TURKEY GAY GUIDE

Contents:

• TIPS FOR GAY AND LBIAN TRAVELERS TURKEY
• PROVG YOU'RE GAY TO THE TURKISH ARMY
• IS ISTANBUL GAY FRIENDLY?
• TURKEY: PORTUGUE TOURIST SAYS HE WAS JAILED FOR LOOKG GAY
• EXPLORE VAST AND HIDN GAY TURKEY
• 'PASSAG' DIRECTOR NOUNC 'DANGERO' NC-17 RATG ON A FILM PICTG A GAY LOVE STORY
• GENR BENRS, GAY INS AND MEDIA: LBIAN AND GAY VISUAL RHETORIC TURKEY
• TURKEY GAY TOURS

TIPS FOR GAY AND LBIAN TRAVELERS TURKEY

The social suatn for members of the gay muny is better smopolan Istanbul than ral areas, where honor killgs still occur; but whether or not people feel fortable g out to their fay and iends pletely pends on their own ntext and would still mean a number of risks.

Istanbul and some of the most tourist-iendly areas, such as Bodm, have a fairly thrivg gay scene, wh pulsg dance floors, gay bars, and hamams; but many lols who are volved the gays scene by night are livg a different life by day, as they are not able to be open wh their fay or iends, and certaly not at work, where they uld worry about the impact would have on their future. Even Ankara and Izmir, Turkey’s pal and most Wtern-leang cy rpectively, don’t have anythg that close to beg scribed as a ‘gay scene’, so while they’re tertg plac to vis, gay travelers shouldn’t expect a party. '' Instead he gave them a photograph of himself kissg another hop this will give him what he needs - a "pk certifite", which will clare him homosexual and therefore exempt om ary the years, gay life has been beg more visible Turkey's big ci.

PROVG YOU'RE GAY TO THE TURKISH ARMY

Caf and clubs wh an openly gay clientele have been openg Istanbul, and last summer's gay pri march - unique the Mlim world - was the largt while there are no specific laws agast homosexualy Turkey, openly gay men are not wele the army. ''I had a fear of guns, '' he ptn, Last summer's gay pri march Istanbul was the largt ever held TurkeyAs a gay man he was also aaid of beg bullied, and after ltle more than a week he plucked up the urage to clare his sexual orientatn to his manr.

Sometim, stead of photographs, doctors rely on a "personaly tt" Turkish army refed BBC requts for an terview, but a retired general, Armagan Kuloglu, agreed to gay men the army would e "disciplary problems", he says, and would be impractil creatg the need for "separate facili, separate dormori, showers, trag areas" says that if a gay man keeps his sexualy secret, he n serve - an echo of the US ary's recently dropped Don't Ask Don't Tell policy.

"Doctors are g unr immense prsure om their manrs to diagnose homosexualy, and they obey, even though there really are no diagnostic tools to terme sexual orientatn, '' says one psychiatrist who formerly worked at a ary hospal. And next to that, brackets, ''homosexualy'''s ary hospals still fe homosexualy as an illns, takg a 1968 versn of a document by the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn as their people Turkey say wh rentment that gay men are actually lucky, as at least they have one possible route out of ary service - they don't have to spend months the barracks, or face the possibily of beg ployed to fight agast Kurdish for openly gay men, life n be far om is not unmon for employers Turkey to qutn job applints about their ary service - and a pk certifite n mean a job of Gokhan's employers found out about not by askg Gokhan himself but by askg the that, he says, he was bullied.

IS ISTANBUL GAY FRIENDLY?

If you do a ltle rearch before g to Istanbul, you will clearly see that there are so many gays, they are ee to clare their sexual inti unlike some other Mlim untri, and they take part anizatns to raise public awarens. The hotels touristy districts are known to be gay-iendly and there is no problem for a gay uple to ask a double-bedd room, will be better to let them know about your preference before arrival as most of the rooms has tw beds the hotels Istanbul.

TURKEY: PORTUGUE TOURIST SAYS HE WAS JAILED FOR LOOKG GAY

There, zenn equently perform (whout a sexual element) for straight-intified male dienc says filmmaker Mehmet Bay, whose 2012 feature Zenne Dancer explor the iendship between an Istanbul zenne dancer, a German photographer, and a gay “bear” om the nservative Urfa provce. But the past half-, zenne dancg Istanbul has gone mastream: bolstered by the media attentn paid to Bay and Alper's film as well as the succs of gay crossover clubs like Chanta: which ter their zenne shows to a largely heterosexual, female clientele. While the Turkish ernment do not crimalize homosexualy – nor do provi LGBT dividuals wh any formal protectn om discrimatn – cultural attus toward homosexualy are largely negative; acrdg to a 2011 poll nducted as part of the World Valu Survey, a full 84 percent of Turks intified gays and lbians among their least sirable neighbors.

EXPLORE VAST AND HIDN GAY TURKEY

And although Istanbul particular has beg creasgly welg to gays – Istanbul's annual Gay Pri para is the largt any majory-Mlim untry -- the risg thread of Islamism the Turkish ernment is slowg progrs for LGBT rights. In 2013, Turkey’s prime mister at the time, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, cricizg the adoptn of a Turko-Dutch boy by a Dutch lbian uple, publicly lled homosexualy a “sexual preference, which is ntrary to the culture of Islam. LGBT people are currently not protected by law, and Ankara meanwhile, a prohibn on all LGBT activy has been the bad news out of the way, remas to be said that travellers who act wh discretn, gay and straight alike, are unlikely to experience any trouble while Turkey.

Turkey’s most open-md cy, Gay Istanbul n easily be found the area around Taksim but be reful when explorg lser-veloped areas outsi of the centre, the tradnal muny of Tophane for example where tourists may not be weled que so Dpa Galani2. The term “homosexualy, ” while sometim nsired anachronistic the current era, is the most applible and easily translatable term to e when askg this qutn across societi and languag and has been ed other cross-natnal studi, cludg the World Valu Survey. Dpe major chang laws and norms surroundg the issue of same-sex marriage and the rights of LGBT people around the world, public opn on the acceptance of homosexualy society remas sharply divid by untry, regn and enomic velopment.

'PASSAG' DIRECTOR NOUNC 'DANGERO' NC-17 RATG ON A FILM PICTG A GAY LOVE STORY

However, while took nearly 15 years for acceptance to rise 13 pots om 2000 to jt before the feral legalizatn of gay marriage June 2015, there was a near equal rise acceptance jt the four years sce legalizatn. In South Korea, for example, those who classify themselv on the iologil left are more than twice as likely to say homosexualy is acceptable than those on the iologil right (a 39-percentage-pot difference).

And Poland, supporters of the erng PiS (Law and Jtice), which has explicly targeted gay rights as anathema to tradnal Polish valu, are 23 percentage pots ls likely to say that homosexualy should be accepted by society than those who do not support the erng party. But even untri like France and Germany where acceptance of homosexualy is high, there are differenc between supporters and non-supporters of key right-wg populist parti such as Natnal Rally France and Alternative for Germany (AfD). In 25 of the 34 untri surveyed, those who say relign is “somewhat, ” “not too” or “not at all” important their liv are more likely to say that homosexualy should be accepted than those who say relign is “very” important.

“Indian Gay Ins: Queers Like Us, A Tribute to Indian Gay Ins” was scribed by Bombay Dost, a lol LGBT magaze, as “an exhibn of Indian gay ins featurg some of the te lears of the queer stggle who also spell excellence their profsn” (The Bombay Dost Team). In this article’s discsn of the Turkish gay ins popular culture and the ntemporary lbian and gay practic of visual rhetoric Turkey, I analyze three sets of ntemporary reprentatns and the acpanyg practic of visual rhetoric: 1) two Turkish celebri who are wily visible genr transgrsors Turkey: the late Zeki Muren (1931-1996), a flamboyant queer male sger, [2] and Bulent Ersoy, a male-to-female transsexual sger, both of whom Kaos GL rears voted “gay ins”; 2) the gay ins issue of Kaos GL, a Turkish LGBT muny magaze prt, which adapted the Wtern ncept of gay ins to the needs of the Turkish LGBT muny through a cril engagement wh the ncept; and 3) the llegiate lbian and gay fliers, webse, and “fanz” (Turkish transleratn for “fanze, ” i.

GENR BENRS, GAY INS AND MEDIA: LBIAN AND GAY VISUAL RHETORIC TURKEY

In this manner, I monstrate that while visual rhetoric n empower non-Wtern lbian and gay populatns to rist the domant lol reprentatns of homosexualy and produce and dissemate affirmg alternativ, the medium utilized and the uneven ndns of productn and circulatn om one medium to another terme the extent of the relative fluence of existg reprentatns. For Turkish lbian and gay dividuals the 1980s and 1990s, this search often began wh the genr-bendg celebri Zeki Muren and Bulent Ersoy, who appeared extensively on stage and mastream Turkish media on televisn, films, and newspapers. Yet, paradoxilly, this visibily did not mean that Turkish society accepted non-normative sexual and genr inti, cludg homosexualy, and the knowledge about sexual subcultur still remaed “fugive” spe the mass-mediated queer visibily of the two celebri.

From the perspective of the homosexual dience, however, as I discs the next sectn the ntext of Kaos GL‘s special issue on gay ins, Muren and Ersoy’s barga wh the heterosexist hegemony is seen as havg negative nsequenc for this particular segment of the Turkish dience, sce meant distancg, nial, and erasure of LGBT existence, fuelg heterosexism and homophobia Turkish society.

” However, this labelg of the Turkish ins on the top ten list piled by Kaos GL as “gay” refers to their fluence on the Turkish gay dience, pennt of whether or not they personally or publicly intify as beg gay or homosexual, or even profs any solidary wh the LGBT muny. In fact, only two (male thors and poets Murathan Mungan and Kuc Iskenr) out of the ten people listed are known the gay muny to intify as gay; the remag eight ver a broar range of the genr and sexual spectm: a heterosexual male, heterosexual femal, a queer male (Zeki Muren), and a male-to-female transsexual (Bulent Ersoy), wh Muren and Ersoy beg historilly the most visible genr transgrsors and wily promoted ins the Turkish mass media, as discsed the prev sectn.

TURKEY GAY TOURS

While the (sometim multiple) pictur of the top four ins, Han Yener (female pop sger, seen Figure 3 on the ver of the issue), Ajda Pekkan (female pop sger), Murathan Mungan (gay male thor and poet), and Aysel Gurel (female pop songwrer), are promently featured as part of one-to-three-page articl about them, there are only two small (one ch by one ch) photos of Zeki Muren and Bulent Ersoy (the photos are the same imag I discsed the prev sectn). The magaze’s edors published the photos next to the rears’ ments about why they view certa celebri, as opposed to others, as gay ins; the imag and the ments are prted a separate one-ch pk strip that ns across the bottom of the pag that clu the issue’s in-related articl.

The paratively small size and the placement of the pictur of Muren and Ersoy downplays their importance visually, spe their beg historilly the most fluential and visible ins thanks to the mass media; some of the articl discs and cricize their ambivalence and ambiguy as “gay” ins tail. As for Zeki Muren, Guner, the same Kaos GL lumnist, lls him “our homophobic in” (41) and lks Muren and Ersoy’s legacy of distancg themselv om the LGBT muny to Tarkan, a younger pop mic sger who was also clud on the list of the top-ten gay ins.

Most recently, Tarkan, a self-proclaimed heterosexual— the face of qutns about his sexual orientatn, not to mentn his naked pictur wh another male on the beach—adopted the same strategy of nformg to the Turkish public’s genr expectatns through statg, for stance, that homosexualy uld be cured through psychoanalysis. Consirg the issue’s troductn of the ncept of gay ins and s celebratn of the top ten ins (wh the notable exceptn of Muren and Ersoy), Ysel’s ments should not be viewed as the muny’s rejectn of the ncept self, or even of Muren and Ersoy for that matter, sce the rears who took the survey did vote for them. What Ysel’s ments nvey is that wh the ntext of Turkey, where homosexualy as a public intifitn the Wtern sense is a new phenomenon, the applitn of the ncept of gay ins as a purely affirmative ncept is not yet possible, pecially when the most visible and fluential gay ins never intified as homosexual or transgenr, rpectively, and liberately distanced themselv om the muny.