LGBTI+s in Turkey's media: More visibility, more discrimination

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The Kaos Gay and Lesbian Studies Association (Kaos GL) has released its 13th annual media monitoring report examining news in terms of LGBTI+ representation and rights.

It has examined 3,476 news and column articles, with 1,882 (54 percent) articles on the national media and 1,494 on local media outlets.

While the number of articles about LGBTI+s has increased over the past three years, this isn't because the representation has improved, the report says, noting that the number of articles containing discrimination and hate speech rose from 1,097 in 2017 to 1,366 in 2020. This marks a 24.5 percent increase in three years.

In the last year, 61 percent of the articles contained prejudices against LGBTI+s, 58 percent contained discrimination and 37 percent contained hate speech while these rates were 52 percent, 35 percent and 28 percent, respectively, in 2017, according to the report.

Among the 10 newspapers that published the highest number of articles about LGBTI+s, the entire content of five newspapers included discrimination and hate speech while almost all articles in four newspapers were considered within "rights-based reporting," says the report.

In total, only 39 percent (1,366) of the articles were within the scope of rights-based reporting, according to the report.

İstanbul was the city where the highest number of articles were published and 71 percent of those articles included discrimination and hate speech.

Bursa, Konya, İzmir, Trabzon, and Ankara were the other cities with the most articles.

Government's "systematic" anti-LGBTI+ policies

These numbers are a reflection of the government's policies of "systematically targeting" LGBTI+ rights and the "institutionalization" of antş-LGBTI+ discrimination since 2015, the report says.

In certain times, media campaigns start against LGBTI+s simultaneously with discriminatory statements by senior government officials, including the president and ministers, the report notes.

"When it comes to LGBTI+ rights, the anti-LGBTI+media does both a reflexive and proactive publishing. Being anti-LGBTI+ becomes both a goal and a target," it says.

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