| This master thesis explores the interactions between the Turkish LGBT community and the state, law enforcement, the military, the family and Turkish society in general. The aim was to make sense of these interactions by focusing on the social movement dimension of the Turkish LGBT experience. I strived to achieve this by conducting 14 open-ended interviews with LGBT people in Istanbul, Turkey. The themes that characterized the interviews were repression, different forms of stigmatization, traditional norms of masculinity and marginalized identities. My findings appeared to suggest that authoritarian governments can exacerbate, support or supply with more professional means, the repressive, exclusionary attitudes found in any society. As an authoritarian state has profound control over more aspects of life than a democratic one would, these repressive practices cover a wide range of spaces from the military to employment and law enforcement. Especially in the realm of law enforcement, the experiences I have been able to capture show a cooperation between some segments of the population and the police in upholding the dominance of a conservative and masculine culture that excludes what it sees as deviants. Moreover, this stance does not seem to be able to altogether do away with a sense of identity and solidarity in the LGBT community, and in the future, the clash between these two forces might tell us more about whether more pluralism or exclusion is on the horizon. |
