LambdaIstanbul Office Closed, Association to Meet on the Street
Turkey’s first LGBTI organization Lambdaistanbul was unable to find an office due to discrimination and increasing rents.
The association will hold its routine coordination meeting, previously held in its own space this time at the Tarlabaşı entrance of Mis Street on Friday August 1st at 7:30 pm, since it no longer has a space. Everybody is invited to the meeting.
Opening its first office in 2002 in Taksim, Istanbul, Lambdaistanbul legally became an association in 2006.
The record of the Beyoğlu LGBTI movement
In their declaration, Lambdaistanbul LGBTI Solidarity Association remarked upon the great importance of Beyoğlu district in the memory of Turkey’s LGBTI movement and said:
"This was a place where LGBTI individuals / queers [“lubunya”] socialized and met to exchange ideas even before Lambda and even before the concept of LGBTI ever entered these lands. But now we have to say goodbye to the streets of the LGBTI Pride Parade, which we realized in June of this year with the participation of thousands."
The declaration specified that even if they couldn’t find an office, they would retain their right to stay in place.
"Our search for an office since in our declaration in May have not yielded any results. The reason is the gentrification of Beyoğlu district, and our inability to pay the high rents in increasingly gentrified Beyoğlu. It’s either that the rents demanded for places are astronomical, or that ‘there is no room for gay or trans people here.’
"Beyoğlu has been made into a new mall with chain stores and venues for food, drink and consumption that are gradually all becoming the same. That which has no place in the New Beyoğlu plan is today the Lambdaistanbul LGBTI Solidarity Association, and perhaps tomorrow this will be all LGBTI individuals lacking the sufficient consuming power.
"Although we need to evacuate our current space, we will not be leaving Beyoğlu if we can help it, and we invite everybody to our coordination meeting to defend the streets of our town and most importantly ‘our right to remain where we are.’” (NV/PU)
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From house meetings to becoming an association, 21 years of the struggle A team gets together in the year 1993 to stage a Pride Parade and the first LGBTİ organization in Turkey is founded under the name, Lambdaistanbul Homosexual Civil Society Initiative. It is not easy back then for an LGBTI organization to find an office for itself. The initiative starts firstly to meet in people’s houses. Later on they continue their meetings either by paying hourly rent or by request, in the spaces of various civil society institutions. Opening its first office in 2002 in Taksim, Istanbul, Lambdaistanbul legally becomes an association in 2006.
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