Pro-Kurdish and minority rights HDP pledges to eliminate discrimination against LGBTIs

The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) announced its election manifesto which places a strong emphasis on anti-discrimination protections and social policies for LGBTI people.

Kaos GL, “Pro-Kurdish HDP pledges LGBTI equality”, 21 April 2015, http://kaosgl.org/page.php?id=19240

Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Co-Chairs Figen Yuksekdag and Selahattin Demirtas announced their manifesto today for the June 7 elections.

The party, which has to pass the 10% election threshold to be in the Parliament, made pledges on social rights, union rights and freedoms, conscientious objection, women’s rights, youth, the Kurdish issue and the resolution process, judicial reform and democracy.

The manifesto also explains the HDP’s LGBTI politics under the section “LGBTIs’ equal, free and proud right to life” as follows:

“HDP will eliminate discrimination and oppression against LGBTIs”

“Our party ensures that LGBTI people will live an equal and proud life by eliminating discrimination and oppression based on sexual orientation and gender identity against a system rising upon the prevalent heterosexism which denies and ignores the diversity of sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Equal citizenship, fighting homophobia and transphobia

“A new constitution which recognizes the peoples of Turkey and all differences living in this region is also crucial for establishing the equality of LGBTIs. The HDP, which considers the issue of LGBTI recognition as a problem, will take steps to guarantee equal citizenship in the constitution as well as developing the fight to transform the homophobic and transphobic social culture.

“Local and central governing structures bodies, where LGBTIs have their say and can directly be represented in administrative and political decision-making mechanisms both in individual and organized ways, will be founded.”

Social politics against social inequalities

“Social policies will be implemented to eliminate social inequalities by extensively regulating all legislation, particularly regarding education, health, employment and housing, based on the principle of acknowledging that LGBTIs are equal citizens and that they should be protected from attacks.

“Accessible and effective mechanisms will be established regarding discrimination and violation against LGBTIs.”

The HDP nominated an openly gay candidate – Baris Sulu – from Eskisehir in the last position, making him the first and only out LGBTI candidate in the history of Turkish politics.

In a KaosGL.org interview last month, Sulu approached the ongoing Kurdish resolution process from an LGBTI perspective and said: “Peace must also be made with the LGBTIs in the resolution process.”

 

2 comments

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.