The Turkish State of Emergency and LGBT+ Kurds

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Dec 26, 2016 Syria
LGBT+ Kurds raise rainbow flags at Newroz celebrations in Diyarbakir in 2011. Photograph by Damla Gülmez. LGBT+ Kurds raise rainbow flags at Newroz celebrations in Diyarbakir in 2011. Photograph by Damla Gülmez.

The Turkish State of Emergency and LGBT+ Kurds

By : Hakan Sandal

After the end of the peace negotiations between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, PKK) in July 2015, Kurdish cities witnessed massive destruction. The destruction was accompanied by racist and sexist graffiti messages by Turkish government forces in many of the wrecked areas. Then, following the failed coup attempt of 15 July 2016, a three-month state of emergency was declared by the Erdoğan government, extended again for another three months, blurring the boundaries of Erdoğan’s authority over state power. Empowered by the narrative of defeating the 15 July coup attempt, the government expanded its targeting of the Gülen movement, the alleged coup plotters, to also further target the Kurdish political movement. The success of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party’s (HDP) in the June 2015 elections had re-enforced the movement’s role as a roadblock against Erdoğan’s presidential fantasies of one-man rule. Eventually, the Erdoğan government arrested twelve HDP MPs, including its co-chairs. The government also arrested democratically-elected co-mayors, including the co-mayors of the largest Kurdish city, Diyarbakır/Amed, and appointed trustees to a large number of Kurdish municipalities.

The Erdoğan government’s recent policies against women are a part of a historically significant gender aspect to Turkey’s war on Kurds and a threat to their gender equality gains. One might argue, quite reasonably, that it is difficult to differentiate between the oppression against women and LGBTs in times of severe conflict, as they are closely related in their existential struggles against the constant onslaught of patriarchy. Nevertheless, the distinct experiences of the LGBT+ community and their resistance remain invisible in the broader political discourse, and analysis thereof. In the light of increasing oppressive policies, Kurdish LGBTs are in a “doubly vulnerable” position vis-à-vis state oppression through an “intersectional vulnerability”: on the basis of their ethnic and gender identities. My intent making this claim is to draw attention to the so-far unaddressed dimensions of the political purge against the HDP through possible LGBT+ perspectives. Also important is the situation of Kurdish LGBTs and of LGBT+ refugees.

The HDP party program includes detailed pro-LGBT+ policies. Thus the attempt to eliminate the organization from Turkey’s political scene is also an attack to LGBT+ gains within the state and society in Turkey. According to a survey on LGBT+ rights in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the HDP and its antecedents requested fourteen out of twenty-five parliamentary inquiries into LGBT+ rights between 2008 and 2014. Also, the HDP and the LGBT+ activists faced a number of homophobic reactions from various sections of Turkey and Kurdistan. These reactions ranged from threats by far-right Islamist groups like Huda-Par, or using HDP’s LGBT+ policies against it in pro-AKP rallies, to pro-government newspapers marking LGBT+ activists as targets. Considering the AKP’s discourse on LGBTs from 2001 to 2015 provides sufficient insight into the homophobia within the formal political sphere. Nevertheless, these harsh attacks did not cause the HDP to change its policies. The party continued to bring LGBT+ issues to the Turkish parliament up until the most recent political purge.

Erdoğan’s recent political purge against Kurds included prominent figures of the Kurdish women’s movement and LGBT+ struggles. The government violently detained and ultimately arrested Sebahat Tuncel, co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Regions Party (DBP) and former HDP MP. Tuncel is an active LGBT+ rights advocate. In 2008, she was the first MP in Turkey’s history to request a parliamentary inquiry into the status of LGBT+ rights. In addition to Tuncel, the government detained Levent Pişkin, a renowned LGBT+ activist and one of the attorneys of the jailed HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş, following a campaign against him run by the pro-government newspapers. These two examples (Tuncel and Pişkin) drew reactions from various political factions, shedding light on how the intersection of political identities and/or advocacies may exceed their own realm of meanings and merge to form specific solidarities. It also demonstrated the LGBT+ aspect to the recent purge of the formal political sphere.
Kurdish LGBTs are in a “doubly vulnerable” position. On the one hand, they are Kurds under Turkish rule, where Kurdish national rights are denied. On the other hand, they are LGBT+ persons under a heteronormative and homophobic social order. Yet this dual vulnerability has at the same time increasingly opened up a space for their mobilization and visibility.

There is a strong alliance among LGBTs of different ethnicities within leftist politics in Turkey and Kurdistan. Some of the most recent examples of this alliance area are the joint declaration on human rights violations in post-coup attempt Turkey and the joint statement with feminist organizations against the arrest of Gültan Kışanak (co-mayor of Diyarbakır/Amed). The state of emergency, as a mechanism, works against all kinds of anti-oppression solidarities and alliances. This mechanism includes organizational aspects, like suspending the activities of civil society organizations like Gündem Çocuk (a prominent children’s rights organization), which prevented further collaborations on the rights of LGBT+ children.  The mechanism also includes other aspects, such as disseminating fear and criminalizing acts of solidarity. Despite these impediments, the solidarity effort under the repressive conditions itself remain inspirational.

Kurdish LGBTs are in a “doubly vulnerable” position. On the one hand, they are  Kurds under Turkish rule, where Kurdish national rights are denied. On the other hand, they are LGBT+ persons under a heteronormative and homophobic social order. Yet this dual vulnerability has at the same time increasingly opened up a space for their mobilization and visibility. The proliferation of LGBT+ organizations in Kurdistan has been noteworthy and promising. For example, the city of Dersim—known for the major 1938 massacre and a center of leftist mobilization in Kurdistan—featured its first pride parade in 2014. It was Roştîya Asmê (“Moonlight” in Kurdish/Dimilkî) that organized the event. Keskesor LGBTI (“Rainbow” in Kurdish/Kurmancî), located in Diyarbakır/Amed, is another prominent initiative that used to be active in organizing events within Kurdistan. In 2013, the Istanbul-based Kurdish LGBT+ initiative Hêvî LGBT (“Hope” in Kurdish/Kurmancî) announced its establishment, asserting: “It was necessary to form an entity in Istanbul that can call out to Kurdistan and so here we are.” During the destruction in Kurdish cities and through the declaration of the state of emergency, Kurdish rights advocacy has become almost impossible, given the authoritarian rule of Erdoğan. The same is true for the above-mentioned Kurdish LGBT+ organizations. Furthermore, tracking hate speech and other violence against LGBT+ people has become nearly impossible. These organizations are effectively prevented from working. In a December 2016 interview with Yıldız Tar, a prominent LGBT+ activist and an editor for Kaos GL, they interpret the situation of the LGBT+ rights advocacy in Kurdistan as follows:

The ground, on which the LGBTI organisations can breathe or work is being taken away from them. I mean, a large part of Kurdistan is doomed to a regime, in which it is a success merely to survive, to live. . . . In addition to a war against Kurds, there is also a war against Kurdishness itself on a symbolic level. You live under this pressure, you continue to try to construct your reality, at the same time you are an LGBTI individual, which means the entire space around you is narrowed down. . . . For example, just the "LGBTI individuals have rights" sentence becomes a luxury, maybe more than ever before in Kurdistan. In fact, what you try to say is that LGBTI individuals live through the oppression twice as much, but the sentence hits the wall and tinkles, because beyond that wall, there is a war.


Trying to understand LGBT+ politics without evaluating its intersection with other modes of politics is a reductionist approach. One cannot think of an LGBT+ identity in the Kurdish context without thinking of the war therein as well. The very identities, both Kurdish and LGBT+, are constructed within and through the war. Furthermore, as a consequence of these constructions, their mere existence becomes a form of resistance: “Under certain conditions, continuing to exist, to move, and to breathe are forms of resistance, which is why we sometimes see placards in Palestine with the slogan ‘We still exist!’” [1]

LGBT+ refugees constitute another vulnerable group. On 11 August 2016, the HDP raised the issue of an LGBT hate crime in parliament, the murder and beheading of gay Syrian refugee Muhammed Wisam Sankari in the context of impunity for such LGBT+ hate crimes. There are in fact several indicators of emerging solidarity networks between the local LGBT+ initiatives and the LGBT+ refugees. For example, Kaos GL counselled 452 LGBT+ refugees in 2015. Hêvî LGBT, on the other hand, conducted a comprehensive research project on the community. They continue to organize talks on and with LGBT+ refugees in order to document and report their experiences. These acts of solidarity not only strengthen the LGBT+ communities, but also form alliances and subvert the narrative of victimhood.

It is also important to draw attention to individual experiences, protests, and objections, in which we can see the type of resistance this article is highlighting. In a recent video, Turkish police can be seen harassing a Kurdish trans activist, Demhat Aksoy, because the gender marker on their ID card does not match their gender identity. In the video, which went viral, Demhat is at a protest site, and during the police search, they request a female police officer to conduct the search. Yet the female police officer objects: “If the Turkish Republic calls you a man, I will treat you like a man,” the officer asserts, pointing out the blue-colored identity card, denoting the male gender. In an interview I conducted with Demhat, they interpret the occasion as follows:

Police tells me about the blue ID, you see, tells me that I am a man, but that blue ID doesn’t bother me either, instead, that blue ID becomes an evidence where I define myself. Her [the police officer] pleasure when she flings the ID in my face, becomes my pleasure. I then say: you have learnt one woman, and one man, the colour for them is either blue or pink, but see, my color is completely different.

The decision makers on gender vary from doctors—who hold the power to decide on behalf of a newborn baby—to other state agents, such as police officers—who hold the power to limit the movement of bodies based on a normative/binary understanding of sex/gender. These decisions not only surround our bodies, but also help produce them in a certain way. Yet, at the very same time, such decisions face objections, which produce a certain kind of tension. This tension itself becomes a site of possibility for politics and resistance. In the above-mentioned video, we also witness a discontinuity within the protest, and this highlights the importance of discontinuities within the struggles: they are interrupted, contested, and brought into a sphere where the boundaries between daily lives and moments of protest are blurred. In fact, the struggle of LGBT+ people goes beyond protest sites—and arguably, beyond the state of emergency. In other words, every site of their lives can become a site of resistance. State officials and others used the gender binary against the very bodies that gather to resist repressive policies. They also mobilize homophobia and/or transphobia in different ways in order to prevent assemblies of resistance and new political possibilities.

For when bodies gather as they do to express their indignation and to enact their plural existence in public space, they are also making broader demands: they are demanding to be recognized, to be valued, they are exercising a right to appear, to exercise freedom, and they are demanding a livable life.[2]

In Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, Judith Butler asserts that “alliance” is not merely a future social form, and sometimes it is a part of our own subject-formation. So, if “I am myself an alliance, or I ally with myself or my various cultural vicissitudes,”[3] what political possibilities could emerge from our own subject-formations as Kurdish LGBTs? How can these possibilities strengthen us in Kurdistan against Turkey’s oppressive, if not colonial, practices? Other significant questions follow from this context: What new forms of solidarities and alliances can we expect or establish, primarily within the Middle East? Through effective cultural translation, what can the struggle of Kurdish LGBTs offer to other contexts? What can Kurdish LGBT+ learn from Palestinian queers, as they both are LGBTs of stateless nations? How can other LGBT+ movements or experiences in the Middle East influence us? What might the political system in Rojava,[4] which is partially being constructed with an emphasis on gender equality while fighting against the Islamic State, who murders LGBTs, offer to LGBT+ politics? We should constantly be asking questions for possible solidarities and alliances, then seek new questions from within. Drawing on Benjamin, if the “state of emergency” is not the exception but the rule, it would be proper to conclude with a famous Kurdish political slogan, which also applies to the LGBT+ struggles: Berxwedan Jiyan e! (To Resist is to Live!)

_________________________________________ 

Endnotes 

[1] Judith Butler, “Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance” in Judith Butler, Zeynep Gambetti and Leticia Sabsay (eds), Vulnerability in Resistance (Duke University Press, 2016), 26.

[2] Judith Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (Harvard University Press, 2015), 26.

[3] Butler, 2015, 68.

[4] Michael Knapp, Anja Flach and Ercan Ayboğa, Revolution in Rojava – Democratic Autonomy and Women’s Liberation in Syrian Kurdistan, translated by Janet Biehl (Pluto Press, 2016).
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Mar 13, 2016 Lebanon
Selim Temo By :
Selim Temo

On a Day of a March…

“In his eyes was the sorrow of an Arab horse that has lost the race.”

Yaşar Kemal

On a day of a March…

The three of us are sitting in a hotel garden right above a park. A jovial giant, a cheerful exile, a lucky me... Beneath a sky full of birds… The wind is blowing like a forgotten whisper; the smell of moss is arriving from distant seas. The jovial giant’s phone rings. “Only three people know my phone number: Mehmed, Selim, and the other is…” says the giant as he answers his phone and lends his voice to his dear wife.

The month of March, the year is 2006…

I have a cold. Brother Mehmed is healthy. The giant is happy. The words he utters on the phone, which he has a hard time placing properly onto his ear, are lighter than roses and mingle with the air as if they were mist.

The giant does not get along with his cell phone. Once he called me while my son was riding his bike. We had a long conversation as I followed with my eyes my son’s wobbly moves on his bike. With such excitement, he talked about a novel that might take twenty to thirty years to finish. His voice was cut off suddenly. When it came back, he asked “Who was the girl who spoke a second ago?” Then his voice was cut off again. There was a thing called pay phones back in those days. “Please insert more coins,” or something in this nature, would say a female voice.

Our first meeting was as exhilarating as this one… I was waiting at the Esenboga Airport in Ankara with a staff member and a car Bilkent University provided for us. The year was 2002. The 15th of May. The giant and Zülfü Livaneli emerged from the VIP room. As I was walking toward them in a rather excited mood, I saw the giant embracing with his left arm the leader of Saadet Partisi, Recai Kutan. With a euphoric voice of a tree that hosts a flock of birds from the sky, he said: “Say hi to Necmettin!” Then as I expressed my willingness, under the weight of words becoming heavier in my mouth, to accompany him during the symposium dedicated to him, he quickly asked in Kurdish “Are you Kurdish?” When I said yes, he pressed me against his chest tightly. I sat next to the driver’s seat as Livaneli and he in the back… It was either at the traffic stop or perhaps during the traffic jam when people walking on the sidewalks began to interact with the giant by way of beautiful gazes, waving hands, sending kisses. I thought this must be what it means to be one of the greatest writers in the world.

One day, a very long day, he came to visit my little family all the way from the other end of the city. When I told him I work on Kurdish poetry, he mentioned that he, with Cahit Sıtkı, worked on the early translations of Kurdish poetry. In the darkness of the 1950s, they would hide in some corners and recite Kurdish poetry to each other as they translated them. The jovial giant was thrilled when he heard about Ehmedê Xanî Library, the project of mine that is etched into my dreams. Joining me in my crazy dream project, he said: “I will donate all my books to this library. And you know, among them are the Gallimard encyclopedias.”

The PhD program at Bilkent University offered a seminar on Yaşar Kemal in 2004. Süha Oğuzertem, who taught this seminar, changed our understanding of Yaşar Kemal entirely. We learned that his language in each novel is significantly different from one another. In each novel, there is, as if, a distinctly new novelist. We invited him to the seminar. He came. As he was entering the room, he turned to my dear professor, the late Talât Sait Halman, and said: “Talât, accept Selim into the PhD program, because his father is a dengbêj!” “He is already in,” said Talât.

The day I returned from England. Winter, 2011… This time I called him from a frosty garden. He never wished to exhaust people yet had a voracious appetite for story telling. Witnessing that was such a great pleasure and honor for me. During almost an hour-long conversation, he mentioned again the plans on a novel that would take twenty to thirty years to finish, and the third volume of Akçasazın Ağaları… In fact, he had already told me the ending of Bir Ada Hikâyesi (A Story of an Island) in 2004. He would burn the island in the end! It was such a heavy burden not being able to tell anyone about the ‘end.’ This meant: he, who always put on strong emphasis on “the human” in his nearly sixty years of stellar literary career, would burn everything he had uttered to humanity during his own century. Then the fourth volume of the book came out: My son’s grandpa Yaşar could not burn his island. Yet the speech he sent to be delivered at the ceremony of the honorary doctorate degree he received from Bilgi University was his farewell letter to the world. He talked about literature as an act of responsibility toward the world. With this, he was bringing joy to his island for the last time.

A refugee, a stutterer after seeing his father getting killed, an orphan whose right eye was carved out with a knife, a poverty stricken person, a person who shivered often, an ill-treated Kurd, a revolutionary, a dengbêj, a bard, a mourning flâneur, a story teller, a solemn spirit, a genius of diegesis, a body who fills the world, a chest who embraces the world, a sea of smiles, an island of there-is-always-hope, a human being… he was.

We, three of us, in a garden in the middle of a peninsula on a day of a March were talking as if we all had hard candy in our mouths. The exile paused our convivial conversation with a serious sentence. “I am going to the South,” he said. “The Kurdish government is going to give me the state’s honorary medal. Do you have any message you want me to deliver, Yaşar Baba?” They stared at each other for a while then forgot about me, and the glasses of tea. Tears began to swell in their eyes. The silence lasted like a long winter.

“Tell them that I love them dearly!” said Yaşar Kemal, after a long pause. “I have,” he said, “about thirty novels. Tell them to translate all into Kurdish.” He then turned to me: “Selim can do the translations.” Turning back to Mehmed Uzun, he continued:

Tell them, a people can become a nation only when they pay their writers. I receive a lot more for English or French translations of my work. What I ask from the Kurdish government is $100,000. Ask them to send me this money. I would then go to the bank. There I would ask a bank teller “My daughter, Kurds have sent me money; let me have it.” The bank teller would put the money on the table. Then I would weep profusely while pressing the stack of Kurdish money against my chest. Then I would find your number in my phone list of three numbers. “Mehmed,” I would ask, “find me the bank account number of one of the organizations for the martyred peshmerga so that I can send them the money.

The three of us, on a day of a March in one year, were sitting and conversing in a place somewhere in a world. Now, two of us are no longer on this earth. One of them found out he got cancer on his way from the emancipated part of his country after receiving the honorary medal, then said goodbye to a thousand year old exilic condition and toppled down like a tree on a hillside near Tigris. The other entered the warm chest of the world, leaving houses, shadowy courtyards, plains, wild pears, the mountains with purple violets, nomads with poetry, azat birds[1], the songs of the fishermen, the library shelves, ants, apprenticeship of birds[2], the deer pattern on a kilim spread inside the tent of a dreamy tribe burned to ashes, the blue butterfly, chukars, winds that yellow the weeds, borders, prison doors, the frosty waters of early springs as orphans.

For all, I am mourning over the loss of both.

*Editor’s note: This article was originally published in Radikal Gazetesi on February 28, 2015, and is translated by Öykü Tekten.

Öykü Tekten is a poet, translator, and editor living in New York. She is the co-creator of KAF Collective and pursues a PhD degree in English at the Graduate Center, CUNY. 

  

Footnotes

1. Yaşar Kemal tells the story of “azat kuşları” in his novel The Birds Have Also Gone. The fictional characters in this novel would buy the birds near the places of worship only to set them free.

2. The phrase “apprenticeship of birds” (kuşların tilmizi) refers to the pseudonym of Feqiyê Teyran (1590-1660), a legendary Kurdish poet and writer. Kurds believe that Teyran spoke the bird language. He was also mentioned in Yaşar Kemal’s novel A Story of an Island.