“You can live as queer here – in certain places.” Life for Noor* in Istanbul is one of routine. From Monday to Friday, each day he works an 11-hour shift in a textile factory. At the weekend, he frequents the queer bars and cafes that make up his social scene, and which are “very open”. Places where he is free to wear makeup and feminine clothing – something he would never do in the more conservative area of the city where he lives and works, and something which would have been unthinkable in Gaza, where Noor left in 2023 to come to Istanbul. “There is no comparison,” he says simply, “between there and here.”
Istanbul is a halfway house for many of the LBGT+ community originating from the Middle East, serving – as it always has – as a bridge between East and West, culturally as well as physically. It is a city where homosexuality is largely tolerated, though not widely accepted. Under Turkey’s authoritarian President Erdoğan, in power since 2014, this tolerance is changing.
On the 13th September , the state orchestrated a coordinated crackdown on a number of LGBT+ organisations: The result was the mass arrest of more than 100 individuals in morning raids and increasing online censorship. These attacks have been carried out under the guise of “family safety” laws which has seen the country fall to the third lowest ranking in Europe and central Asia for LGBT+ rights.
Noor is just one of many queer refugees who have made a temporary home in Istanbul, and who live a dual life in the city. During the crackdowns he has maintained the same largely safe but precarious situation he has since his arrival three years ago. He has heard worrying rumours from friends, such as a trans girl being detained and LGBT+ organisations closing, but his own life has remained mostly unchanged. When he isn’t working, he spends his weekdays with the family he has in Istanbul and in the flat he shares with a colleague. Weekends are spent with his friends in liberal areas like Kadikoy and Taksim, home to the queer friendly bars and clubs that have been targeted in the recent crackdowns.
LGBT+ organisations such as Lambda and The Aman Project are now operating more discreetly, forced by the crackdowns to retreat further into the shadows. It mirrors Noor’s personal experience of living in the city. Foreign nationals who are queer, such as Noor, are especially terrified of being arrested, in fear of the implications on their refugee status in Turkey.
He lives a double life, to the extent that when he once by chance saw a co-worker at the weekend, someone he spent significant time with, Noor’s appearance was so different his colleague did not recognise him. Such duality is not unusual for members of the Turkish LGBT+ community. The percentage of those who are completely open about their sexuality in the workplace has long been in single digits, and currently hovers around 5 percent, with little yearly improvement. The recent attacks and forced closures of organisations now threatens to leave a vacuum in practical support for queer people in Turkey, even if more informal community gathering places still exist.
Noor and his family left Gaza in 2023, just before the October 7th attacks by Hamas on what was supposed to be a holiday. The subsequent ongoing genocide on his homeland has forced him to stay in Turkey. He did not plan to settle in Istanbul permanently; he had dreams of living in Germany, where “you can be and do whatever you want.” This, however, is not an option through legal means, and the illegal means are far too dangerous to be worth the risk.
In Istanbul, he has become a refugee not just from war but from intolerance. Here, he has found a community of people in which he can be open. Although it is not possible in every part of his life, it is still much better than the reality at home, even before its mass decimation.
In Gaza, Noor had past relationships, but they were conducted in secret due to the intense danger that being gay carries there. He tells the story of himself as a teenager and his “first love”, a bisexual boy now married to a woman back in Palestine. In Gaza, Noor could only open up to a select few, telling people only after he had known them for a year and felt he could really trust them. While studying he lost his friend group over the revelation of his sexuality and his non-religious beliefs. Even now, most of his family remain unaware. Only his mother knows of his sexuality and has warned him to never let his uncles know. Noor is most scared of his deeply religious brother and how he, his wife and children may react to knowing his true nature.
Turning from the personal to the political, he sums up the situation bluntly: “If Erdoğan stays, Turkey is fucked. They will continue to abuse us more and more.” Hopes for change persist, however, with the vision of a more progressive future and memories of a time, just 15 years ago, when the city held Pride parades; the last free one, in 2013, was attended by more than 100,000 people. Yet even this past openness took place in a culture that has never been fully accepting, one in which you are “looked at strangely even on the metro” if you are gender non-conforming. The city’s queer culture has long relied on general apathy. In the face of rising authoritarianism and extreme Islam growing stronger in the “secular democracy” of the Turkish Republic, this passivity is being threatened.
Turkey has been dubbed by many political scientists and scholars as an “illiberal democracy”, a term coined with the rise of figures such as Erdoğan, the recently deposed Viktor Orban in Hungary, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the US – figures who remain democratic elections while gradually shifting the system in their favour. In urban areas, Young Turks dubbed “generation Erdoğan” are increasingly hungry for a change from the only leader and the only version of Turkey many of them have known. However, last years’ draconian government response to widespread anti-government protests sparked by the arrest of the Istanbul mayoral candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu, paired with the more recent anti-LGBT+ attacks, show a leader desperate to quell dissent and tighten his grip over the country.
Amongst all the politic upheaval and crackdowns, for now life for the majority of the queer community continues as normal. For many, like Noor, this means maintaining a discreet double life, one where the closet is neither closed nor empty, but where the door is only slightly ajar. “I want to move to Kadikoy, but it’s too expensive,” he says. “They like tourists. So I will stay here. I do not have tattoos, you understand. I have a fake earring. I cannot do these things. If I am harmed, my family are harmed, and I love my family.”
This sentiment is not unique. International statistics from Stonewall UK show that less than half of LGBT+ people internationally feel safe being open with their family. As the threat grows greater in Istanbul on the free assembly of the LGBT+ community, even in areas traditionally viewed as safe, the fear of the closet door fully closing looms larger.
*For reasons of privacy and safety, we are not using his real name
