‘Why Can’t I Walk in My Own Country?’ The LGBTI+ Community’s Visual Activism in Turkey

The LGBTI+ community has been the target of Turkish government’s growing hostility. Since 2014, the Istanbul Governor’s Office has banned the Pride March. Yet, LGBTI+ individuals and their allies still gather to celebrate and demand their rights every year. As a result of the relentless hate speech and violence directed at them, LGBTI+ community members have become activists in their own right. By visually documenting the systematic brutality directed at them, LGBTI+ activists are taking radical steps to assert their existence and gain visibility in the eye of the public. This presentation will look at the videos from Pride March 2021 and assert that video activism has become a vital act for the LGBTI+ community in Turkey to counter the stigmatizing narratives that criminalize all the colours under the rainbow; raising awareness against the everyday human rights abuses the community faces; and record police brutality towards requests for peaceful assembly. Moreover, the videos will also show the self-aware acts by LGBTI+ individuals to reclaim public spaces from which they are forcefully removed, as well as how they use confrontation with the police to voice their demands as equal citizens and subjects of this country.