Socio-political Attitude Towards Lesbians in Turkey

Abstract

This article explores issues of discrimination involving lesbians in Turkey. It analyzes and brings into focus fundamental human rights issues being faced by lesbians in Turkey with the aim of ascertaining why such discrimination still persist in the twenty-first century. The finding of this study reveals that the lesbian identity or simply queer identity in Turkey experiences a combination of silencing and suffocating factors: ethics discourse religious and state-sanctioned laws and/or homophobic violence which in turn leads to systematic breaches of the social rights of lesbians in employment housing family life education public life and health care. It further reveals that even a strong social policy that is universal like the first article of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) fails to put lesbians and other queer individuals on an equal footing with other citizens unless equal citizenship rights of lesbians and anti-discrimination principles are recognized and realized.