
But a careful look at the actors involved in the ongoing crisis over the country’s annual Pride Parade, now banned by a Friday announcement of the Istanbul governorship, reveals just how little of Erdogan’s message of diversity and justice has survived in the Turkey he has built over the last fourteen years.
From AbdulMejid to the governorship
To provide context, the decriminalization of homosexuality in Turkey is older than the Republic of Turkey itself: It was decreed by the Ottoman Sultan Abdulmejid in 1858. Non-governmental organizations working on LGBTQ+ rights and freedoms have been active in the country since the early 1990s. The Pride March in Istanbul started in 2003, and had continued uninterrupted for a decade, reportedly attracting over 100,000 people in 2013. In early 2015 Erdogan’s conservative AKP even boasted in an election brochure that “Turkey is a country where Gay Pride parades are able to be held in the middle of Ramadan […] AKP has never had intent to intervene in anybody’s lifestyle, nor will it ever have such intent.” This self-branding strategy was nevertheless tarnished when, less than a month after the election, Istanbul police violently broke up the2015 Pride Parade on the grounds that it conflicted with “sensitivities surrounding the Holy Month of Ramadan”.
Early this week, a Twitter handle for Muslim Anatolian Youth (MAG), a fundamentalist organization, called out for the prevention of this year’s Trans Pride and LGBTQ+ Pride Paradesscheduled for June 19th and 26th.It tweetedposters with calls to action: “We are not letting the dishonorable perverts walk” and “We are not letting the faggots walk. We will be there. We are waiting for you (to join us) too.”
An extreme nationalist youth organization called The Alperen Hearths soon followed suit in a press conference. KursatMican, Istanbul head of the organization,called for the cancellation of the event, saying that “the honorable state authorities”must “do their duty” to prevent what is “not a normal freedom.” “Otherwise”, Mican has warned, we are not responsible for what will happen after this point.” Following widespread criticism and the threat of legal action from various LGBTQ+ and human rights NGOs, The Alperen Hearts made a second announcement on Thursday stating that their words “do not constitute a threat” and “they had not meant (to call for) a physical intervention.”
When asked on Monday whether the government would allow the parade to take place, and whether there would be extra security in place after the Orlando attack, Deputy PM NurettinCanikli stated: “Of course, there are certain criteria when such permissions are issued. I am stating in terms of the authorities that would issue the permissions. If there is no problem for such authorities, the permission would be granted. And if permission weregranted, the necessary safety precautionswould be taken.”
On Friday, however, the Istanbul Governorship announced that the marches on June 19 and June 26 would “not be permitted…in the interest of the safety of our citizens, and primarily of the attendees, and of public order”. Parade organizers announced in the following hours that the march would be held as planned.
The anatomy of a phobia
Notably, the calls to action came after homophobic coverage of last week’s Orlando shootings by numerous conservative, pro-government news agencies. One such newspaper, YeniAkit, reported news of the Orlando attack with the headline “Number of dead rise to 50 in bar frequented by perverted homosexuals!” It soon serviced the MAG announcement with the headline “Muslim Anatolian youth will say “Stop” to perversion”.
The discriminatory and celebratory tone of the newspaper’s Orlando coverage also carry over to its presentation of the efforts to stop the Istanbul Pride–YeniAkit uses the same word,sapkın(“perverted, aberrant”), to describe both the Orlando victims and the parade organizers/attendees in Istanbul.
The Muslim Anatolian Youth seemed to be in agreement on the point: WhenFatihAyhan, a MAG official, was asked in an interview about the Orlando shootings, he stated: “I underline this especially–the perverts in Turkey are to learn their lesson from this event! They are to not disturb people! We are not a morality police; but they must not forget that this is Ottoman soil!”Ayhan, it seems, is not only anachronistic;he is also mistaken in his late Ottoman history.
But is there any cause for real concern? Can the likes of TheAlperen Hearths, MAG, and YeniAkit not be dismissed as small, insignificant right-wing groups the likes of which can be found in any nation state?Not if we take a closer look.
The organizations responsible for the threat to safety that the Istanbul Governorship has acknowledged—and, somewhat absurdly, chosen to accommodate rather than remedy—are not a handful of fundamentalists blowing off steam.They are groupswith real, proven criminal tendencies that the Turkish Republic has chosen to ignore –and, over the past decade, even indulge, as is now the case with the Pride Parade.
MAG, for one, has strong ties with a Jihadist fundamentalist organization called IBDA-C–one that is considered to be a terrorist organization by Turkey, the EU and the U.S. The website of MAG calls IBDA-C founder SalihMirzabeyoglu “Commander” and claims that MAG adopts Mirzabeyoglu’s central tenets. An IBDA-C website repeatedly -and violently- calls for the establishment of a Shari’a state in Turkey, and Mirzabeyoglu was given a life sentence in 2001 for “Attempting to change the constitutional order in Turkey”.
But here’s where things get odd: Mirzabeyoglu was released from prison after a retrial in 2014, on the grounds of a “lack of credible evidence” of his guilt. (When IBDA-C claimed responsibility, along with Al-Qaeda, for four truck-bomb attacks in Istanbul in 2003, Turkish authorities remained “skeptical about the claim” according to a report by The Washington Institute.) Just months after his acquittal, he had a meetingwith none other than then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The Alperen Hearths does not have a much better track record. Members of the organization, which claims on one of its websites “to serve humans and to humanity”, and on another to promote “tolerance like that of Rumi,” have been variously linked to every single one of the following crimes in the past decade: the killing of a Christian priest in Trabzon, the killing of a high court lawyer and the injuring of three others in Istanbul, the killing of three Christian missionaries in Malatya and the high-profile (and still unresolved) killing in 2007 of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul. Members of the organization also attacked the leader of Turkey’s main opposition party, protesters during the Gezi Park protests of 2013, and, bizarrely, a classical music concert in Topkapi Palace.
While those who committed these crimes were convictedand sentenced, The Alperen Hearths and its administration have never been publicly prosecuted -or even investigated- in relation to this string of violent hate crimes, to whichan attack on Istanbul Pride 2016 would only be the latest addition.
This means that organizations such as MAG and The Alperen Hearths, and their unchecked threats towards the LGBTQ+ activists in Turkey, are doubly frightening.In the first place, their attacks aren’t just rhetorical:they constitute a realthreat of terror and violence.But these groups are even more alarming because they reveal a disturbing trend of government tolerance fororganizations with criminal fundamentalist ties and agendas. In a way, The Alperen Hearthswererightwhen they declared, in reference to the Pride Parades, that “… We have stated what will happen, and we are not responsible for what will happen after this point.”The AKP government, and not an extremist organization that subscribes to a bizarre neo-Ottoman Turkish nationalism, should be “responsible for” preventing “what will happen after this point.” But it seems that brazen, proven criminality can trump democratic forms of expression if it is voiced along the rightideological lines, and voiced loudly and shamelessly enough.
We do not see that as humane
Erdogan’s words about LGBTQ+ rights and freedoms in Turkey from some fourteen years ago might provide the conclusion this story needs: he said “…within the framework of their own rights and freedoms.” The question in the new Turkey that he has painstakingly forged is: “What rights and freedom?”
Make no mistake: the question is a rhetorical one. If Erdogan was ever sincere when he donned his most civil smile and thoughtfully answered the college student who asked him about gay rights on national TV, he has long since quit flirting with the various minorities and the liberal intelligentsia members of Turkey.
This is perhaps because he has found followers, in organizations like TheAlperen Hearths and MAG, who are for more willing and compliant.They are allies that he is ideologically and –perhaps personally- far more comfortable with. For Turkey, now thatit has become President Erdogan’s sociopolitical playground and as the past week’s events make clear, is no longer a place for civility and thoughtfulness. It is a place where anything -or anyone- that Erdogan and his conservative political machinery are uncomfortable with must be shut down, silenced, extinguished. Organizations such as MAG and The Alperen Hearths, and their continued fascism, however, are to thrive, and even to guide the government in its efforts. This week’s events, and the plight of Turkey’s LGBTQ+ community, are but one manifestation of the trend.