Pride March at Boğaziçi University: 'Get used to it, we are not going anywhere'

* Photo: Boğaziçi Resistance

Click to read the article in Turkish

Boğaziçi University LGBTI+ Pride Week ended with the Pride March held at the South Campus in İstanbul on June 11. Students marched to the gate of the campus, carrying rainbow flags and opening a banner that read, "We have turned, the wheels will turn as well."

They also chanted the slogans, "Where are you, my love? I am here, my love", "Universities are ours, they will be free with us" and "Nakka (No, never) to homophobes, transphobes, bi-phobes, les-phobes, aphobes, and TERFs [Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists]."

As the "Pride" exhibition was banned by a last-minute decision of Fazıl Önder Sönmez, the vice rector of appointed rector Melih Bulu, the students also carried the photographs of Ateş Alpar during the march.

'We are here despite bludgeons'

Some highlights from the press statement read out following the Boğaziçi LGBTI+ Pride March were as follows:

"Today is June 11 Friday, this is the last day of the 8th Boğaziçi Pride Week. It has been four months since Boğaziçi University LGBTI+ Studies Club was closed, but we are still here despite all threats, attacks, targeting remarks, surveillance cameras watching us all the time, the eyes looking at us with hate and the hands holding bludgeons and sticks.

"Those who closed down our club thought that they could prevent our existence, that they could hinder our struggle. But we, each passing day, don't give up on any of our gains, primarilyn on our school.

"In the beginning of the Boğaziçi resistance, we showed our stance saying, 'Nakka (No, never) to the trustee!'

"However, from the very first day on, the flags we carried, the slogans we chanted and even our presence in the site of protest were found odd by everyone, including the state bodies at the very top.

"Even mentioning the LGBTI+ identity in the press statement was considered too much; we made great efforts to ensure that the agenda of the LGBTI+s became a real subject of the politics.

'Attempt to instroduce LGBTI+phobic policies'

"At the very beginning, we knew that the trustee regime, a subcontractor of the state, would try to bring LGBTI+phobic policies into our university.

"Amid the ongoing debates about the presence of LGBTI+s in the protests, one of the first actions taken by trustee Melih Bulu was to remove the signboard of our gender-neutral toilet, which had been attacked for years, at the South Campus in an act of vandalism.

"The LGBTI+ hatred that he carried, with the state standing behind his back, was apparently not enough because soon afterwards, he closed Boğaziçi University LGBTI+ Studies Club in an irregular manner, by trampling upon the law and by making false statements.

"In taking this decision, he was acting with his own will to such an extent that it was Presidency's Communications Director Fahrettin Altun, who announced the closure of our club in the middle of the night when our nearly 200 friends were detained with police violence.

"While all these were happening, LGBTI+ kept on being subjected to a mounting state violence every day. ODozens of fellow LGBTI+s were subjected to torture, hate speech and threats of rape in detention.

"The process that started with the police officers' hunt for rainbow flags during the İstanbul Convention protests evolved into a process when our over 70 friends were detained for defending the rainbow flag on March 25-26 and lawsuits were filed against some of them.

"These state policies are trying to cause a split between our struggle with the feminist struggle. We know that victory will come when all these struggles for rights come together.

Kurdish trans women, sex workers, trustees...

"In İstanbul, Kurdish trans women were taken hostage by police officers in the middle of the street for minutes. Several sex worker women were deprived of their houses for such fabricated reasons as Covid measures, they were deprived of their right to work.

"We know that just as the trustee policies, which started with the appointments against Kurdish people's will, target freedom of peoples, they also want to silence LGBTI+s, to make them invisible and disappear.

"Just to spite this process when we have been subjected to so much hate and so many attacks that they cannot be fit into a press statement, we keep on existing. We call out to the queers who feel hopeless and desperate in the room of a small house: We are with you! We will not stop struggling until all LGBTI+s have equality and freedom.

"We call on everyone to wage a joint struggle against LGBTI+phobia, misogyny and racism. Get used to it, we are not going anywhere!" (EMK/SD)