Pembe CarettaLGBT Rights Claiming in Antalya, Turkey

This essay discusses the emergence, strategies, and challenges faced by Pembe Caretta (www.facebook.com/pembecarettalgbt), a grassroots advocacy group in Antalya, a major city in southern Turkey with a population of three million people. I conducted one-on-one interviews in a room at the back of an Antalya bookstore with eleven members (six women, four men, and one self-identified transsexual) between twenty and twenty-seven years old in the summer of 2014, finding participants with the help of LGBTactivist friends. I asked about members' involvement with Pembe Caretta, the difficulties faced by the group, and the challenges of LGBTactivists in Turkey.

The group's name and rainbow-colored logo, which includes a prominent design of the endangered loggerhead sea turtle (the species has a large breeding ground in Antalya), signal its commitment to animal and environmental protection as well as support for a social minority. The group mission focuses on LGBT "right to life, right to accommodation, and right to education." Pembe Caretta works to combat homo-phobia and transphobia—which include high rates of discrimination and "honor" killings by family members—through awareness-raising projects, events, and education targeting the LGBTcommunity. Even with an increasingly conservative political climate throughout the country, Pembe Caretta faces more challenging conditions than established LGBT organizations in Istanbul and Ankara. The LGBT community in Antalya is not particularly open or active. Activists prefer to cooperate discretely with student groups at the university and the national rainbow coalition.

Students at Akdeniz University, the only postsecondary institution in Antalya until recently, established Pembe Caretta in September 2013. They initially tried to register as a student club, but the administration rejected their request on the grounds that they used the terms gender identity (cinsel kimlik) and sexual orientation (cinsel yonelim) in their mission statement. They decided to broaden the mission scope to include and defend animal and environmental rights. They sign collective press releases and declarations about animal rights, environmental rights, and so on.

The group has not registered as an official association with the state, an issue of debate among the members. Registering as an association would give them legal standing, which is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, such standing is essential for engaging officially with the state, for instance, suing for human rights violations and applying for funding for projects. On the other hand, it would also make the group institutionally visible and in direct confrontation with the state, which some members want to avoid. They mentioned several cases in which municipalities filed to close LGBT organizations in other parts of Turkey.

One of their main challenges is to find actual spaces to hold events in Antalya. When the group tries to "find a place to organize a talk or symposium or workshop," officials or managers often tell them they must "book as an association or foundation." In other cases, an owner will say that "they are all booked up or under construction as an excuse. We do not confront the owners because we believe [prejudice] will break down in time." The group usually gathers in the local bookstore where I conducted the interviews. These interviews took place in the summer of 2014 with eleven members of the group between the ages of twenty and twenty-seven.

Activists believe that visibility poses special problems. Most LGBT people in the city are not out because open presence as an LGBT person is regarded as "abad or dangerous thing." LGBT groups organize annual gay parades in several cities in Turkey, including Antalya. While attendance is not as high as in Istanbul, local LGBT groups nevertheless come out to celebrate gay pride. During the 2014 LGBT parade in Antalya, which about 350 people attended, Pembe Caretta distributed masks for people who wanted to avoid being identified. While fifty masks were printed, they were surprised when only ten people wore a mask during the parade. Nevertheless, most "people don't want to be seen with a gay/lesbian," including politicians, even if some of them accept the existence of LGBT people.

Interviewed Pembe Caretta activists used human rights frames...