Story of İstanbul LGBTİ+ Pride Parade with Photos

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The İstanbul LGBTİ+ Pride Parade has been banned this year too, however, LGBTİ+ activists have gathered at Mis Sokak where the press statement was made.

Here is the Istanbul LGBTI+ Pride Parade from Hüseyin Aldemir’s objective:

Normally, the 26th İstanbul LGBTİ+ Pride Parade was planned to be closed up with the 16th Istanbul Pride Parade to be held on July 1 at 6 p.m. this year.

However, Istanbul Governorship prohibited it on June 29, Friday at late afternoon by giving justification of causing “possible negative events”.

After the prohibition of Governorship, The Pride Parade Committee announced that the Pride Parade will be realised as planned just after stating as: “İstanbul Governorship has proven that the reasons they show to ban the parade, not overlapping with Ramadan or being threatened, are just excuses and that kind of attitudes as the Governorship prohibition are just the signs of their hate directed towards us one more time.’’

The activists began to gather at afternoon, on July 1 at Mis Sokak.

As a result of negotiating with the police, it has been announced that a group of one hundred activists will be allowed to make the press statement.

As planned, the press briefing was made at Mis Sokak:

"The security excuses that the Governorship has shown in the prohibition decison are just so funny.  Our parades had been held peacefully for 13 years before the prohibition."

"These parades have been getting more and more crowded with every passing year and mediated to make way for us, the LGBTİ+ members facing to hatred since our existence, to feel in secure and make our voices heard. On the contrary to these peaceful parades, the hate crimes of the State have become undeniably more remarkable with the police violence”.

‘’Our laughter, shouting and slogans are still echoing on these streets"

"We miss really much the parades to which thousands of people were joining, and by which we were celebrating our visibility. Here today, with the help of honour coming from our existences and the power from the honour, we are mocking the ones trying to limit us."

"We also invite you to mock them trying to limit us through our identities, sexual orientations, existences, bodies, languages, dreams and all the things making us ‘ourselves’.

"While going beyond the limits and becoming free we are growing and widening our limitless and genderless areas. We are revolting against the ones firstly imprisoning us in limits and ghettoizing, and then removing us from our own areas and trying to transform us: briefly, we are not leaving Taksim."

After the statement for the press, the activists left Beyoğlu in company with "Leave the street".

They left for other statements in different points in Beyoğlu and the close-up party of the Pride Week.

A group of activists gathered in Odakule at around 7.p.m and made a second statement for the press and left there before arrival of police by shouting slogans. 

The police pushed the LGBTI activists from the main arterial roads, as Galatasaray, to the side streets. 

The police intervened the people on the cafes nearby just before the press statement planned to be made at 8 p.m. in Cihangir and took 11 people into custody totally.

The 26th Pride Week was closed up with the allowed press statement at Mis Sokak and a guerrilla action in Odakule.

The İstanbul Pride Parade has not been allowed since 2015.

The Pride Week was firstly organised in Turkey in 1993 with the name of “Sexual Freedom Week”, however, the first Pride Parade was held in 2003, literally 10 years after the first Pride Week. (ÇT/HG/TK)