LGBTIs Call For Solidarity on 24th İstanbul Pride Week

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24th Istanbul LGBTI Pride Week will be will be between July 20-26 this year (2016) and closed with the 14th Pride Parade which will begin at 5 p.m. on June 26, Sunday

Pride Week volunteers who have been compensating the costs of the events through crowdsourcing in the recent years, have again called on everybody for support.

Those who wish to support the Pride Week can join the campaign on İndiegogo website and can make a donation as much as they want.

The volunteers have noted that although they had not been able to actualize the parade last year due to police intervention, they had managed to gather in various parts of the city for pride events and pointed out to the importance of these activities for the LGBTI movement.

Görkem Ulumeriç from Pride Week Committee talking to bianet has noted that pride week was the time when the visibility of the LGBTI persons is at its utmost, thus may the people not spare their support.

Click here to see the campaign.

What is on the 24th Pride Week?

Throughout the pride week that previously was shaped by the themes of ‘Attention:Family!’, ‘Taboo’, ‘Memory’, ‘Resistance’, ‘Contact’ and ‘Normal’, people will search for an answer of a stronger solidarity and organization of various resistance ways within the forums and panels determined by topics and agendas of LGBT+ movement.       

Pride Week Volunteers declare that the march will take place in Taksim again this year noting; “We are not leaving the streets and not letting fear to rule our bodies. As we stated before, we will continue our struggle until there's no oppression on our desires, bodies, labours, acts and, identities”.

“We will meet in these events in order to be able to touch each other, heal our wounds and create a safe space to speak of our bodies and affects.

“We will determine the candidates of 12th Hormone-fed Tomatoes Awards by your established consideration and then choose regarding the most homophobic/transphobic hate speeches of the year via your votes. Throughout the week, we will party and celebrate our solidarity within the hundreds of people, LGBTI+ groups from wide areas of Turkey and strengthen our rebellion”.

Pride Week in Turkey

Pride Week was planned to be celebrated in 1993 for the first time in Turkey under the name of “Sexual Freedom Week”. Yet as the Governorship has not granted permission and the guests coming from abroad were deported, the activities could not be realized.

The demands of the movement and the social support it got became stronger before law and the first İstanbul Pride Parade was actualized in 2003, 10 years after the Pride Week began to be celebrated.

The march, which had only been actualized with participation of only 20-30 persons back then, grew bigger with time and reportedly 100,000 persons have attended the march on İstiklal street in 2013.

In 2015 the 13th Pride Parade has unexpectedly been blocked by the police. Yet the movement and its activists are determined to fill the streets for the 14th Pride Pride on June 26, 2016. (ÇT/DG)