Karin Karakaşlı

Welcome to the Fag Case

Source: Karin Karakaşlı, “İbne Davasına Buyrun,” (“Welcome to the Fag Case”), Radikal 2, 09 March 2014, http://www.radikal.com.tr/radikal2/ibne_davasina_buyrun-1180089

The next hearing will take place on 25 March 2014.

Prime Minister Erdoğan has raised an official complaint against LGBT activist and HDP (People’s Democratic Party) Beyoğlu District President Levent Pişkin. The first trial of the court case will take place at the Çağlayan Courthouse on March 13 (Thursday) at 9 AM.

Topkapı? Dolmabahçe? The most respected palace for me is the Çağlayan Palace of Justice. I have visited Çağlayan more times than I have the others. And what about that magnificent C Gate with its vast, cold and windy square? There are no words to describe it. But I shall try. Because once again, it looks like we, the impure, are headed for the Palace of Justice.

We are an idiosyncratic crowd. I mean, we might not resemble a festive, charmingly bewildered and careless tourist fleet but we have gathered enough visibility to deserve our own description. You will recognize us from our troubled faces. There are bags under our eyes but our eyes are always bright. We owe that brightness and the tension in our souls to the consistency of the state. We usually carry a number of different banners. We scream for whichever soul has been wronged most recently and we make it our own struggle to achieve justice that never seems to manifest in the courts.

Now, we have a new object of struggle. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan raised an official complaint against LGBTI activist and HDP (People’s Democratic Party) Beyoğlu District President Levent Pişkin. The first trial of the court case will take place at the Çağlayan Courthouse 18th Criminal Court of Peace on March 13 (Thursday) at 9 AM.

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