Month: July 2018

Turkey’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex activists gathered Sunday for an LGBTI pride march in Istanbul, moving from street to street for an hour as police tried to end an event the local government had banned for the fourth year in a row.

Hundreds of people chanted slogans and waved rainbow flags on side streets along Istiklal Avenue, Istanbul’s main pedestrian thoroughfare. The organizers released a statement saying the city’s ban would not deter them from marching peacefully.

Despite the ban, police allowed the organizers to read a press statement. “We do not recognize this ban,” the group said in the statement read out loud by a volunteer, calling the prohibition imposed by Istanbul’s governor “comical.”

Police told the crowd to disperse after the statement, warning “otherwise, we will intervene.” Officers patrolled with dogs and had water cannons stationed nearby.

They fired tear gas on groups in some areas and were seen elsewhere pushing and shouting at participants who were too slow to scatter.

March organizers said Friday that the governor had prohibited the march in violation of the right to freedom of assembly.

The governor has cited security reasons and public “sensitivities” as grounds for barring LGBTI marches since 2015. Prior to that, Turkish authorities had allowed pride marches since the first one took place in 2003. As many as 100,000 people attended Istanbul Pride in 2014.

While police tried to disperse Sunday’s march, participants kept reassembling in clusters different parts of the city’s Taksim district, chanting “Don’t be silent, shout out, homosexuals exist.”

Another activist read from the statement that the march organizers also circulated online and said, “We miss the marches attended by thousands where we celebrate our visibility.”

On Thursday, the governor in Turkey’s capital city of Ankara, citing the need to protect “public order,” banned a screening of “Pride,” a Golden Globe-nominated film about gay activists in the United Kingdom. The prohibition on the movie followed a blanket ban issued in November on LGBTI events in Ankara.

Although homosexuality and being transgender are not illegal in Turkey, LGBTI people face discrimination and hate crimes.

Yasemin Oz, an activist and lawyer, told The Associated Press that transgender and gay people were “ostracized and discriminated against” in accessing education, health care and employment.

LGBTI individuals need to “go out to the streets, show themselves, say `We are here, we are among you,”’ if they are to be accepted by society, Oz Said.

The Turkish government denies that individuals are discriminated against based on gender identity or sexual orientation and says current laws are sufficient to protect the rights of every citizen. The government says perpetrators of anti-LGBTI hate crimes are prosecuted.

Turkey has been under a state of emergency for nearly two years following a failed coup attempt, which allows authorities to curtail some freedoms.

 
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Germany’s interior minister and head of the Christian Social Union party reportedly offered his resignation from both posts Sunday night rather than back down from his stance against Chancellor Angela Merkel’s migration policies, as the crisis within her governing coalition came to a head.

The dpa news agency, citing information from unidentified participants, reported that a nearly eight-hour meeting of the CSU in Munich was put on hold after Interior Minister Horst Seehofer made his offer. Dpa reported that Alexander Dobrindt, the leader of the CSU in parliament, told others Seehofer could not be allowed to resign.

If Seehofer does step down, it was not immediately clear what effect the move would have on a three-week impasse between Merkel and her Bavarian-only CSU partners, which has centered around his resolve to turn away some types of asylum-seekers at Germany’s borders.

Merkel has insisted on Europe-wide solutions to handling the waves of desperate foreigners trying to reach the continent and the standoff could spell the end of her fourth government.

Merkel insisted earlier Sunday that a plan to regulate immigration European Union leaders approved Friday and agreements she hashed out with several key countries would accomplish what Seehofer seeks.

“The sum total of everything we have agreed upon has the same effect” as what Seehofer has demanded, Merkel said in an interview with ZDF television. “That is my personal opinion. The CSU must naturally decide that for itself.”

But dpa reported that Seehofer told the forum he thinks the measures do not adequately accomplish his goals.

As the CSU met in Munich, Merkel’s Christian Democrats met in Berlin to discuss what comes next.

Seehofer, whose party faces a state election in the fall, has threatened to turn away at the borders migrants whose asylum requests Germany already rejected or who already sought asylum elsewhere in Europe.

Merkel has rejected that approach, saying Germany needs to address migration more broadly to preserve EU unity. If Seehofer goes ahead with his policies, the dispute could end the decades-old conservative alliance between the CSU and Merkel’s CDU.

Merkel and Seehofer met Saturday night for two hours. The German leader would not comment Sunday on the outcome of the talks. She also would not speculate on whether she might fire him or if the issue could lead to a government confidence vote in parliament.

She said she would wait and see what the leadership of the two parties decides “and then we will see what comes next, step for step.”

Merkel reiterated her position that if countries start turning migrants away at national borders unilaterally, it would cause neighboring countries to close their borders and jeopardize the border-free movement the Europe’s so-called Schengen-zone.

She said the decision by leaders of European Union countries Friday to strengthen the 28-nation bloc’s exterior borders and her proposal for “anchor centers” to process migrants at Germany’s borders would work better.

“I want Europe to remain together,’” she said. “That is why the unified action of Europe is so important to me.”

Merkel also secured agreement from Greece and Spain to take back from Germany migrants who previously registered in those countries. She said 14 other nations had given verbal assent to work toward similar deals.

 
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