Tag: LGBT

Turkish child fostered by Dutch lesbians sparks diplomatic row

Turks demonstrate against the Dutch youth care policy in Lelystad on March 22. A diplomatic row over a Turkish boy fostered by Dutch lesbian parents clouded the Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to the Netherlands this month. Evert Ezlinga / AFP.

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ISTANBUL // A nine-year-old boy in the Netherlands is at the centre of a row between Turkey and European countries over non-Muslims fostering Muslim children and eroding their “moral values and religious beliefs”.

Yunus, a Dutch citizen of Turkish origin, was removed from his Turkish parents as a four-month-old by Dutch authorities over suspicions of child abuse and neglect. He was given to lesbian foster parents who have raised him ever since.

Several court rulings have confirmed that Yunus’s biological parents were unfit to care for him, a Dutch official said last week. He said the boy had not been adopted by his foster parents.

The case has become the focal point of a campaign by the Turkish government to prevent Muslim children of Turkish families in European countries from being raised by non-Muslim or homosexual foster parents.

“If a child is given to a homosexual family, then this runs counter to general moral values and religious beliefs of [Turkish] society,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a visit to the Netherlands this month.

At the core of the row lies Ankara’s view that the about four million Turkish citizens and people of Turkish descent in European countries are exposed to threats to their cultural or religious identity – and that Turkey has the right, and the duty, to act.

Mr Erdogan suggested that cooperation between the Turkish and Dutch governments could prevent similar problems in the future and said Turkish non-government organisations in the Netherlands could also help.

Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, dismissed the idea of any Turkish intervention, saying the case was a domestic issue.

Mr Erdogan’s government regards itself as responsible for the welfare of Turks abroad, even if they have foreign passports. But this clashes with Europeans’ view of their sovereignty and ideas of integration, as well as with the continent’s more liberal values.

Bekir Bozdag, a Turkish deputy prime minister who oversees Turkish expatriates, told parliament late last year that there were about 4,000 cases of children who had been forcibly taken away from Muslim-Turkish families in Europe and given to non-Muslim foster parents.

He suggested that religious reasons were behind the trend, but offered no proof to back up the accusation.

“These children are really Christianised,” Mr Bozdag said. “We are faced with a big tragedy.”

Mr Bozdag called on European countries to have Turkish children raised by Turkish families if possible and promised that his government would do everything to “save our little ones”.

Faruk Sen, chairman of the German-Turkish Foundation for Education and Scientific Research and an expert on the Turkish community in western Europe, said the Turkish government was partly to blame.

“There are 700,000 Turkish families in Germany, but not enough come forward to take children” as foster families, Mr Sen said last week. He said Turkey’s diplomatic missions in Europe had failed to provide authorities with lists of potential Turkish foster parents.

Referring to local, parliamentary and presidential elections coming up next year and in 2015, Mr Sen said efforts to please the conservative voter base of the Erdogan government were also shaping Ankara’s position on the issue. “They want to tell voters at home: ‘I am making sure that no Muslim child is raised by a Christian family’.”

A lack of Muslim foster families had also been an issue in the case of Yunus in the Netherlands, the Dutch official said.

“He was initially placed in a foster home and given to the couple after a while,” the official said. He also said that the biological parents of the boy had tried and failed to get Yunus back through the courts.

As the case became public, the lesbian couple in the Netherlands went into hiding with Yunus. Dutch officials said there had been no specific threats, but the move to “another address” had been organised as a precaution.

The Turkish family has turned to the Turkish government for help. Following Mr Erdogan’s visit to the Netherlands, Nurgul Azeroglu, Yunus’s biological mother, praised the stance taken by Ankara.

“Our prime minister’s statement took a weight off my mind,” she told the Turkish Cihan news agency. “Now I have new hope that I can embrace Yunus again after nine years.”

Ms Azeroglu appeared on Turkish television this month and called on Mr Erdogan to intervene in the case. She said she accidentally dropped the child from a poorly fastened carrying bag once – part of the reason he was removed from her care.

Dutch news reports said the authorities in the Netherlands decided in 2008 to remove two of Yunus’s siblings from the Azeroglu family and place them in the same family with the boy, but that the children had been sent to Turkey by their family before the decision was implemented.

* With additional reporting by Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press
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March 31, 2013
Children fostered by European gay couples will be retrieved

Bakıcı aileye bile devlet para yardımı yapıyorken, gerçek ailesinden maddi sebeplerle alınmaları Avrupa’da çok gerçekçi değil.

by Corinne Pinfold

18 February 2013, 12:04pm

Turkish authorities have begun procedures to remove Turkish children from foreign gay foster parents (Image: Freedom to Marry Site: Flickr)

A campaign has been launched by the Turkish Government to retrieve Turkish children fostered by Christian families in Europe – starting with children fostered by gay and lesbian couples.

According to the Hurriyet Daily, the Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag has instructed Turkish international representatives to start the process in the cases of three children fostered by gay couples in Belgium.

The children had been taken from their families by child welfare officers because of abuse claims, or because the families could not financially support their children.

An investigation was launched last month after the Turkish Government estimated that 5,000 such children had been given to Christian foster parents in Europe, rather than being matched to foster parents who share their faith and heritage.

The Turkish Parliamentary Human Rights Commission (TPHRC), which lead the investigation, reported that three of the children had been given to gay and lesbian couples in Belgium.

One child, Yunus, was taken from his family at 6-months-old after allegedly being dropped on the floor by his parents. He is now 9-years-old and lives with a lesbian couple in Belgium. His family had previously applied for his return, but had been rejected by courts.

Turkish authorities have begun legal proceeding to have Yunus and other Turkish children given to gay foster parents returned, citing a violation of human rights and psychological damage done to the child.

Speaking about Yunus’ case Ayhan Sefer Ustun, head of the TPHRC, said: “We don’t condemn that culture, but the child has been given to a foreign culture, to a lesbian family. Even if a child is taken from the [biological] family for the right reasons, he or she should be placed with a family closer to his or her culture.”

He said he was concerned that the children would have their Turkish cultural background and Islamic religion “assimilated” by living with Christian European families.

“The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in a past ruling said that taking a Christian child from his family and giving him to a family of Jehovah’s witnesses was not an appropriate act,” he said. “This is a situation against human rights. It is an assimilation to take a child who has grown up with an Islamic culture to be given to a Christian family without a judicial decision.”

“We have highly successful Turks in Europe. Turkish children could be given to such Turks,” he added.

via Turkey: Children fostered by European gay couples will be retrieved – PinkNews.co.uk.

February 19, 2013
Turkey rejects protection for gay rights

Turkey rejects protection for gay rights

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party vetoed a proposal that aims to bring in constitutional protection for LGBT rights

14 September 2012 | By Dan Littauer

Deputy Mustafa Şentop from the ruling Turkish AKP party says LGBT rights have no place in the country’s constitution or international agreements

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) has vetoed a proposal jointly introduced by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) that would bring in constitutional protection for gay rights.

The (AKP) claimed that LGBT rights should have no place in the Turkish constitution, reported the Turkish paper Hürriyet Daily News.

‘It is the duty of a state to eliminate practices and legal rules which stem from cultural or societal prejudices which are based on the supremacy of a gender’ said the proposal, which was introduced on 11 Sept.

The proposal was submitted during discussion on the principle of equality as part of the drafting of the ‘Fundamental Rights and Freedoms’ chapter of the Turkish constitution by the parliamentary constitution reconciliation commission.

CHP’s İzmir deputy Rıza Türmen and the BDP’s Diyarbakır deputy Altan Tan asked for constitutional protection of LGBT rights along with the inclusion of ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity,’ within the article covering protection of equality.

AKP’s Istanbul deputy Mustafa Şentop rejected the proposal stating: ‘We don’t find it right to have an expression concerning gays in any part of the constitution’.

Şentop also argued that the AKP is against the inclusion of ‘such notions’ both within the Turkish constitution and with regards to international agreements.

Following the AKP’s objection, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) has proposed an alternative clause that said: ‘Nobody can be subject to discrimination no matter what the reason is,’ with its deputy Faruk Bal suggesting that such an article would ‘cover everybody.’

The proposal was eventually rejected outright and not included within the draft.

Turkey has consistently never sent a delegate to vote on any United Nations resolutions that suggested any protection or recognition of ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’.

Turkey is a member of the Organization of Islamic Conference which consistently objects and instructs its members veto any international proposal that includes these concepts.

via Turkey rejects protection for gay rights | Gay Star News.

September 15, 2012
Video: Shocking gay honor killing inspires movie

By Ivan Watson, CNN

January 13, 2012 — Updated 1111 GMT (1911 HKT)

Istanbul, Turkey (CNN) — In colloquial Turkish, the word zenne means male belly dancer. It is also the title of a new film that explores sexual identity while also highlighting a deadly case of homophobia in modern-day Turkey.

“The starting point was a dear friend of ours who was murdered in 2008 for being gay by his own father,” said Mehmet Binay, producer and co-director of “Zenne,” which opens in theaters across Turkey on Friday.

Binay was referring to the 2008 killing of Ahmet Yildiz, a 26-year old physics student who was gunned down in Istanbul.

Court records identify Yildiz’s father, Yahya, as the primary suspect in the killing. The father’s motive, according to a copy of the indictment, was that he “did not accept the victim to be in a gay relationship.”

More than three years after the slaying, Yildiz’s father is a fugitive, still wanted by Turkish police.

The death has since been widely referred to as Turkey’s first gay honor killing.

One of the main characters in “Zenne” is based on Ahmet Yildiz and his tragic story.

Caner Alper, the writer and other co-director of “Zenne,” was also a friend of Yildiz’s. Alper said before he died, Yildiz often spoke about receiving death threats from his family, who were trying to “cure” him of his homosexuality.

Court documents show Yildiz reported these death threats to the Turkish authorities.

In an interview with CNN this week, the filmmakers said they hoped their film would force Turkish society to debate hate crimes that target victims based on gender, religion, ethnicity or sexual identity.

“Death and murder is still on the agenda of our country. We can’t get rid of this mentality,” said Binay. “People need to tolerate each other. They need to understand that different identities can live next to each other without disturbing each other.”

Binay and Alper are not only creative partners. Shortly before the debut of their debut film at the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, Turkey’s most prestigious film festival, the two men announced they had been a couple for 14 years. Alper said their families advised against coming out publicly.

“They thought it would be career suicide,” he said. “Until we won five awards from the first festival that we attended.”

Despite recent critical acclaim, the filmmakers agreed Turkey still has a long way to go before it overcomes deeply entrenched institutional homophobia.

According to Article 17 of the health regulations of the Turkish Armed Forces, homosexuality is considered a “psychosexual deviance.”

All Turkish men are required to perform military service. But gay men can be exempted from conscript duty provided they first prove their homosexuality.

“Zenne” depicts the degrading process its main characters endure at an army recruiting center.

In the film, military doctors perform anal examinations and hurl homophobic insults at conscripts. They also demand photos of the characters having sex with other men.

Gay rights activists say the military has long demanded graphic photo and/or video evidence from men asking to be released from military duty.

“In the photograph and the video you have to show your form and your face. Your face has to be clearly identified and another man has to be penetrating,” said Kursad Kahramanoglu, who teaches international law and human sexuality at Istanbul’s Bilgi University.

CNN asked Turkey’s defense ministry to comment on what gay rights groups claim has long been an unwritten military policy.

“The practice of asking for video and photographic evidence is out of question,” a defense ministry spokesman responded, speaking on condition of anonymity, a common practice in Turkish government bureaucracy. “I cannot confirm that it definitely did not happen, but we do not have any information that such a thing happened,” he added.

The spokesman said the current policy is for conscripts to prove their homosexuality with a doctor’s report from a private or military hospital. “The evaluation is made based on the medical report,” he said.

Less than two years ago, a senior Turkish government minister was quoted in an interview calling homosexuality “an illness … that should be treated.”

These types of statements have not stopped members of Turkey’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community from demanding equal rights.

Thousands marched in a rainbow-hued gay pride parade through downtown Istanbul last July.

Some of the activists carried large posters of Ahmet Yildiz with the slogan “get the murderer.” Among those marching was Yildiz’s former boyfriend, Ibrahim Can.

“I am fighting for the rights of my lover and for all the gays and lesbians and transsexuals in the world and in Turkey. And I want the Turkish government to change the homophobic attitude in Turkey,” Can said in an interview with CNN.

LGBT activists are lobbying the Turkish government to have the constitution amended to protect the rights of Turks on the grounds of gender and sexual identity. The Turkish Constitution is currently in the lengthy process of being re-written.

Binay, meanwhile, points to what he calls remarkable progress for minority rights in Turkey over the last decade. He said: “All sorts of minorities including gays and lesbians are demanding their rights. They want recognition, they want protection by the state. They want to be able to live, first of all, and not be murdered.”

via Shocking gay honor killing inspires movie – CNN.com.

January 15, 2012