Turkey’s “Queer State of Emergency”
A dispatch from Erdoğan's Turkey, where Kurds, leftists, and the LGBTQ community are all under fierce attack.
Since last summer’s failed coup attempt in Turkey, the state under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been intent on revoking basic democratic norms in order to shut down all political opposition.
The ongoing state of emergency includes a purge that has left nearly 140,000 civil servants fired, more than 4,000 judges and prosecutors dismissed, 50,000 people jailed, more than 8,000 academics sacked, hundreds of journalists arrested, and dozens of media outlets shut down.
When I visited Ankara, Turkey’s capital, in mid-May at the invitation of the LGBTQ journal Kaos GL, I encountered a society in transition to authoritarianism. One fired professor of women and gender studies at Ankara University explained:
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