Hundreds of people marched briefly in Istanbul on Sunday in an LGBTQ+ pride parade, defying a ban imposed by authorities. Several of them were arrested, an AFP videographer saw.
Waving rainbow flags and chanting various slogans, the demonstrators managed to walk for about ten minutes on Baghdad Avenue, one of the most famous arteries of the Turkish megacity, before suddenly dispersing in an attempt to escape the police.
Several of them were arrested by the police, noted an AFP videographer.
The authorities had banned the event, as they have done every year since 2015, denouncing calls for demonstrations coming from “illegal groups”.
Taksim Square cordoned off
On the other side of Istanbul, the large Taksim Square, once a center of protest against the Islamo-conservative power, was closed off on Sunday morning. In an adjoining street, police officers deployed in large numbers were filtering access to the main pedestrian avenue Istiklal, noted another AFP journalist.
Several nearby metro stations were also closed.
“Your thousands of police officers, your helicopters and your bans will not stop us. All the streets of this city are ours,” the march organizers proclaimed in a statement.
Homosexuality is not criminally repressed in Turkey, but homophobia is widespread right up to the top of the state, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan regularly describing LGBTQ+ people as “perverts” and threats to the traditional family.
Until 2014, Istanbul, the largest Turkish city, saw tens of thousands of LGBTQ+ people march each year claiming their identities and expressing their distrust of the Islamo-conservative government in power since 2002.
ats, afp
