Turkey’s gay community fights homophobia alongside COVID-19
Prosecutors have launched a probe into the bar associations that condemned the head of the state-run religious affairs directorate, for claiming homosexuals are spreading the pandemic.
Human rights activist Ajda Ender was staying at a friend’s house when Turkey announced its first case of the novel coronavirus in mid-March. “At a time when all state authorities were telling us to stay home, I simply could not, as I was in a legal battle with my neighbors, whose harassment and threats prevented my access to my own apartment,” Ender, a trans woman, told Al-Monitor.
Ender’s case was brought to the parliament’s agenda earlier this year by Zuleyha Gulum, a deputy from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, who asked the Ministry of Family and Social Affairs to protect Ender from threats, harassment and physical violence from her neighbors and police officers.
“When she went to the local police station to file a complaint, she was met with transphobic speech. The officers told her that it was the way she looked that caused all this,” Gulum said in a parliamentary question in January.
With the outbreak of the coronavirus, things went from bad to worse for Ender. The neighbors at her friend’s apartment, where she took refuge, cut the water and the internet connection to force her to move, as they believed she may carry the virus. Like many small businesses, her fashion brand, already struggling in the last year, came to a halt.
