“When Hate Turns into and Instrument” by Alper Turan with B.Toprak Karakaya, Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu, and Yasemin Kalaycı and Elçin Acun, the founders of Koli Artwork House, is an essay commissioned by PROTODISPATCH, a brand new digital publication that includes private views by artists addressing transcontinental issues, filtered by the place they’re on the earth. It was initially printed by the worldwide nonprofit Protocinema and seems right here as a part of a collaboration between Protocinema and Artnet Information.
On September 18, 2022, an “anti-LGBT+ march” was held in Istanbul beneath the identify of “The Massive Household Gathering” with the slogan “Defend Your Household and Technology, Cease Perversion” and the participation of communities and sects was supported by the state establishments and political events.
The Istanbul Pleasure March has been banned since 2015 on the grounds that it endangers “public security.” Consequently, this march has been subjected to intense police violence for the final seven years. 300 and seventy-three individuals had been arrested through the satisfaction march in 2022, the biggest mass detention lately. Activists had been detained, subjected to bodily and psychological violence, and stored in police autos for a lot of hours.
The requires participation in “The Massive Household Gathering” is the newest transfer by the anti-LGBT+ motion organized by the political Islamist authorities and ultra-nationalist events and supported by state establishments.
Their actions reproduce the conspiracy theories which were taken with no consideration lately, arguing that “LGBT propaganda within the digital age is a virus that’s enveloping Turkey and the world” and that “If you wish to say ‘cease’ to the worldwide and imperialist lobbies that wish to ungender the neighborhood, cut back the human propagation, and destroy the household establishment, be part of our Massive Household Gathering to guard our household, our kids, and future generations.”
A video of the decision for participation was deemed a “public service announcement” by Turkey’s Radio and Tv Supreme Council (RTÜK) and was inspired to be broadcast freed from cost by nationwide channels.
This anti-LGBT+ motion, which goals to interact voters prematurely of the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2023 by exacerbating mass polarization, performs illusionary victimhood whereas channeling the anger of the more and more impoverished individuals to “straightforward goal LGBT+ individuals” and instrumentalizes hatred. The LGBT+ neighborhood, the goal of more and more energetic hate politics lately, is handled as a felony group and queer individuals, who’re presently not allowed any public visibility and illustration, are uncovered to every kind of unfair remedy and violence and put in insecure and precarious positions.
In Turkey, not solely is the Pleasure Parade banned, the rainbow flag thought-about a felony machine and the abbreviation “LGBT” is taken into account propaganda, however all counter-protest occasions resembling March 8 conferences, the Boğaziçi College resistance, and concert events of opposition singers, had been additionally banned. The existence and motion of all opposing identities are beneath fixed paranoid management.
This textual content, produced for Protodispatch (Protocinema’s new digital publication undertaking that commissions artists’ views on native and intercontinental points), consists of the responses of 4 queer tradition employees from Istanbul to the anti-LGBT+ rally that came about on September 18.
Younger filmmaker Toprak Kara, who participated in The Massive Household Gathering, shared the pictures they took from the stroll with us. Toprak Kara, who dared to go to the rally carrying a hat with the rainbow flag–which has now been designated a terrorist image–documented the uniform mass, the ironic moments of the march, and the appropriated slogans used on banners.
On the identical day and similtaneously the Massive Household Gathering, Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu’s queer efficiency at Salt Beyoğlu within the coronary heart of town unfolded. By means of this new work, titled Angelus Altera, she* transforms Turkey’s queer previous and resistance into energetic analysis via her* physique. Darıcıoğlu makes use of her* hair to beat seven sand dunes, every full of rainbow-colored glitter till every is flattened, spaying glitter in every single place. This whipping motion mirrors the “whipping up” of emotion on the hate march that coincided with her* efficiency and came about a number of kilometers away.
Yasemin Kalaycı and Elçin Acun create a queer, feminist, and clear artwork area instantly involved with the hustle of town in an environment the place queer illustration on the road is not possible. Kalaycı and Acun share their concepts about Turkey’s more and more aggressive governmental LGBT+ coverage and their experiences via Koli Artwork House, which they based in 2021 in Kadıköy, which could be thought-about an alternate ghetto of town and even the nation. Koli Artwork House reestablishes our religion in artwork and politics by foregrounding the hope that artwork can function political illustration when public participation is just not potential.
— Alper Turan
*As an artist who disagrees with the binary gender system, Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu makes use of “she/her” as a strikethrough with an asterisk in writings and takes “they/them” in verbal language.
B. Toprak Karakaya
Images from the anti-LGBT+ rally that came about on September 18, 2022
A “hafız” candidate (a time period utilized by Muslims for somebody who has fully memorized the Quran) holding an indication saying, “We’re towards every kind of hatred, violence, and imposition directed at people” in an anti-LGBT+ rally held in İstanbul. Turning into by chance pro-LGBTI, the younger “hafız” was utilizing the identical sentence LGBTI+ are utilizing to assault them. Photograph: B. Toprak Karakaya.
Though any picture of the rainbow has been lately thought-about sacrilegious amongst many Islamic teams and is prohibited in Turkey to promote to minors, a lady carries a rainbow tote bag, ready for the rain to cease. Photograph: B. Toprak Karakaya.
A girl holds an indication, saying “Say cease to these making an attempt to remove your grandchildren’s proper to dwell”. Photograph: B. Toprak Karakaya.
Members of the Ottoman Motorbike Membership, a male-only monarchist group, had been current on the rally. They had been carrying gilets with an Ottoman coat of arms and fez, a logo of Ottoman affiliation. Photograph: B. Toprak Karakaya.
B. Toprak Karakaya is standing among the many rally crowd, carrying a hat with a rainbow flag.
B. Toprak Karakaya, subsequent to a rally attendee carrying a t-shirt with an “Islam” umbrella defending a “household” from a rainbow. The graphic idea, re-appropriated in line with specifics of assorted localities, are being utilized in Russia, Poland, and Qatar.
Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu
Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu, Angelus Altera. A shot from the efficiency in Salt Beyoğlu on September 18, 2022. Courtesy Salt, İstanbul. Photograph: Emirkan Çördük.
“His Our face is turned towards the previous. The place we you understand a series of occasions, he sees we see one single disaster that retains piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in entrance of his our ft. The angel wish to keep, awaken the lifeless, and make entire what has been smashed. We’re going there, summoning the ghosts and making entire what has been smashed.”1
On July 2, 1993, the primary LGBTI+ Pleasure March and the three-day occasion program that Turkish lubunyas2 wished to prepare beneath the identify of Sexual Freedom Actions had been banned on the grounds that they had been towards the customs and values of society. The home doorways of a few of the lubunyas on the organizing crew had been destroyed with sledgehammers, homes had been plundered, individuals had been detained, and contributors who got here from overseas for assist had been deported.
Though the primary Pleasure March came about solely ten years later, in 2003, this primary try to march pierced the twilight that had fallen on that day, paving the way in which for the lubunyas to seek out one another, come collectively, and create in the present day’s highly effective Queer motion.
Whereas the magnitude of violence has been rising yearly and the facility has been progressively taking part in for top stakes for the final seven years, think about a gaggle of people that didn’t shut themselves of their houses and gathered in Beyoğlu and its environment to inscribe their existence within the metropolis, to defend their want, their existence, to not be alone and to not depart one another alone, though they knew that they’d be uncovered to police violence.
Though it’s scary to look at what has occurred within the final two and a half years since I moved away from Turkey, the lubunyas remind me that even when our backs hit the bottom after each protest, we’ve one another to raise us up and rub our wounds. The slogan of the West, “The Future is Queer,” printed on T-shirts, is breath for the our bodies right here, that’s clear. We’re the long run; the long run is lubunya.
Whereas I used to be designing Angelus Altera, the durational efficiency I carried out at Salt Beyoğlu on September 18, I had these ideas in thoughts: The primary three and a half hours of the efficiency looked on the twilight of the 80s, which is an inflection level for each lubunyas and Turkey normally. On one hand, throughout this era, a jail of worry was woven into your complete society by the army coup and the individuals who died and had been tortured in prisons. Then again, the 80s characterize the loneliness of not having the ability to discover one another, and even not realizing one’’s personal existence.
The Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian homes that had been destroyed and the lives that had been displaced when Tarlabaşı Boulevard was being opened revealed the damaged doorways of Ülker Avenue, a trans ghetto of the 90s, violated by Hortum Süleyman3, who was the commissioner of Beyoğlu Police Station and well-known for his transphobia. There was additionally the worry that got here between our bodies and wishes with the HIV/AIDS disaster.
The subsequent three and a half hours of my efficiency contained the voice of destroying borders and organising extra-territorial positions, as within the historical past of Turkish efficiency artwork, of the battle and the resistance on the one aspect of the nation, of getting stronger as lubunyas, of coming collectively, and the way in which of claiming: “We’re the long run and it doesn’t matter what you do, you can’t cease us.”
Figuring out that RTÜK4, the media watchdog of the nation, of which I’m a citizen and to which I pay taxes, issued the decision of the Household Gathering as an invite to the assaults that had been taking place 20 minutes away, spreading hatred towards queer existence, infected my efficiency of Angelus Alter.
There have been silent cries of, “Right here’s your hatred, right here’s your loved ones,” by the sand piles that I beat with my hair. My screaming, my whip materialized all through my hair, as my hair was beating the dunes and my physique was undulating on this three-and-a-half-hour pogo of sand and hair. My each fall unfold extra rainbows, extra glitter, extra sparkles. The tears I noticed within the eyes of the viewers had been saying: We’re tearing down these hills which might be being put towards us, we’re uniting already, we’re dancing collectively within the sand and the shine, in tears and want.
1. Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of Historical past, Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, New York: Schocken Books, 1969: p249. The textual content has been manipulated by Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu and Natis fka. Hasan Aksaygın and utilized in Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu’s Angelus Alterus efficiency.
2. A lubunca (Turkish queer and secretive language) phrase that was first used to imply a female homosexual or trans lady, however later expanded to explain all queer gender identities in the present day.
3. The previous chief of police. He’s recognized for his acts of violence towards transsexuals in Beyoğlu throughout his tenure. In 2000, he was tried and given a jail sentence of two years, three months and 27 days on the grounds that he had dedicated violence towards 9 transgender individuals throughout his responsibility, however he escaped punishment on account of an amnesty in 2003.
4. Radio and Tv Supreme Council, often known as RTÜK, is the Turkish state company for monitoring, regulating, and sanctioning radio and tv broadcasts.
Koli Art Space (Yasemin Kalaycı & Elçin Acun)
Shot from Koli Artwork House opening reception of the present exhibition, ÇARK, September 3, 2022. Photograph by Tahir Akkurt.
Turkey’s coverage towards LGBTI+ people is heading towards a fairly divisive level because of the approaching elections. These in energy are consistently calling for hatred via their long-held channels. The media are efficient at this. Persons are invited to precise solidarity in rallies such because the “Massive Household Gathering and March,” with absurd, baseless, and outdated arguments offered within the identify of public service bulletins. A contagious hostility is fueled by creating a way of unity out of hatred.
In the meantime, peaceable protests, such because the “8 March Feminist Night time March” and “Pleasure Month Occasions,” are fully prohibited and, once they do occur, are met with police violence. On this regime, it’s then okay to face behind the rhetoric of violence in gatherings resembling “household” rallies.
Political energy decides which physique is essential and is taken into account a reliable a part of the social physique and may simply persuade individuals to marginalize, devalue, deem expendable, and even criminalize those that are completely different. This threatens our very existence by fueling a lynch mob tradition.
Greater than ever, we’d like areas the place we will enable our ideas to breathe, meet round related ideologies, produce collectively, and really feel secure with out being uncovered to hate speech. At KOLİ Artwork House, this has been our purpose for the reason that starting, and on this context, we hope to be activists within the wrestle for the liberation and visibility of LGBTI+ people, specializing in gender equality.
KOLİ is a spot within the neighborhood of Yeldeğirmeni, with home windows on all facades. Due to this fact, it establishes a direct relationship with the skin and has an structure that draws the eye of even those that usually are not artwork audiences and invitations them inside. Yeldeğirmeni has modified tremendously in the previous couple of years; it has grow to be costly and a few of the individuals who have lived there a very long time have needed to transfer, whereas boutique cafes have changed native shopkeepers.
Regardless of these adjustments, it’s nonetheless a district the place the neighborhood tradition continues. We’re surrounded by native tradesmen; individuals connect significance to neighborly relations. We observe that they dwell by respecting one another’s areas with out concerning one another as strangers. It is among the uncommon districts in Istanbul the place we will exist comfortably and freely with out a sense of elitism.
Though most mainstream galleries are on the European aspect, the artists desire to maintain their workshops right here on the Asian aspect of the Bosphorus. They settle in districts resembling Yeldeğirmeni, the place they’ll really feel the spirit of town and expertise the chaos of Istanbul and type a neighborhood relatively than in newly established neighborhoods. Native shopkeepers and our neighbors are accustomed to artists and venues on this sense. This openness is a bonus that will increase the visibility and variety of the individuals we handle, but additionally makes it weak.
To date, we’ve not had large issues through the occasions we’ve held. Whereas we’ve typically encountered complaints through the performances that overflowed the streets and, now and again, the police even got here, nothing severe ensued.
As people who find themselves so usually denied and pushed into the shadows in public locations, it is necessary for us to be seen. On the identical time, the rise in hate speech in in the present day’s local weather inevitably pushes us to be cautious.
We dream of having the ability to shield what we’ve with out worry, with confidence and to be extra liberated with each step.
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