Gay Honour Killing In Turkey?

International News, By Joal, 22nd July, 2008

A man who represented Turkey at an international gay gathering in 2007 has been shot dead.

Twenty-six year old Ahmet Yildiz [pictured] was found dead in his car late last week. His partner has fled the country on advice from the German consulate, the country with which he held a passport.

According to Pinknews.co.uk, Yildiz’s close friends are holding vigil outside the city morgue where their friend’s body is being held, but without legal access to their friend’s body, they cannot begin making funeral arrangements. Friend’s have tried to contact Yildiz’s family, but the telephone goes unanswered as authorities begin to suspect an ‘honour killing’.

“He fell victim to a war between old mentalities and growing civil liberties,” said friend Sedef Cakmak, a member of gay-rights lobby group Lambda, a group an Istanbul court placed a ban on and dissolved in May. “I feel helpless,” continued Cakmak, “we are trying to raise awareness of gay rights in this country, but the more visible we become, the more we open ourselves up to this sort of attack.”

Recent estimates have put honour-killings at 1,000 per year in Turkey, and 5000 globally. Victims are usually women, murdered by male relatives, for contravening strict and sexist social codes. The suspected gay honour killing of Yildiz is thought to be the first of its kind reported, although gay-rights activists suspect there have been many more that authorities and the government have failed to investigate.

A physics student, friends have been reported saying they never heard Yildiz have a friendly conversation with his parents, “they would argue constantly, mostly about where he was, who he was with, what he was doing.”

Yildiz’s family have not claimed their son’s body, which is common practice when an honour killing has occurred, an ironic ritual that sees families kill the ones they love for compromising their family’s honour. Since coming out, Yildiz’s family had reportedly asked him to seek treatment or a ‘cure’, death threats he received were investigated but later dropped by authorities.

Turkey’s desire for membership to the European Union has encouraged it to decriminalise homosexuality and appear more liberal in terms of rights and recognition of minority groups. This year’s gay-pride parade was Turkey’s biggest, and although murderers are no longer allowed to claim family honour as reason for their actions, having child relatives commit honour killings has been a known alternative to bypass prosecution.

“He could have hidden who he was, but he wanted to live honestly,” said a former neighbour of Yildiz. “When the death threats started, his boyfriend tried to persuade him to get out of Turkey. But he stayed. He was too brave. He was too open.”

Photos from Istanbul Gay Pride 2007.

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