ANKARA: Police arrested more than 50 people in Istanbul Sunday ahead of a banned LGBTQ+ pride march, the city’s bar association said.
“Before today’s Istanbul Pride march, four of our colleagues, including members of our Human Rights Centre, along with more than 50 people, were deprived of their liberty through arbitrary, unjust, and illegal detention,“ the Istanbul Bar’s Human Rights Centre posted on X.
Earlier Sunday, police arrested protesters near the central Ortakoy district, AFP journalists observed on the scene.
Once a lively affair with thousands of marchers, Istanbul Pride has been banned each year since 2015 by Turkey’s ruling conservative government.
“These calls, which undermine social peace, family structure, and moral values, are prohibited,“ Istanbul Governor Davut Gul warned on X on Saturday.
“No gathering or march that threatens public order will be tolerated,“ he added.
Taksim Square, one of the city’s main venues for protests, celebrations and rallies, was blocked off by police from early Sunday.
According to a video posted on X by Queer Feminist Scholars, one protester chanted “We didn’t give up, we came, we believed, we are here,“ as she and a dozen others ran to avoid arrest.
Homosexuality is not criminalised in Turkey, but homophobia is widespread. It reaches even the highest levels of government, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan regularly describing LGBTQ+ people as “perverts” and a threat to the traditional family.
The banning of Istanbul pride follows the failure of Hungary’s conservative leader Viktor Orban to prevent his country’s main pride parade from going ahead.
A estimated 200,000 people, a record, marched in the Budapest Pride parade Saturday, defying a ban by Orban’s government.
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