14th Istanbul LGBTI+ Pride Week Committee Press Statement on 26 June 2016

Istanbul LGBTI+ Pride Week Committee could not complete their press statement in Tünel. However, LGBTI+ “dispersed” and continue to read the press statement at safe locations. Links below.

The reason why we are reading this press statement today is because the 14th Istanbul LGBTI+ Pride March has been banned.

Pride Marches are among the biggest, multi-voiced, and mass demonstrations that this country has witnessed. In our marches, we stand up to this dark time that is our share in world history, with our love and desire. We hold those who seize our labor accountable, we take our destiny into our hands, we dream our own future. We defend peace instead of war, courage instead of fear, and all who are oppressed. We show that a different world, sexuality, body, and life is possible. Those who banned our march used “society’s sensitivities” as an excuse. But what’s being guarded is not society’s but the government’s sensitivities. Society is none other than us. What’s being banned is our attempt to voice our longing to exist as proud people of this world, our demands, peace, justice, and equality. Banning our march is an unsuccessful attempt to silence our voices.

Unsuccessful because the pride of our existence grows with every oppression. We proudly own all the insults they throw at us to hurt us. We are expanding our limited spaces with solidarity. We are leading a revolution on every street we walk, on every work day, every house, every love and every act of lovemaking. We are killed and reborn in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Antep, Diyarbakir, Mexico, Bangladesh, and Orlando. We will always exist, shout out our existence, and always be proud of our existence.

We are not marching today but we just started marching [forwards]. The sound of our slogans is in our ears, the colors of the rainbow are with us, the scent of freedom is in our noses. We are on this path to demand more than tolerance and permits. We are continually strengthening our resistance everywhere to demand that our personal, political, and social rights are guaranteed; that sexual orientation and gender identity are included in the constitution; and that the reality of the LGBTI+ movement as a political participant is recognized.

We are dispersing, we are stronger, bigger, and louder. They are right to be afraid of us because we are uniting, growing, and marching.

Photographs by Şener Yılmaz Aslan

Source: https://www.facebook.com/prideistanbul/videos/929854223808858/

Source: https://www.facebook.com/istanbullgbti/videos/1010217819055947/

Source: https://www.facebook.com/ekinyasa/videos/10209691695110490/

Source: https://www.facebook.com/reisof/videos/1238197612871136/

Source: https://www.facebook.com/prideistanbul/videos/929893753804905/

Source: https://www.facebook.com/prideistanbul/videos/929899170471030/

Source: https://www.facebook.com/prideistanbul/videos/929916480469299/

Source: https://www.facebook.com/prideistanbul/videos/929918987135715/

Source: https://www.facebook.com/nihal.noraluca/videos/10157270513035713/

Source: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1320791064615656&id=153245714703536

5 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.