Pembe Caretta
Bihter Tomen · Journal of Middle East Women s Studies · 2018
This essay discusses the emergence, strategies, and challenges faced by Pembe Caretta (www.facebook.com/pembecarettalgbt), a grassroots advocacy group in Antalya, a major city in southern Turkey with a population of three million people. I conducted one-on-one interviews in a room at the back of an Antalya bookstore with eleven members (six women, four men, and one self-identified transsexual) between twenty and twenty-seven years old in the summer of 2014, finding participants with the help of LGBT activist friends. I asked about members’ involvement with Pembe Caretta, the difficulties faced by the group, and the challenges of LGBT activists in Turkey.The group’s name and rainbow-colored logo, which includes a prominent design of the endangered loggerhead sea turtle (the species has a large breeding ground in Antalya), signal its commitment to animal and environmental protection as well as support for a social minority. The group mission focuses on LGBT “right to life, right to accommodation, and right to education.” Pembe Caretta works to combat homophobia and transphobia—which include high rates of discrimination and “honor” killings by family members—through awareness-raising projects, events, and education targeting the LGBT community. Even with an increasingly conservative political climate throughout the country, Pembe Caretta faces more challenging conditions than established LGBT organizations in Istanbul and Ankara. The LGBT community in Antalya is not particularly open or active. Activists prefer to cooperate discretely with student groups at the university and the national rainbow coalition.Students at Akdeniz University, the only postsecondary institution in Antalya until recently, established Pembe Caretta in September 2013. They initially tried to register as a student club, but the administration rejected their request on the grounds that they used the terms gender identity (cinsel kimlik) and sexual orientation (cinsel yonelim) in their mission statement. They decided to broaden the mission scope to include and defend animal and environmental rights. They sign collective press releases and declarations about animal rights, environmental rights, and so on.The group has not registered as an official association with the state, an issue of debate among the members. Registering as an association would give them legal standing, which is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, such standing is essential for engaging officially with the state, for instance, suing for human rights violations and applying for funding for projects. On the other hand, it would also make the group institutionally visible and in direct confrontation with the state, which some members want to avoid. They mentioned several cases in which municipalities filed to close LGBT organizations in other parts of Turkey.One of their main challenges is to find actual spaces to hold events in Antalya. When the group tries to “find a place to organize a talk or symposium or workshop,” officials or managers often tell them they must “book as an association or foundation.” In other cases, an owner will say that “they are all booked up or under construction as an excuse. We do not confront the owners because we believe [prejudice] will break down in time.” The group usually gathers in the local bookstore where I conducted the interviews. These interviews took place in the summer of 2014 with eleven members of the group between the ages of twenty and twenty-seven.Activists believe that visibility poses special problems. Most LGBT people in the city are not out because open presence as an LGBT person is regarded as “a bad or dangerous thing.” LGBT groups organize annual gay parades in several cities in Turkey, including Antalya. While attendance is not as high as in Istanbul, local LGBT groups nevertheless come out to celebrate gay pride. During the 2014 LGBT parade in Antalya, which about 350 people attended, Pembe Caretta distributed masks for people who wanted to avoid being identified. While fifty masks were printed, they were surprised when only ten people wore a mask during the parade. Nevertheless, most “people don’t want to be seen with a gay/lesbian,” including politicians, even if some of them accept the existence of LGBT people.Interviewed Pembe Caretta activists used human rights frames in their discussion of LGBT status. They deploy terms such as equality, equal treatment, and universal human rights to defend their existence. As one activist explained: We all want equality. Other than that, I personally care about the issues of [providing] schooling, work, and healthcare [for LGBT members]. We all have problems but we specifically have problems over these issues. Do all homosexuals and transsexuals face these difficulties? No, but a majority of them do, and they require remedy. The state others us and has not addressed these problems. Although not reflected in media accounts, LGBT individuals experience bad treatment in hospitals, including not being treated and being kicked out. People change work quite often because of bad treatment and bullying. Transsexual individuals cannot find a job and cannot attend school. We establish LGBT organizations to get together and collectively realize solutions to these problems and overcome the taboos in people’s minds.When asked whether they used universalist language to make their claims, an activist replied, “Every living being in the universe has a right to live freely. Everyone has to respect that right. This right has to be extended to all segments of society, not only parts of it. The world has to give up on the heterosexist rules, respect all sexual orientations and gender identities and the laws should reflect that.” Another insisted, “LGBT individuals do not need a special language or special rights. Universal human rights is enough. We need legal regulation only for special circumstances, such as transsexual individuals.” However, one activist objected to slogans such as “We are human, too!” He argued that slogans like this other the self from society: “I am human but to say ‘I’m human, too,’ is like asking to be acknowledged and recognized by the ‘normal’ people. It is pitiful.”An interviewee pointed out the difference between having abstract rights and having actual protection and access to resources: There are problems in practice, but there is also a problem with the constitution. For example, sex reassignment is allowed in the constitution, but it depends on the hospital, the doctor, and finances of the patient. It is so hard to achieve in practice. In male-to-female or female-to-male reassignment, there is a problem of sterilization. If you are a transsexual, you have to be sterile [to get the reassignment operation]. But hospitals like Hacettepe found a solution to this obstacle. They write reports as if the individual is sterile regardless of his sexual fertility. People wait a long time to get this report.Since the Turkish Constitution allows sex reassignment if a person is infertile, many fertile individuals acquire hospital documentation declaring them infertile to allow reassignment surgery (Can et al. 2011).Activists discussed “sexual terrorism” as a constant threat to LGBT people. This is a system of frightening, dominating, and controlling bodies “manifested through actual and implied violence,” such as rape, battery, sexual abuse, and murder. When I asked a respondent about same-sex marriage rights, she replied: We have not yet gained the right not to be killed, let alone have the right to get married. Foremost we want the right to walk freely on the streets. The right to life comes first. After we guarantee that right, [we can demand] marriage, employment, children, and so on. It is a bit funny to discuss same-sex couples’ request to adopt children before we can deal with the problems of being bullied on the streets, accepted by our parents, and discriminated against at work. . . . As long as we have a patriarchal family structure, we will not get there.More than one respondent discussed living in fear of murder by family members. As one person framed the situation, “If they ask me to choose between the right to marry and these other rights to life and having a decent living, I would choose the latter right now. We are neither alone nor wrong! When we get together, we can empower each other. . . . Every week we hear about LGBT individuals being beaten or killed.” Although being LGBT is not illegal in Turkey, the organization proposes an amendment to the equality clause in the Constitution that explicitly recognizes “sexual orientation and gender identity” as a protected status, allowing for legal consequences for violators. Members “demand that killing gays and transsexuals should be considered as a hate crime.” They reject reductions of sentences “on the basis of provocation.”