By Ayla Albayrak
It may come as a surprise that at Turkey’s last elections in 2007, a survey of the country’s gay community said they would vote for the Islamic-leaning and socially conservative Justice and Development Party, or AKP. But not this time.
A recent poll by Turkish gay community website haydiGAYri.com concluded that some 45.5% of respondents plan to vote for the main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, at elections on June 12, followed by the AKP with 31.3%.
That’s a big change from when the same poll was conducted in 2007. Then 33.1% said they would vote for the AKP, and only 28.3% for the CHP. The AKP won the actual vote with 47%.
Some 7,200 registered users of the website, mostly from big cities in Turkey, took part in the latest poll, with one vote counted from each IP number.
Although its base support is made up of religious conservatives, the AKP has long based its electoral success on attracting religious conservatives, liberals, center-right voters and nationalists alike under a big tent platform that promised a break with the corruption of the past. But gay activists say many members of the community have been alienated since the last elections, weakening that part of the coalition.
A big reason for the change was a comment by State Minister for Women and Family Affairs Aliye Kavaf, when she said last year that homosexuality was an illness and needed to be cured.
“That comment by Aliye Kavaf is one of the main reasons why the votes have shifted. Also, we have felt more pressure lately. Our website, for example, was closed twice without any explanation,” said Ozan, who maintains the site. Turkey’s Internet regulator has come under wide attack for aggressively shutting Internet sites in recent years.
Turkey’s gay vote is unlikely to have any significant effect on the outcome of the election, which the AKP is widely expected to win. And the community’s options are limited. “Even if CHP is less religious, neither of the two parties care to promote gay rights,” said Ozan, who declined to give his full name, citing safety concerns. He said he has received threatening emails because of the website.
The AKP has pledged after the elections to scrap the country’s authoritarian constitution, drafted by military junta after the 1980 military coup in Turkey, and produce a new one. Who gets to shape that constitution is the bottom line for many voters.
Turkey’s gay rights organization, Kaos GL, has asked for the government to guarantee the rights of sexual minorities in the new constitution. But only one of the major parties, the Kurdish minority’s Peace and Democratic Party, or BDP, supported that call and included the promotion of gay rights into their party statutes last year.
However, the BDP’s emphasis on regional and ethnic politics in Turkey’s Kurdish Southeast, and the fact that most people taking part in the “gay poll” were in western and central Turkey, appears to have limited its appeal in the poll.
via Turkey’s Gays Shift Away From AK Party – Emerging Europe Real Time – WSJ.