The ban on gay dating app Grindr in Turkey has been taken to the Constitutional Court by Kaos GL Association.
Source: Ömer Akpinar, “Eşcinsel uygulamasına sansür Anayasa Mahkemesi’nde”, kaosGL.org, 27 March 2015, http://kaosgl.org/sayfa.php?id=19062
Kaos GL Association has made an individual application today to the Turkish Constitutional Court on behalf of the association’s Umut Guner against the ban on gay dating app Grindr.
The website of Grindr has been blocked by the Turkish Telecommunications Directorate since August 2013 as a “protective measure”.
Homosexuality is “automatically considered as a crime”
The application to the Constitutional Court was prepared with the support of Prof. Dr. Yaman Akdeniz from Istanbul Bilgi University, Faculty of Law, and Asst. Prof. Dr. Kerem Altiparmak from Ankara University, Faculty of Political Sciences, Human Rights Center. The application emphasizes that the decision to ban Grindr does not define obscenity and prostitution and that it automatically considers homosexuality is a crime.
Access to Grindr was blocked based on an individual application to the prosecutor’s office for the sharing of personal information without consent. The application to the Constitutional Court underlines that the protection measure has negatively affected the plaintiff for an undetermined amount of time even though the plaintiff had nothing to do with the event.