“The problems occur at night” – Being a transsexual in Istanbul

It’s late afternoon in Taksim, the centre of Istanbul. Ebru, Demet and some of their friends are sitting in a violett painted, yet quite empty room, somewhere in a side street of the lively district. The women chat over a cup of tea, exchanging the latest news: new relationships, politics, the job market, cooking recipies. Everything seems normal untill I enter the scenery, asking them how life as a transsexual in Istanbul feels for them, what sort of difficulties they face. One of the women looks at me, confused by the question. She responds: „It’s good, my life is good, I don’t have many problems.“ I am puzzled. Demet jumps into the conversation: „But as a transsexual, she means, we face problems in our lifes, don’t we? Friends of us get killed by their lovers, we are harassed by the police, shop-keepers charge us more because of our sexual identity. We have problems.“
Problems that prompted Demet and her friend Ebru six months ago to rent the little room we are sitting in now. Problems that caused them to offer a safe space for transgender and transsexual friends, for counseling, debating, exchanging news, chatting.

Ebru Kırancı and Demet Demir on the İstiklal Cadessi in Istanbul

Working conditions and legal situation
News that did not make it to the news: One day after the last Pride Parade at the end of June 2009, a 19 year old transvestite from Şişli/ İstanbul was killed. The story of facts is as short as her life. The transsexual was picked up by a customer in the centre of Istanbul. What happened afterwards in the customer’s car remains unclear. The dead body of the transvestite has been dropped by its murderer in Zeytinburnu, another district of Istanbul, around 20 minutes away from the centre. A relative of the transsexual sewed the case and LGBTT people in Turkey tried to spread the news over their own information channels like their homepage or facebook groups. Besides this, no public attention has been paid to the killing of this young person. Recently there is no media coverage of violence against transvestites. The only way to do something, says Demet, is to protest. “Then the police is forced to find the murderers.”

One of the major problems transsexual face are linked to working conditions for transsexuals, especially in cases where they earn their money as sex-workers. “We can’t even work at home.The state and the local government use to close houses in which transsexuals and transvestites work, even if we live there.“ Due to a new regulation, private houses are assaulted and closed down for three month. After this period local authoratives close them down again for the same period. This has not always been like that claims Demet: “I saw the coup d’etat in the 1980s and how everything changed. Before the coup the environment was considerably friendly. After the coup transsexuals have been unrightfully taken to prison, raped, murdered. This continued until the new millenium. Since 2000, after the EU-negotiations things became more easier for transvestites, at least for a brief period. Then when AKP came into power things started to get more difficult again. Before they came into power 2002, they would close down houses for 10 days. Recently the period has been expanded to three months. Even the state runned brothels are closed down one after the other under the islamist-neoliberal AKP (Justice and Development Party) administration. After 1995 there were around 10.000 sex workers. Around half of them were registred. Now there around 4000 registred sex-workers but the total number is near a hundred thousand. So the number of unregistred sex-workers has been increased incredibly.“

In order to survive many of the sex-workers go to the street where they are confronted with new difficulties. On the pretext of blocking the traffic, disturbing public life, sex-workers get arrested on a regular basis due to a law that has been passed by the islamist-neoliberal AKP government in power. Another law that made life more difficult for transsexuals is the recently passed, so called, exhibitionist law. Transsexuals, officially being accused of showing their sexual organ in public, Ebru argues that „even transsexuals who show up in the most conservative dress are taken over by the police“. „They take you to the police department where they charge you between 60 and 70 YTL. On top of that we are supposed to pay food and rent. It is not possible to live like that. We can’t work. In this situation we say just give us a monthly payment. But they don’t want that either. They want us to starve and die,“ Demet adds. According to her, this situation where transsexuals can’t neither work in their homes nor in the streets, forces transgender people who work in the sex-business to their last station of choice – the highways. „There our friends get raped and killed by the customers or cars run over them. The responsible organ for that is the state because they force us to work there.“ Moreover, the state began a programme based on a court decision, that has been passed around two years ago on which basis transsexuals and transgendered are transferred into mental institutions. Being transsexual, according to the court, was considered, as a mental sickness that needs to be cured. „We know about 100 transsexual and transgender people that have experienced such assaults by state representatives. “We could only convince a couple of them to sew them because they are scared“, says Demet. „However, when we file reports concerning sexual harrassment at the police station the answer we get is: ‚it’s probably because you shook your tail, thats why he jumped on you ’“, says Demet.

However, there are also more positive examples. Başak, a friend of the group, recently got accepted as a teacher in an elementary school. The kids don’t know about my sexual identity, she says and claims that so far no problems have been occured, even not with teachers or parents.

Family situation and marriages among transsexuals
Demet came out when she was 22. Afterwards she lived for one year with her parents “but I am an exception”, she states. In contrast to her, Ebru has not seen her family for 20 years. Both of them agree that after coming out in the family it is hard to find a place in the transsexual community. Sex-work is mostly the only chance to survive for transsexuals. „Usually,“ Demet says „if you give money to your family they still consider you their daughter, if not then you are the fagot kid. Most families of transsexuals cut ties untill they die. If they die though they are hunting for what remains of the person“. Demet knows around 10-15 transwomen who got married while their husbands know about their sexual identity. However, when they get divorced, the men generally take advantage of this knowledge and pretend that they did not know before and that now, when they find out, they want to get divorced.

Transphobia among heterosexuals and LBGTs
Being a transsexual, even in the westernized centre of Istanbul, means being constantly in struggling not only with state authoratives representing a strongly patriarchal system but also with the Istanbulite population, including family, neighbours and shop- and house owners who perform a starkly unfriendly social environment for transsexual and transgender people. Interestingly, not just heterosexual oriented people exclude transsexuals and transgender socially, politically and economically. Yet there exist also transphobia among gay and lesbian people, another reason for Demet and Ebru, who worked in a well established LGBT organisation to open the first little association for transvestites and transsexuals.While many gays and lesbians feel that “transgender” is simply a name for a part of their own LGBT community, others actively reject the idea that transgender people are part of their community, seeing them as entirely separate and distinct. In the latter cases it is for instance controversely debated if transsexuals are homosexuals or not. The old discussion among scholars that are involved in gender studies becomes here a precarious tool for discrimination: What is the difference between gender and sexuality? If for example a transwoman is attracted only to other women, she is either lesbian by nature, being a woman, or is otherwise a heterosexual man which causes transphocic LGBT to exclude other transvestites transsexuals from their community. The implacability of the question whether a transgender person considers him- or herself as homosexual or not has been overcome by the rise of Queer Theory in the 1990s and the Queer community, which defines “queer” as embracing all variants of sexual identity, sexual desire, and sexual acts that fall outside normative definitions of heterosexuality. Thus a heterosexual man or woman as well as a transgender person of any sex can be included in the category of queer through their own choice.

More information on webpage of the lgbtt group or on other LGBT platforms in Turkey such as

LGBT Rights Platform

Kaos GL
LGBTT Association

Lambdaistanbul
LGBT Solidarity Association

MorEL (PurpleHand)
Eskisehir LGBT Initiative

Pembe Hayat (Pink Life)
LGBT Association

Piramid LGBT Diyarbakir
Initiative 

Siyah Pembe Ucgen (Black Pink Triangle) Izmir Association

Cases of hate crimes against transsexuals, transgender and transvestites who have been murdered in Turkey in the last two years:

On 15 July 2008 Ahmed Yıldız was shot dead in Üsküdar, Istanbul
On 10 November 2008, transsexual Dilek Ince was shot dead in Ankara.
On 19 December 2008, an unidentified transsexual was shot dead with two bullets through the chest at a roadside in Gebze.
On 10 March 2009, transsexual Ebru Soykan was stabbed to death at her home in Cihangir, Istanbul.
On 20 March 2009, transvestite L.D. (29) was stabbed in the stomach and wounded by three people in Eskisehir.
On 22 March 2009, the body of a transvestite, whose head and sexual organ had been cut off, was found in a rubbish container in Bursa.
On 27 March 2009, Yasar Sert (35) killed Sükrü Gençer (57) for suggesting a sexual relation (Edirne).
In Istanbul, the bodies of Yasar Mizrak (44), Mehmet Naci Zeyrek (30), Enes Arici (25) and Ercan Coskun were found in a well. The murderer, Özkan Zengin, said he had killed them for being gay.
On 11 April 2009, Melek K. (25) was stabbed to death in her home in Ankara.
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