LGBTI+ activists gathered in İstanbul's Kadıköy district today to mark the 12th İstanbul Pride March despite official bans.
The gathering took place in the Fenerbahçe neighborhood, an unannounced location chosen to circumvent the bans in a strategy activists have used in recent years.
During the demonstration, participants commemorated murdered trans people whose right to life was taken away. "We will build a world where trans people grow old and die," the activists said in a statement to the public.
12. İstanbul Trans Onur Yürüyüşü, Valilik ve kaymakamlıkların tüm yasaklamalarına rağmen yapılıyor:
— bianet (@bianet_org) June 21, 2026
"Yok yargı paketi, yok fiili hormon kısıtlamaları, yok beden uyum süreci yaşının anayasaya aykırı biçimde yükseltilmesi…
Tüm bu politikalarına rağmen ne yapıyoruz? Devletten… pic.twitter.com/ktmFrervkm
MP Özgül Saki from the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party also attended the demonstration.
Police officers later arrived at the scene, surrounding the group and detaining several people, including journalists Yusuf Çelik and Doğa Tekneci.
12. İstanbul Trans Onur Yürüyüşü:
— bianet (@bianet_org) June 21, 2026
Kadıköy’de toplanan LGBTİ+’lar “Deniz’den Arya’ya poyraz olup eseceğiz” pankartıyla yürüyor. pic.twitter.com/TjeC2NMxfZ
Massive police presence in Taksim
Prior to the event, authorities deployed thousands of officers, particularly around Taksim Square and its surroundings, to prevent the pride demonstration.
The Beyoğlu and Kadıköy district governor's offices had anticipated the protest and declared bans on demonstrations across their respective districts. Police forces were also stationed at main avenues and public transit station exits throughout the city.
In Taksim, metro and funicular stations were completely shut down. Taksim Square remained empty while police officers blocked side streets leading to İstiklal Avenue. Authorities even restricted local residents trying to reach their homes, demanding proof that they lived in the area.
Because the actual demonstration took place in a completely different location, the heavy police deployment in Taksim guarded an empty area.
The statement
Full text of the statement read out by the activists:
Today we are holding the 12th Trans Pride March here.
The entire city is under blockade! But here at the 12th Trans Pride March, we are together, side by side, and strong! Because we imagine it, and it becomes reality!
What did we say this year? “To dream freely is a political act. Everything can be transformed, and everything can be questioned.” And we put our words into action! We dreamed freely! We transformed the city and its familiar paths!
Just as they’ve tried tirelessly in recent years, they once again attempted to blockade the entire city and stop us—but here we are again. We found each other in the streets, all across the city. We became each other’s solace and breath.
We, as trans people, are fighting against the boundaries imposed by patriarchal capitalism, states, and racist economic and gender regimes. We are organizing against the state’s policies targeting trans bodies. Whether it’s the 11th or 12th judicial package, the de facto hormone restrictions that have continued since the pandemic, or the unconstitutional raising of the age for gender-affirming care…
They’ve tried to restrict hormone use arbitrarily and unlawfully. But despite all these policies, what are we doing? We’re living our lives—with hormones, without hormones. We’re living our lives with our own resources, through our solidarity, and in defiance of them; we’re living our lives without ever tiring of demanding from the state what is rightfully ours.
This year, despite being one of the years in which we’ve felt the state’s oppression and violence the most, we haven’t given up on our organizing. We were outside hospitals protesting hormone restrictions, and we were in the subways and on the streets exposing policies of hatred.
The state’s policies of demonizing trans people went as far as the imprisonment of our friend Eylem. But we did not give up! In every space we occupied, we reminded everyone at every opportunity that trans people are present throughout the city
We trans people live every day, every moment—despite the hatred and violence directed at our bodies, minds, and dreams, which show everyone that another way of living is possible. We live in spite of the pressure and suppression policies of family, society, and the state that uphold that entirely fabricated, “normal” that no one can fit into—that damn “normal.” We will not be silenced! We will not apologize for our existence!
We stand united with the anger and grief of our friends whom you have denied the right to live. We lost Eylül Cansın in 2015. It is a heavy burden to live with the sorrow of people who, even as they faced death, thought of the dog they shared their life with; that is why, despite all the oppression, we are here today with Eylül’s sorrow. We are here with the defiance of Deniz, whom you wouldn’t even let stay in your own home! And what about Okyanus Efe? After his father and uncle told him, “Hang yourself so we can be rid of you,” Okyanus Efe took his own life, leaving a note that read, “What good is being ‘normal’ anyway?” Yet we have not a single friend to lose to your system. We trans people want to die of natural causes.
We want to create a society where trans lives are valued and where we can freely mourn the friends we’ve lost. Let this be our pledge to all our murdered friends: we will build a world where trans people die of old age!
We are here to demand justice for Hande Kader, Poyraz, Arya, Cindy Çağla, Dora Özer, Okyanus Efe, Roşin Çiçek, Ecem Seçkin, İrem Okan, Nida Nazlıer, Selen Özkula, Dilek İnce, Gökçe Saygı, Mira Güneş, and Günay Özyıldız.
Even as the state and its instruments of violence surround us trans people from all sides with policies of hatred, we will continue to be here. We refuse to accept their control over either our bodies or our lives!
We want to create a society where trans lives are valued and where we can freely mourn our friends we’ve lost. Let this be our promise to all our friends who have been murdered: we will build a world where trans people live to a ripe old age!
We are here to demand justice for Hande Kader, Poyraz, Arya, Cindy Çağla, Dora Özer, Okyanus Efe, Roşin Çiçek, Ecem Seçkin, İrem Okan, Nida Nazlıer, Selen Özkula, Dilek İnce, Gökçe Saygı, Mira Güneş, and Günay Özyıldız.
Even as the state and its instruments of violence surround us trans people from all sides with policies of hatred, we will continue to be here. We refuse to accept their control over either our bodies or our lives!
Our rebellion is enormous, and we stand in these spaces with the resilience of the trans sex workers who went on a hunger strike at Gezi in ’87. We do not want to be the first to be abandoned, the first to be cast aside! Whenever skyscrapers are built in a neighborhood, it is always trans sex workers who are exiled from their living spaces. It is also sex workers who have resisted police violence and torture across the city. Let those who drive sex workers out of this city, who seal their homes, who narrow their streets—and then pretend this violence is invisible—know this: We have not forgotten. We know on which street whom was subjected to violence, at which police station whom they tried to silence, and in which court which perpetrator was protected. We also know which homes were sealed off and which doors were forced shut by the police. Those seals are the criminal record of this system that seeks to uproot trans women sex workers from their homes, their streets, and their lives.
We also know how these attacks go unpunished. We know which perpetrators hide behind which uniforms, which courts, and which forms of masculinity. Do you know what was said about Volkan Hicret, the police officer who murdered Hande Buse Şeker? “A simple act of murder.” We are here today with the grief and resistance of Hande Buse, Çağla Joker, Esra Ateş, and all the murdered sex workers! May your heteronormative, patriarchal family system go to hell!
So what exactly are they forcing upon us under the guise of “family”? What does their “sacred” family mean for our lives? “Family” means the erasure of trans children, the mutilation of intersex children, the exploitation of women’s labor, their murder, and their exposure to male violence. To those who say we are “destroying the family,” we say: Your accusations are correct—we reject your family, which is a breeding ground for violence against women and trans people! Long live our trans-feminist solidarity against your “sacred” family!
Our voices, which rose through a hunger strike in Gezi Park in 1987, led to the establishment of associations and organizations in the 2000s; trans people have repeatedly recreated their own movements in the face of both state violence and their erasure within the movement; they threw the first stone at Stonewall and resisted from Taksim to Kadıköy. WE WILL NEVER FORGET VOLTRANS, KADIN KAPISI, AND T CLUB. Following the drag queens who were at the forefront of clashes with police during the Gezi protests,
the Pride March reached 100,000 people. Now, too, we are not silent—we are in the streets; we are not hidden—we are organized. From Taksim to Kadıköy, we have blown like the Poyraz wind, and we will continue to blow!
Two days before our Pride March, they tried to shut down our social media channels that mention LGBTİ+. Despite the mainstream media, acting as the state’s mouthpiece, singling us out as targets, they failed. They think that without our social media, we won’t be able to find each other; they think that if they target us, they’ll get a response.
They say “peace”! What do they understand by peace? They don’t understand that there can be no peace without trans people. They’re holding a NATO summit in the coming weeks! The people are being crushed by poverty, yet they’re opening an airport for heads of state. Erdoğan continues to act as America’s watchdog in the Middle East! Their understanding of “peace” is nothing more than the power and wealth of Erdoğan and the capitalist clique around him, all under the guise of a “Strong Turkey.” They’re taking sides in the wars raging across the globe; capitalism is trying to solve the deep poverty it has created through war, death, and exploitation. The AKP hasn’t taken a single step toward the peace process; from the Kurds’ perspective, neither Bakur, nor the Syrian territory, nor Rojava is safe.
The genocide in Palestine continues, and the US and Israel are waging their war against Iran, but we insist on peace.
We, as trans people, are here to tear down the boundaries imposed by patriarchy, capitalism, states, and colonialists. For a long time now, trans and queer people have been targeted by fascist attacks. Let’s repeat: No matter what they put us through, they cannot steal our dreams. We dream of and will build a society where we dismantle fascism—a society where trans people live freely, have access to hormones, study, work, and grow old in peace, with bread and justice!
Long live our trans existence, long live our Trans Pride March!
(VK)
