Kamil Pasha

Photo from The Independent

Excerpt from The Independent: (for full article, click here)

In a corner of Istanbul today, the man who might be described as Turkey’s gay poster boy will be buried – a victim, his friends believe, of the country’s deepening friction between an increasingly liberal society and its entrenched conservative traditions.

Ahmet Yildiz, 26, a physics student who represented his country at an international gay gathering in San Francisco last year, was shot leaving a cafe near the Bosphorus strait this week. Fatally wounded, the student tried to flee the attackers in his car, but lost control, crashed at the side of the road and died shortly afterwards in hospital. His friends believe Mr Yildiz was the victim of the country’s first gay honour killing….

“The media ignores or laughs off violence against gays,” says Buse Kilickaya, a member of the gay lobbying group Pink Life, adding that Ahmet Yildiz’s death “risks being swept under the carpet and forgotten like other cases in the past”. Turkey has a history of honour killings. A government survey earlier this year estimated that one person every week dies in Istanbul as a result of honour killings. It put the nationwide death toll at 220 in 2007. In the majority of cases, the victims are women, but Mr Yildiz’s friends suspect he may be the first recorded victim of a homosexual honour killing….

While his death may be unique, Mr Yildiz is by no means the first victim of widespread homophobia. When an Istanbul court decided to close down the city’s largest gay rights group late this May, commentators took the decision as evidence of a crackdown on the community spearheaded by Turkey’s current religious-minded government. Lambda Istanbul had been taken to court by the Istanbul governor’s office on the grounds that it was “against the law and morality”.

However, many gay activists are reluctant to draw a connection with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), noting it was the first party in Turkey’s history to send a deputy to attend a conference on gay rights. This year’s Gay Pride parade in Istanbul was the largest ever, they also point out. Long active in more liberal parts of western Turkey, gay groups are even beginning to meet relatively openly in the conservative east of the country where Ahmet Yildiz came from.

Tags: Culture, Istanbul, Rights //