Istanbul municipality responded to “GAY” license plate tweet: So what if we are gay?

The Atasehir Municipality in Istanbul responded to a viral tweet about the license plate of a municipality police vehicle with a popular pride slogan. The municipality told kaosGL.org that they are ready to give all sorts of support for LGBT people.

Source: Ömer Akpınar “Istanbul municipality responded to “GAY” license plate tweet: So what if we are gay?” Kaosgl.org, February 17 2015, http://kaosgl.org/page.php?id=18767

The Atasehir Municipality in Istanbul, which belongs to the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), responded to a tweet about the “34 GAY 94” license plate of a municipality police vehicle without falling into the trap of homophobia.

atasehir_zabita

“Not a problem for us”

ErkekTarafi (@ErosEmorotti) tweeted “Most probably the police deliberately handed this plate to the #Atasehir Municipality”, which received the following comment by the municipality:

“Even if so, they should’ve known that it does not constitute any problem for us… So what if we are gay? :)”

“So what if we are gay?”, this popular slogan of the Istanbul Pride, was followed by an inclusive message by the Mayor of Atasehir, Battal Ilgezdi: “As a municipality, we are rightfully proud to provide services to our citizens without any discrimination.”

“We are proud of the LGBT struggle”

The Atasehir Municipality made the following statement to kaosGL.org, showing their enthusiasm to give support to the LGBT struggle:

“We think that LGBT people have made a tremendous impact on democracy, human rights and the understanding of freedom in this country with their rightful struggle and we are proud of them. The LGBT movement is important not only within itself but it is also meaningful and applicable for each and every individual in society. Although we did not have a specific project [for LGBT people] so far, we are ready to give all sorts of support.”

In November, Besiktas and Sisli municipalities in Istanbul stood up against transphobia on the Trans Day of Remembrance, putting up billboards with LGBTI activists holding banners that read “just to spite hate, long live life”. The Besiktas Municipality has also begun offering free healthcare to a trans shelter.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.