Hundreds of people marched briefly in Istanbul during an LGBTQ+ Pride March. However, this demonstration banned by the Turkish authorities was quickly stopped and several participants were arrested, a videographer from Agence France-Presse (AFP) informed on Sunday June 30.
Wearing rainbow flags and chanting various slogans, the demonstrators managed to walk for around ten minutes on Bagdad Avenue, one of the most famous arteries of the Turkish megacity. They then suddenly dispersed to try to escape the police. Several of them were arrested by the police, noted an AFP videographer.
The authorities had banned the event, like every year since 2015, denouncing calls for demonstrations from “illegal groups”. On the other side of Istanbul, the large Taksim Square, once a hotbed of protest against the conservative Islamist regime, was sealed off in the morning. Police officers deployed in large numbers were filtering access to the large pedestrian Istiklal Avenue, a thoroughfare near the famous square, another AFP journalist said.
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Homophobic climate
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”, proclaimed the organizers of the march in a press release. Homosexuality is not criminalized in Turkey, but homophobia is widespread there, right up to the top of the state. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan regularly refers to LGBTQ+ people as ” pervert “ and threats to the traditional family.
Until 2014, Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, saw tens of thousands of LGBTQ+ people march every year to assert their identities and express their defiance towards the Islamo-conservative government in power since 2002.
