Message From Sezen Aksu for Pride Week: Love Wins

Click to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish

Sezen Aksu has sent a message to the Pride Parade Committee for the 14th İstanbul LGBTI+ Pride Week.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     The message of Sezen Aksu expressing “There is no winner in the matter of violence, sooner or later love wins” is as follows:

“Living together and treating differences with tolerance are nowadays only naive wishes or a call against what are faced with every day.Yet these words which have become devalued now, actually mean a lot. [...] No kind of violence can have a transforming effect. No violence can ever separate anyone from their nature of beliefs. It can suppress it for a while but can’t make it disappear. An attack in the existential nature of a living creature is a futile effort. There is no winner when it comes to violence. Sooner or later love wins. Hail to all LGBTI persons; my heart and prayers are with you”.

The threats addressed to Pride Parade continue

For the first time last year, police had tried to intervene the LGBTI Pride Parade which had been realised every year for 13 years.

Right after the Orlando massacre claiming lives of 49 homosexuals, certain groups had published threat messages and attack calls targeting the 7th İstanbul Trans Pride Parade on June 16 and 14th İstanbul LGBTI+ Pride Parade on June 26.

Recently Human Rights Association (İHD) İstanbul Branch and İstanbul LGBTI Solidarity Association organizing the Trans Pride Week and Social Policies Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Studies Association (SPoD LGBTI) had also taken legal action against threats targeting the Pride Parade and criminal complaint had been filed against the Muslim Anatolian Youth and Alperen Group on charges of inciting people to grudge and hostility, insulting, discrimination and threat.

İstanbul Pride Week has also announced that they would make a criminal complaint against the Muslim Anatolian Youth, ultra-nationalist Alperen Group, Tembihname and Özgür-Der. (ÇT/DG)