Recep Tayyip Erdogan has shown that he is doing everything he can to win votes and emerge victorious in Turkey’s elections, and against this backdrop, the country’s president has targeted the LGBTI community in a bid to win an even larger share of nationalist voters. conservatives and support him in the electoral battle on May 14.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has never been… a friend of the LGBTI community. Otherwise. However, as the May 14 elections approach, the more he targets this community to convince the conservative public to vote for him… he bites.
A few days before the elections, the Turkish president tries to increase his voters with slogans against the LGBT+ collective. Recep Tayyip Erdogan calls them “perverts, he cited Deutsche Welle’s lengthy report on the whole matter.
The transgender deputy
If it were up to the Turkish president, Talia Aydin would probably not exist. Who is Talia Aydin and why did Recep Tayyip Erdogan attack her? The 26-year-old is a parliamentary candidate for the Turkish Workers’ Party (TİP) and He has openly declared that he is transgender.
Istanbul 2. Bölgeden adayım yoldaşlar. We will fight for all women, youth, LGBTI+ people, yurts of all religions, all ethnic groups in Turkey, farm workers, farmers. Yapacak çok ışım var. We will get rid of 20 years of yıkım ve nefret hükütinden. Devrim Daimidir🏳️🌈💜 pic.twitter.com/TGGu5Bkx0v
—Talya Aydin (@TalyaAydin96) April 9, 2023
“This country has no LGBTI community”
Aydin is one of the people Recep Tayyip Erdogan refers to almost every day just before the elections. During his speech, in the context of his election campaign, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that “this country has no LGBTI community“threatening to give”a lessonto his followers.
LOATKI (English: LGBT) is an acronym derived from the wordss lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders, constituting a hostile term for the Turkish president.
“He is in favor of marrying animals”
You can be sure that this will have religious-conservative voters. However, statements of this kind to the persons in question are not new.
For years, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Minister of the Interior, Suleyman Soylu, have fueled a hostile climate towards these people, publicly calling them “perverts” and equating them with terrorist organizations.
Soilou recently declared in a homophobic tirade that the LGBTI community is in favor of marrying animals.
the demonstrations
What may seem absurd to some, reaches some voters. In the summer of 2022, as a result of government provocation in many cities in Turkey, people took to the streets demanding, among other things, a ban on “gay propaganda”.
When transgender woman Celine Djigerji wanted to open a beauty salon in the city of Iconium, a crowd gathered in front of her house and aggressively asked her to leave the city.
Türkiye is on the verge of a big change
Turkish Workers’ Party (TİP) candidate Talia Aydin wants to address exactly this issue. “I cannot accept that now I feel less secure than when i was 14 and people thought i was a boy“, she declares. She is not afraid of being in public as a transgender. “I am not the one who should be afraid of them, they must fear a just judge in the future».
But a few months ago, she herself would not have believed that she would be able to rule a country under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
That he did it despite all that surprised her positively. The self-proclaimed socialist focuses on equality, regardless of social class, economic resources, and gender. She is sure that Türkiye is on the verge of a big change.
Oiku Didem Aydin does the same. Oikou has represented many homosexuals in court.
The country’s judiciary is corrupt, the government politicizes homophobia to rally voters. “There is a pogrom atmosphere in Türkiye, people are being attacked.says Oiku Aydin.
It has the highest murder rate of transgender people.
According to the organization “Transrespect”, Türkiye leads the statistics of European countries, with the highest percentage of murders of transgender people. Women are also underrepresented in politics. Under Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, the country withdrew from the 2011 Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women.
Islamist parties are against feminism
Recep Tayyip Erdogan now hopes to win the election with the support of all Islamist parties, which include anti-feminist agendas in their campaigns.
The Kurdish Islamist Judah Par, for example, wants to protect the “traditional” family from “deviant” ideologiesteach boys and girls separately and offer women working conditions that correspond to their “nature”.
The Islamist “New Welfare Party”, as part of its election campaign, uses a bus in which the male candidates appear with a photo of themselves while only the shadow of a candidate is visible.
They fear Erdogan’s re-election
Women and gay men fear that if Recep Tayyip Erdogan is re-elected, their situation will get worse again.
Denise Altuntas from the Center for Research on Women and the Family at Kadir Has University, points out that it is clear that the threats will not only remain verbal, but could take the form of violence. “Imagine every day a politician threaten you during your speech, claim you don’t exist, describe you as a threat to society».
If the current government continues like this, it is inevitable that rights and freedoms will continue to be restricted.
Source: Deutsche Welle