Belgrade groups call solidarity protest at Turkish embassy over crackdown on queer community

Fifteen organisations from Belgrade are calling on citizens to join a solidarity protest with Turkey’s queer community on Friday, 18 September, at 7 p.m. in front of the Embassy of the Republic of Turkey at Krunska 1.

The trigger is a wave of arrests that began in Turkey on 12 September. According to the organisers’ statement, reported by the Belgrade outlet Mašina, police have raided private homes, the offices of LGBTIQ+ organisations, bars and other queer spaces, seized property and detained activists, while courts have ordered websites and social media accounts blocked. Searches and detentions are continuing, the organisers say, and police are breaking up support rallies and detaining journalists who report on them.

Turkey’s justice minister has said that legal measures are being taken against 162 people, nine associations and 13 businesses. The operation has been named “My Family Is Safe” and is presented by the authorities as part of a fight to protect family values, within the “Decade of Family and Population” declared by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

“We know this pattern well”

The Belgrade organisers demand an end to the persecution of Turkey’s queer community, the release of those detained, the dropping of court proceedings and an end to censorship. In their statement they note that authoritarian regimes use “family values” and “protecting children” as a pretext to impose identity divisions and to channel public discontent towards groups that are already marginalised.

“This year we mark 25 years since the first Pride march in Belgrade, when the desire for freedom was violently crushed, which is why we remember that day as the Bloody Pride. The progress we have made over the past two years has been possible only through joint struggle and solidarity. When solidarity crosses borders, it is a message to every authoritarian regime that they can neither erase us nor silence us,” the statement reads.

Who is behind the call

The protest is called by Kvir zbor Beograda, Belgrade Pride, Labris, the Centre for Queer Studies, Dugina iskra, ERA LGBTI, XY Spectrum, the Centre for Crisis Policy and Response, Talas TIRV, Snaga, Da se zna, the Reconstruction Women’s Fund, the Centre for Women’s Studies, Kvir front and Potent.

Similar rallies, at the invitation of Turkey’s queer community, are being held in the coming days outside embassies and international organisations around the world. So far they have been confirmed in Berlin, The Hague, Amsterdam, London, Brussels, Bern, Toronto, Vienna, Skopje, Marseille, Barcelona and Rome.

Source: masina.rs. English adaptation: gay-serbia.com.