21 January 2010

For 26-year-old Ahmet Yildiz, the choice to live openly as a gay man in Turkey proved deadly. Prosecutors say his father, charged with allegedly killing his son in what is being dubbed as the first gay honor killing, traveled more than 900 kilometers from his hometown to shoot his son in an old neighborhood of Istanbul. The case has drawn international attention and is putting the spotlight on Turkey’s attitude towards homosexuality.

The young physics student, Ahmet Yildiz, was one of the few openly gay men in Turkey, a country in which the military, the guardian of Turkey’s secular state, regards homosexuality as a disorder.

Yildiz represented his country at a gay meeting in San Francisco and wrote for gay publications in Turkey. Observers believe his activism is probably what got him killed.

His boyfriend, Ibrahim Can, was in their shared apartment when Yildiz was murdered.

He wanted to go out and buy some ice cream, he went down and just got into his car and I heard gunshots, he says. I looked down from the window I saw him being ambushed. He says he ran outside and screamed “Please do not die.” Can said his eyes were closed, when I shouted he opened for a second, he looked at me and then closed his eyes.

Can says before the shooting, Yildiz had repeatedly filed complaints at the local prosecutor’s office that he was receiving death threats from his family. Gay rights groups claim the prosecutor’s office did not investigate or provide Yildiz with protection.

The story was largely ignored until it starting getting attention by the foreign media. What resulted was a bout of national soul-searching underlining the tensions between the secular modern Turkey and a more traditionalist Turkey, in which conservative Islam increasingly holds power.

Oner Ceylan of Istanbul’s gay rights group Lambda says it’s a landmark case.

“I think it is important that people, that this fact, that a father can kill his son, simply because of his sexual orientation. That is an important awareness, because maybe they were cases before, but we just did not know,” said Ceylan. “We read in the news maybe a father killed, but we did not know why before. So I think its a very important step.”

Yildiz’s father is on the run and believed to be in hiding outside Turkey. As a result, the trial that began in September is on hold.

While Turkey’s aspiration to join the European Union is pushing the Muslim-rooted government to increase civil liberties for women and homosexuals, some remain nervous with a permissive attitude toward sexuality and gender roles.

Scott Long of the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch says reluctance by the authorities to punish violence against the gay community is not unusual.

“People who express their sexuality, people who differ from these cultural norms, from masculinity and femininity, are abused, are beaten, are raped, are excluded from the family,” said Long. “That there is violence at every level and most conspicuously that the government does not intervene to stop it.”

The country’s growing lesbian, gay and transgender movement is increasingly challenging violence against them.

Ceylan says its a long struggle, but education and patience are key.

“When you talk about violence people do not really exactly know what are you talking about. When you have the incidents, the cases and everything, then it more clear to them that inevitably there have been some human-rights violations. And with the police we have been trying to communicate with the city government, because the police reports to them,” he said. “I think we are making some progress, but these things are deep-rooted, so you cannot expect things to be just great within years or decades.”

The Yildiz murder has become an focal point for gays around the world to put pressure on Turkish authorities for change.

This video entitled “Ahmet Is Part Of My Family”, is circulating the Internet as part of a campaign by gays around the world to protest the Yildiz murder. Yildiz’z boyfriend, Can say he hopes the legal proceedings will not only put Yildiz’s murderer on trial, but put Turkey’s treatment of gays on trial, too.

I hope this court case will reveal the situation of homosexuals in Turkey to the whole world, he says. He says there are millions of gays living in Turkey, most hidden, some forced to marry women, some willingly married just to avoid loosing their respectability. He says he hopes the case will change attitudes.

A recent government study estimated one person dies every week in Istanbul as a result of honor killings. The victims are mostly young women, murdered by male relatives for such things as having illicit affairs, talking to strangers or even for being the victim of rape. Because gay honor killings remain underground, it is not known how many of those happen on a weekly basis.

ISTANBUL — For Ahmet Yildiz, a stocky and affable 26-year-old, the choice to live openly as a gay man proved deadly. Prosecutors say his own father hunted him down, traveling more than 600 miles from his hometown to shoot his son in an old neighborhood of Istanbul.

Ahmet Yildiz was shot outside his apartment building.

Mr. Yildiz was killed 16 months ago, the victim of what sociologists say is the first gay honor killing in Turkey to surface publicly. He was shot five times as he left his apartment to buy ice cream. A witness said dozens of neighbors watched the killing from their windows, but refused to come forward. His body remained unclaimed by his family, a grievous fate under Muslim custom.

caption id="" align="alignnone" width="190" caption="Ahmet Yildiz"/caption

His father, Yahya Yildiz, whose trial in absentia began in September, is on the run and believed to be hiding in northern Iraq.

The case, which has caused a bout of national soul-searching, has underlined the tensions between the secular modern Turkey of cross-dressing pop stars and a more traditionalist Turkey, in which conservative Islam increasingly holds sway.

Ahmet Kaya, Ahmet Yildiz’s cousin, said Mr. Yildiz was the only son of a deeply religious and wealthy Kurdish family from Sanliurfa, in the predominantly Kurdish southeast.

Mr. Kaya said Mr. Yildiz, a straight-A physics student who had hoped to become a teacher, was tutoring fellow students so he could make extra money to live independently. But by coming out as gay in a patriarchal tribal family, he had become the ultimate affront to both religious and filial honor, even with parents who adored him.

“Ahmet’s father had warned him to return to their village and to see a doctor and imam in order to cure him of his homosexuality and get married, but Ahmet refused,” Mr. Kaya said. “Ahmet loved his family more than anything else and he was tortured about disappointing them. But in the end, he decided to be who he was.”

That clash of values permeates Turkish society. While Turkey’s aspiration to join the European Union is pushing the Muslim-inspired government to accept and even promote civil liberties for women and homosexuals, some traditionalists remain ill at ease with a permissive attitude toward sexuality and gender roles.

Until recently, so-called honor killings have been largely confined to women, who face being killed by male relatives for perceived grievances ranging from consensual sex outside of marriage to stealing a glance at a boy. A recent government survey estimated that one person dies every week in Istanbul as a result of honor killings, while the United Nations estimates the practice globally claims as many as 5,000 lives a year. In Turkey, relatives convicted in such killings are subject to life sentences.

A sociologist who studies honor killings, Mazhar Bagli, at Dicle University in Diyarbakir, the largest city in the southeast, noted that tribal Kurdish families that kill daughters perceived to have dishonored them publicize the murders to help cleanse their shame.

But he said gay honor killings remained underground because a homosexual not only brought shame to his family, but also tainted the concept of male identity upon which the community’s social structure depended.

“Until now, gay honor killings have been invisible because homosexuality is taboo,” he said.

Gay rights groups argue that there is an increasingly open homophobia in Turkey. The military, which is the guardian of Turkey’s secular state, regards homosexuality as a disorder.

Last year, a local Istanbul court ruled in favor of disbanding the offices of Lambda, the country’s leading gay rights group, after a complaint that it offended public morality. (The decision was later overturned by a higher court.)

Firat Soyle, a human rights lawyer for Lambda, who was advising Mr. Yildiz before his death, said that three months before the murder, Mr. Yildiz had filed a complaint at the local prosecutor’s office that he was receiving death threats from his family. Mr. Soyle said the prosecutor’s office had refused to investigate or provide Mr. Yildiz with protection. The local police and prosecutors declined to comment on the allegation because the case was continuing.

The murder has divided Mr. Yildiz’s neighbors in Uskudar, an old Ottoman district on the Bosporus in Istanbul where secular and religious Turks live side by side.

Ummuhan Darama, a neighbor of Mr. Yildiz, was shot in the ankle during the attack and has filed criminal charges against his father. She said that the police had visited her in the hospital after the episode, urging her to drop the charges and to avoid becoming involved in what they called a “dirty crime.”

Ummuhan Darama, a neighbor of Mr. Yildiz, was shot in the ankle during the attack and has filed criminal charges against his father. She said she was the only one among her neighbors willing to testify.

Ms. Darama, a religious Muslim who wears a gold satin head scarf, said she was the only one among her neighbors willing to testify.

“The police and local religious officials are trying to protect the killer because they think homosexuality is a sin,” she said. “But in Islam killing is an even bigger sin, and no one but Allah has the right to decide between life and death. Ahmet was a nice, gentle boy and he didn’t deserve to die.”

But Kemal, 55, a Kurdish man newly arrived to the district from the southeast who declined to give his last name, said he would disown his son if he found out he was gay. “I would kick him out of the house and he would no longer be my son,” he said, fingering his prayer beads.

Even as some gay groups have sought to blame encroaching Islamic conservatism for Mr. Yildiz’s death, others argue that Turkish society is actually becoming more sexually liberated. Nilufer Narli, a sociologist who has studied gender issues, noted that gay clubs and gay bars have proliferated in big cities like Istanbul. She said homosexuality in Turkey had been tolerated since Ottoman times.

One of Turkey’s most celebrated singers is Bulent Ersoy, a transsexual, who was banned by the military government in the 1980s but has since become more popular as a woman than she was as a man.

“It is a cliché that Turkey is homophobic,” Ms. Narli said. “There has been a rise in religious conservatism, but at the same time, because of globalization, people are more accepting now of different values than they have ever been.”

That acceptance, however, has not always filtered down to Turkey’s religious heartland, with sometimes deadly consequences.

Didar Erdal, a 23-year-old gay man from Mr. Yildiz’s hometown, recently fled Istanbul for the Netherlands out of fear that his own family was hunting him.

Mr. Erdal said his family had learned he was gay last month after he applied for an exemption from military service on the grounds of his sexuality. He said his father had gone “crazy” and ordered him home, where the tribe’s elders would decide his fate.

“I know all too well,” Mr. Erdal said, “what the tradition demands must happen to me.”

Source: nytimes