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III. Living in Fear: Harassment and Abuses against Gay Men

A. Cem’s Story

“I knew this guy over the internet,” Cem Başeskioğlu began. Thirty-two and soft-spoken, he was accustomed, when we interviewed him, to speaking about what happened to him in 2001. He arranged to meet the man whom he’d chatted with several times—“He said he was gay and he came from Ankara”—in an Istanbul café. After their second meeting,

I invited him home. I live alone.… So we wound up back at my place. I told him I was hungry, asked if he was too. We ate together, and I made tea. He asked how many sugars I wanted, and when I said two he put them in and stirred them for me—he seemed very gentle.  Then he started talking about his family, where they came from. He was very insecure, he wasn’t out at all, to anyone, he said. …

We had sex and everything was OK. Nothing was suspicious. I said, “I have to work tomorrow, and I have to sleep.” He said, “Fine, if you want I can go.” I said, “You can’t go home at this hour”—it was around 2 a.m. The charger for his mobile phone was finished so he put his card in mine, then called someone. That should have made it easier afterward to find him.

Then I slept.  After half an hour I woke. He was sitting on the corner of the bed. I asked why he didn’t sleep and he said he didn’t want to sleep: he said, “Go on sleeping.”  I did. I don’t know how much time passed. It was from my neighbors that I learned what time it was when I started shouting. While sleeping I felt a pain. I don’t hurt so often. Then another. When I opened my eyes he was sitting on top of me, holding my knife and stabbing me. Up and down, like a piston.  I felt the last stab but I didn’t think it was real. I thought I was still dreaming.

I pushed him away, and got up. He pulled my hair from behind. I fell and saw my intestines coming out of my stomach. I wanted someone to hear me so I kicked the door.

We started to fight—I protected myself for a long time, several minutes. He tried to cut my throat. After much struggle I understood I was losing. What was strange was, I felt a great strength. I had been stabbed seventeen times—but I was still fighting.

I grabbed the sharp blade of the knife with my hand. It slashed my hand but I got it away from him. I asked him why he did it. He said, “OK, I’m gay.” And he went.

An old man who lived on the first floor came up. I think he was shocked because I was bleeding so much. Like a flood. I begged for help. The room was covered with blood. I collapsed, my strength gone, feeling sharp pains. I closed my eyes and prepared to die. I lay like that for a long time. Finally the police came.

They were shouting, asking if an ambulance would come or not. The ambulance finally arrived. They were so incompetent—they couldn’t get the stretcher unfolded for twenty minutes.  And then I was in the hospital for 25 days.

The investigation, Cem said, “was different from what I expected. I had never heard the police behaved kindly to gay people. But they were very correct in how they talked to me. My being gay came up in the investigation—I told them after I woke up from my operation.  And one of my friends had been interrogated during my operation and told them. They didn’t ask me but said they knew my private life and asked if I accepted it or not, and I said yes. ‘Don’t hide anything from us.’ The policeman was around thirty, very intelligent-sounding.  ‘Your sexual identity is none of our business,’ he said.  Even the word he used for identity, kimlik, sounded very modern.”

But, Cem said, “The police never found the man. And I believe it is because I was gay.” He explained that, despite the kind approach in the hospital, there was no sign the police did much to follow up.

The police could find the number he dialed—the last call remained on my cell even though the SIM card was gone. The policemen told me in the hospital, “We may have a clue from that number.”  Then they shut up.

My belief, and I can’t prove it, is they didn’t bother to investigate fully—they prefer not to do it because the victim is gay. It’s not just their prejudice: I think if they found the guy, he would just say he was “defending himself”; he would get off lightly. So why should they bother?

In 2003, Cem spoke at a panel on “Extreme Violence in Homosexual Homicides” at the annual congress of the European Academy of Forensic Sciences, in Istanbul. Officials from the city’s police also addressed the subject of “gay murders.”

Even in the conference, the two high-ranking police officers—the deputy head of the police, the head of the homicide department—behaved strangely around me. It’s very funny telling it, but very inhumane. They shook hands with other participants.  I said nothing to blame them. ... But they didn’t shake my hand, didn’t come near me. They treated me like a pariah. And we sat at the same table on the dais for three hours.²⁴

B. Intolerance and Impunity

Cem’s story is rare: that of someone who faced an extreme form of homicidal, homophobic violence, and lived to tell the story.  There is little reason, however, to think that either the possibility of such violence, or the ambivalent and discriminatory character of official responses, have changed substantially in the years since.

On February 24, 2006, Istanbul police found the body of Baki Koşar, a 41-year-old journalist, in an apartment in the neighborhood of Feriköy in the Şişli district of Istanbul. According to the police report he died six days earlier.²⁵ Four years earlier, Koşar wrote an article called “Gay Murders.” Gülşen Tunç is the lawyer representing Kosar’s family in the criminal procedure against his murderer. She recalls reading the article soon after the murder took place. “It gave me the goosebumps,” she said. “It was as if he was telling us about his own murder.”²⁶

Tunç told Human Rights Watch that police found Koşar’s decomposing body in the living room, while bloodstains covered much of the rest of the apartment. Initially the police caught one suspect, but released him for lack of evidence. They arrested another man on March 30, 2006, in Muğla, a city in the south-west of Turkey, and charged him with the murder.

The defendant Serhan Bağlan, stated before the Istanbul court that he met Koşar on the internet. According to the defendant Koşar described himself as a passive homosexual, gave him his address, and invited him over to his apartment.

The defendant told the judge:

I thought that in the intercourse Baki would be passive and I would be the active, but he showed me that he wanted to pass to the active side by doing elle sarkıntılık [harassing me]. I told him that such a thing could not happen. Baki said that he could get into intercourse by both being active and passive. I cannot accept being passive! I went out of the bedroom, we had a quarrel. Baki Koşar said to me “Who do you think you are?” He went to the kitchen, took a knife and walked towards me.

The defendant described an altercation: “Apparently I stabbed him numerous times, but I don’t remember this because I lost consciousness.”²⁷ The forensic report registered 32 stab wounds in different places. Twenty-one were deep wounds, seven of them lethal, and 11 were considered cuts. The cause of death was “internal bleeding caused by the stabbing.”²⁸ The defendant said he took Koşar’s cell phone and tape recorder. He added: “I went to the bathroom and washed my hands, put on my coat and ran away.”²⁹

The No. 6 Criminal Court in Istanbul convicted the accused, ruling on February 27, 2007:

The attitude and the attack of the deceased—who proposed active intercourse—towards the defendant has been considered an occasion of provocation to the suspect’s benefit.  The effect that this proposal of intercourse has created on the suspect has to be taken into account.³⁰

Under article 81 of the Turkish Criminal Code (TCK), which provides that “anyone who murders intentionally is subject to life imprisonment,” Bağlan should have received a life sentence. However, the Court decided he committed murder under tahrik (incitement, provocation), one of the grounds for alleviating the sentence under article 29 of the TCK. The Court considered elle sarkıntılık as grounds for provocation and reduced the defendant’s sentence to 18 years.³¹ The defendant’s good behavior in court further reduced the sentence: thus he received a total of 15 years.³² Both Koşar’s family and the defendant’s lawyers appealed.

Tunç explains how the judicial system discriminates in the cases of gay men. “Because of this ‘active-passive’ role they [the Court] decreased the sentence. This is how effective this argument is.” She recalls the first hearing. “The attitude of the members of the court surprised me a lot. They were very indifferent. They did not question the suspect thoroughly.” She claims that “[t]he defendant’s lawyer was very comfortable: he didn’t do much defending, it seemed members of the court were doing the lawyer’s job.”³³

She also stated she was surprised when one of the prosecutors quietly told her that Baki Koşar was apparently gay and that the suspect went to his apartment for a regular chat without knowing that he was gay. The prosecutor added, “If the Court decides that it was legitimate self-defense and decides to give a few years of imprisonment, or if they decide on his release, don’t be surprised.”³⁴

She added, “[a] person who commits a customary killing gets a life sentence. But if someone commits a gay murder, it is pretty obvious the slight sentence they will get.”³⁵

Tunç believes that murders like Koşar’s should be considered honor killings. The exact truth of what happened the night of Koşar’s death may never be known.  Both these stories, however, suggest that criminal-justice officials take “honor” in a dual sense, both of which tend to deny full protection of the law to men like Başeskioğlu or Koşar who are seen as desiring sex with other men.  

On the one hand, a man identifying as “gay” is without “honor,” a “pariah,” as Başeskioğlu felt police saw him.  On the other, a man who is the object of homosexual desire—particularly of possible penetration—is legitimated in feeling his “honor” threatened, and that can justify or even require the violence of 17 or 32 knife thrusts in “self-defense.”  

In both cases, ideas about what it means to be a man may mitigate murder.

Every transgender person and many gay men Human Rights Watch spoke to reports having been a victim of violent crime—sometimes multiple crimes—based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. These crimes ranged from beatings in cruising areas, to robberies by men or gangs who arranged to meet their victims over the internet, to attempted murder.³⁶

Homophobic murders have become a particularly contested subject. Activists allege that police do not adequately investigate murders of gay men and transgender people, and do not take possible motives of hate into account. According to KAOS-GL at least 15 gay men and transgender people were reported murdered between January and October 2007.³⁷ Halil Yılmaz, former deputy head of the Istanbul police, stated both publicly and to Lambda Istanbul in 2003 that in the eight preceding years there were 36 known murders of gay men in Istanbul; 34, he claimed, had been solved.³⁸  While the numbers seem impressive on first glance, the criteria Yılmaz cited as revealing the victims’ sexuality suggest both persistent stereotypes about homosexuals, and the strong possibility that other such crimes have gone unclassified. Yılmaz has alleged that gay victims can be identified through “naked pictures, Vaseline, and porno videos … found in their homes”—and the fact that “many victims wear red tanga underwear.”³⁹ Yılmaz has also referred to homosexuality as among the “sexual perversions” [cinsel sapıklığı].⁴⁰And he has stated that “[n our country, homosexual homicides do not result from discrimination. The violence is not against homosexuals, but between homosexuals.”⁴¹

Yılmaz’s statement is a rhetorical move familiar to campaigners against homophobic crimes in other countries—blaming the stigmatized victim, and the victim’s identity and community. It dangerously misunderstands the nature of much homophobic violence. Cem Başeskioğlu told Human Rights Watch that the man who stabbed him “was dying of self-hatred. And he decided to take it out by killing me.”⁴²

As already noted in the summary of this report, homophobic violence cannot be dismissed, whether it comes from people who might or who might not experience homosexual desire. Such violence is ultimately driven by prejudice, not by desire itself and, thus, it should be equally condemned.

Further, when the court lessened Baki Koşar’s killer’s sentence, it chose to treat a man’s sexual “approach” to a man (not just an “attack”) as in itself a mitigating “occasion of provocation.”  This is a version of what has been called the “homosexual panic defense.”  Courts’ susceptibility to believing that the “humiliation of being objectified by someone’s homosexual affections” can drive someone to kill is, as one writer notes, a sign of whether a “legal system—and the society it reflects and supposedly protects—is willing to condone prejudice and excuse violence against gays.”⁴³

Meanwhile, the visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people amid expanding political openness has made them exposed, easy targets of violence. Royan, a gay man who has himself been beaten and robbed, told Human Rights Watch “there are several types of people doing gay-bashing.”

One group is fundamentalists. They think that going after gays and leftists are similar things, and approved by God. The second group is working-class guys who are sort-of-nationalists, brainwashed by these fascist movements like the MHP in a superficial way. They think gays are rich and decadent. So they rob them, and, if they resist, kill them. And the third group does it just for money, without ideology.⁴⁴

Kenan stressed the impact of increasing social inequality:

Fathers become jobless, families poor. They tell their sons, “Go away, earn your own money, I can’t support you.” And they become gangs. Taksim [a district of Istanbul] is particularly dangerous. Taksim for the jobless becomes a potential to earn money. …There are straight people prowling Taksim looking for victims, looking for money. Any victims. But if you look different—if you look effeminate or gay—it makes you an ideal victim, because you will not go to the police. … Gay people and transvestites face this danger because they are public: in the streets, in the bars. We are in front of those who need money. And now I am afraid if this goes on, it will become a world of gangs like in collapsing countries. No one will go out; everyone will be too afraid. It will become a division not between gay and straight, but between rich and poor, your money or your life.⁴⁵

As the internet has become increasingly important in Turkish life, gay men increasingly are targeted through it. Bakı Koşar is one case—but Human Rights Watch researchers heard many more. Can, 30, was beaten up in the winter of 2005 by two men, one of whom he had met in a chat room.⁴⁶ Volkan, a 23-year-old student, “spoke” to a man in an internet chat room in April 2002, and then arranged a meeting one night in his Ankara neighborhood. At the rendezvous, however, they were joined by seven other men—who dragged Volkan into the darkness of a nearby park.

“Is this a faggot?” they asked. “Is he giving his asshole?” They kept hitting me: on my face, and pounding my head against the iron bars of a fence till it was bleeding. They kept asking me questions: if I answered in my own words, they would hit me. “What kind of a man are you?” I said, “Is this manhood, eight to one?” When I questioned their manhood they got angrier, started hitting me harder. I was bleeding and when I got their clothes bloody, they got furious: “You’re ruining our clothes.” They were saying to each other, “Why don’t you fuck this one? Why don’t you take him?” I was very afraid of being raped. Then they threatened to castrate me. “Are you a transsexual? We’ll make you one.” They started telling me to get undressed. One of them broke a bottle on a stone and walked towards me with the jagged end.⁴⁷

The men became distracted when another gay man—and potential victim—appeared to be entering the park, and Volkan escaped.

Other gangs still target areas gay men are known to frequent. Cenk told Human Rights Watch of going to a cinema in Izmir, “not a gay movie theater, but a place that on weekends and at night is full of gay men, and men who don’t call themselves gay but have sex with gays.” A man seemed to cruise him:

Then suddenly he was screaming, “What are you doing, ibne, I’m going to kill you!” I ran out into the lobby to get the usher—and the guy hit me in the face and my glasses flew off. Suddenly two others came out to block me. Suddenly it was obvious: this little gang had come to the cinema looking for gays and for trouble. I ran as fast as I could. I’m sure these psychopaths do it in a planned way, and they come there in groups.⁴⁸

Not only gangs but individuals visit cruising areas to assault or rob gay men. Murat told Human Rights Watch how, in June 2003, he went to a park in Ankara that is “a gay venue, especially in the evenings.” He met a man there, who walked with him and held his hand “Then he said, ‘I will dig you a grave in the middle of the street and put you in it. You did something wrong.’” At knifepoint, he stole 25 million Turkish Lira (TRY)—about US$20 at the time.  Murat said the same man had robbed another gay friend:

Gays are easy targets for a guy like this; they’ll immediately give away all they have. For social reasons: because of what might happen to them. If you go to the police, they won’t treat you objectively. Then there’s the family factor, needing to hide your homosexuality. Plus these systematic pressures: you already feel guilty over your sexuality, you are affected by the image of homosexual men as easily scared, as weak, unlike straight men who are powerful and in control. He expects you to slip into the role automatically.⁴⁹

Indeed, mistrust of the police is widespread among Turkey’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.  In Izmir, Deniz, a gay student, said, “All of us have heard the story of Ülker Sokak [the Istanbul street where police drove out a transgender community]. You don’t need anything extra to give you an idea of how the police treat sexual difference. You can extrapolate from the facts.”⁵⁰ And Kenan’s statements reflected the same deep mistrust:

The police will not help: police will say to the victim, you deserve it. So, gays and transvestites don’t say anything to the law. Because they will make fun of us: most of them will say, “Where were you?” “In the bar.” “When?” “At night.” “You’re an ibne. You were asking for it.” Just to be out at night, at a certain age, as a man, makes them think you are gay! And some police take money from the gangs. All policemen will deny this, but it is clear. Most of the mafia and gangs are not just with the permission of, but are because of the police.

“The police in Turkey must be cleaned up,” Kenan said. One key step in addressing the spread of violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity is changing both the language, and the thinking, of the criminal justice system.

C. Emre’s Story

Emre, in his mid-twenties when we talked to him in 2003, is a middle-class professional who had moved to Istanbul in the late 1990s to study. He also learned to fear the police. An incident in 2001 still affects him. “I have been seeing psychologists since that time. I think my lack of self confidence comes from that,” he told us.⁵¹ It happened in the early hours of December 30, 2001. He had spent the night drinking and celebrating at a gay bar. As he was walking home, a man offered him a ride.

He looked good, very well-dressed. It didn’t seem a risk. I got in the car. He asked where I had been. I said the name of the bar. He said, “Isn’t that a gay place?” He asked was I a student, where was I from. I told him a lot about my life. In front of my apartment building, he asked what floor I lived on. I showed him the apartment window. He said: “Can you handle the stairs by yourself?” And as I stepped down, he said, “Stop. You’re not getting out.” He started the engine, and we were moving. He started insulting me. “Aren’t you ashamed of doing ibne [faggot] things? Letting yourself be fucked?” Then he showed his ID, and it was a real police ID. He took my ID card, my cell phone. He gave me a paper, asked me to write down my mother’s and father’s names and numbers. …

He attacked me physically—grabbed my head by my hair and hit it against the window. He said, “I will take you to the main police station, Vatan Caddesi, and make you a Christmas present for the policemen there. I’ll tell your parents—they’ll learn what you are. Let’s see if you can ever go home again.”

I think he was of a high rank—on the way, when we met some police cars, officers in them greeted him with respect. Then he started saying, “You might be saved if…” Meaning I had to pay. He asked what I had in my wallet. I hadn’t much. He gave me the telephone and said, “Find the money.”⁵²

They drove to meet a friend of Emre and got the money from him (80 million TRY altogether, about US$100 then). Since he was now with his friend, Emre refused the officer’s demands that he get back in the car. “He took off with my cell phone and ID card.” Emre’s roommate continued the story.

It was 3 a.m. or so. I was still awake; we had a woman guest staying with us, and she was sleeping. The bell rang. The voice over the intercom said, “Police.”

The man came up. He said, “We have arrested Emre.” I asked for his ID: He showed it, it was real. He said he needed the charger of Emre’s cell phone. Such nerve! So daring! And it’s so cheap just to buy a charger on the streets!

I asked: “Why was Emre arrested?” He didn’t answer at first, then said: “Prostitution.”

When the girl woke up, he asked for her ID and mine. He stormed around to make us both afraid. He was small but he had a mean, thuggish face. … I asked where Emre was: he said he didn’t know, he might have been taken to the police lockup.  As he was leaving he said, “He’ll be out before morning, don’t worry.”

We couldn’t sleep, of course. We tried calling Emre. Then in less than an hour the phone rang and it was the officer. He wanted me to come downstairs.

I had about 80 million on me. I knew he would ask for money. I gave most to the girl and took 30 million with me. I put 20 million in one pocket and 10 in another—I wanted to save some. He took me in the car and we started driving—in very dark streets, with sudden turns, trying to disorient me, making me feel psychologically lost. I kept asking what Emre had done, and he kept saying, “prostitution.”

I defined prostitution for him—sex for money. “Did he ask money from you?” He got angry—“No, it’s not that way! If someone asks for sex from you, it’s prostitution!”

He got brutal. Finally I asked him how much money he wanted directly. ... I offered 10 million. It’s all I have. He laughed—“It’s too little.” He said he was taking me to the police lockup too.

He did a U-turn to make me think we were going there. Then he said, “We’ll go home and take your girlfriend to the police lockup too. I’m sure you’re selling her. I’m sure you’re having sex. I can accuse you of many things once we get to jail.”⁵³

Emre’s roommate eventually gave the officer all the cash he had on him, and was released.

Emre said, “The cop must be a professional in this. He knows what gay people are afraid of—the way he cajoled me to give details, show my apartment. He had my ID, my parents’ numbers—everything. I lived in fear. I started making up stories to tell my family if he called them. I was in sheer terror.”⁵⁴ Emre still believes that coming in direct contact with the police is dangerous and avoids contact.

D. Police Abuse: “The Problem is You!”

On a Saturday night in June 2007, police raided Tekyön, a club for gay men in Istanbul. Bawer, age 27, and his friends had arrived there around midnight.

We had been there about 10 minutes when the music suddenly stopped. We were expecting the usual ID check. We started to get suspicious 10 minutes later. I gathered some people and said to leave. When we got to the door we saw two policemen blocking the entrance. Then we started hearing shouting from the inside. Police were swearing and insulting people. …. When one of our friends went to ask an officer what is the problem, the officer told him “the problem is you!”⁵⁵

That attitude seems common. Eren Keskin, a lawyer and former chair of the Human Rights Association in Istanbul, notes that “There is nothing in Turkish law that says homosexuality is a crime.” Yet she also points to the irrelevance of the rule of law where social stigma and police authority are unchecked, and intersect. “We live in a society in which police power is very great, and militaristic. Police and military—they take homosexuality as a vice. This is why people who are homosexual face a great deal of violence.”⁵⁶

Emre’s story illustrates that intersection, and that violence. It shows how police can exploit the stigma against homosexual conduct for profit, through extortion. Gay men and lesbians are less consistently subject to police abuse than transgender people, because they are less visible: their bodies do not necessarily proclaim their identities; secrecy is an option. But gay men are not exempt from police ambitions to uncover, and rid cities and towns of “deviance.” The stigma attached to homosexuality and the possibility of concealment make them ready targets for police harassment.

Bulut, 30, was waiting for a friend in Ankara when a police car stopped him.

The cop asked me for my ID card. I asked why—“Don’t ask, ibne [faggot], just hand it over.” He took me to the car. There were two men in it, one of them was the friend whom I was going to meet. I didn’t know who the other one was but he was gay too. The cop asked me how I knew them. There were two other policemen also. They were all in uniforms, regular police. “You’re a man like a ram [a colloquial expression for a strongly-built man]: why are you doing ibnelik [being a faggot]?” One of the policemen said, “There’s no room in Ankara for faggots.” He hit me on the face, and another one spat in my face. They asked if I had other homosexual friends, and asked for their phone numbers and home addresses. I said I only knew the friend they were keeping in the car and I didn’t know any other gays. They put me in the car and we drove around. They were saying, “Show us the homosexuals if you see them on the street.” ⁵⁷

Finally, the three men were taken to an isolated street. The police took Bulut’s money; one officer struck him in the face, saying, “I will kill you if I see you again doing ibnelik.” Then Bulut was left there while the others went on.

Beyond the business of blackmail, police scrutinize known cruising areas, such as Taksim Square in Istanbul, and harass men there as part of efforts to “clean up” the quarters—modeled on their campaigns against prostitution. Deniz told Human Rights Watch how one night “I was in Taksim, with my boyfriend. I was about to say goodbye, we hugged. A policeman was staring at us. He came over suddenly, and put handcuffs on me and him.”

He said: “What are you doing? You are both men! Why are you doing that to each other?” I was very angry and afraid.  But I stood up to him—I said, “Being homosexual is nothing to be ashamed of. We were saying goodbye. Why are we handcuffed together?”

He loaded us into a police minibus. And as we got underway, he kept asking who we were and what we were doing.  I demanded to know why we had been arrested and where we were being taken. The cops said, “[y]ou’ll go to the contagious diseases hospital.”

Instead, they took us to Beyoğlu police station. They said we were “suspects”—I have no idea what we were suspected of.  I demanded to call a lawyer, and my aunt here in Istanbul. They said, “[t]he officer in charge isn’t here; you aren’t allowed to phone.” ⁵⁸

They took our shoelaces and our belts. And they gave us papers: on this document it was written that we were detained because of security. …I refused to sign it.  But saying that didn’t change the reality that we had to sign. So we signed it!  …They told us to sign or we would never get out.

Deniz and his friend were released the next afternoon. “They gave up the idea of testing us at the contagious diseases hospital: I don’t know why.” No charges were pressed. “It was meant to scare us, to discourage us from being seen in public.”⁵⁹

The document given to gay men who are prohibited from serving in the military (an issue discussed in a later chapter) can also be an excuse for abusing gay men. In 2005 Şule, who now identifies as a transgender woman but who at the time identified as a gay man, was stopped by the police on the street. “Police knew I was gay,” Şule explained.

I had just gone through the process to get my military exemption, but for some reason they didn’t put it in my record… I was stopped by the police and taken to the police station. One of the policemen harassed me. He beat me, made me strip and clean the bathroom naked. I wanted to press charges. I complained to the high officer. He said he would take care of it, but then made fun of the situation. He told me to apologize to the guy that abused me!⁶⁰

Undercover police also harass gay men. Atilla, 33 when we spoke to him in 2003, comes from a middle class background and works for a private company in Ankara. He told Human Rights Watch how he began a December night dancing with friends at a gay bar in Ankara. A flirtatious man in his twenties approached him insistently throughout the evening.

Atilla avoided him. But after midnight, he found two men seizing his arms and hauling him toward the door. When Atilla resisted, one showed a police ID.

Outside, they shouted, “Bring the handcuffs.” I still didn’t believe they were cops... … They just cuffed me and pushed my head into the car. There were two cars, plain, not official. I was scared as hell. I knew I hadn’t committed any crime, but anything could happen.

In the car, one cop said, “Now your mother’s fucked, son of a bitch.”

Four police filled one car, and four or five the other, “including the guy who had cruised me”—who had been an undercover officer.

Every word out of their mouths was a swear word. “Son of a bitch, we’re going to fuck you,” and so on. The guy driving was playing the good cop. He’d ask, “What have you done, beautiful [güzelim]. Don’t make trouble, make it easy for us.” I said: “If I knew what my offense was, it might be easy.”  My mouth was dry with terror, my teeth were chattering. They said they were from the Narcotics Division, and the man in the bar had said I was selling drugs.

They kept insulting me: ibne, ass-giver [götveren], and so on. It was Ramadan—so they said, “You don’t stay at home at Ramadan, you come to these places to get your asses fucked. And you blame our married friend” —the man who cruised me—“for your perversion!” … Asking the same questions over and over. About dealing drugs but also about all the gays I knew. And physically shoving and slapping me, and still with the names—ibne, ibne. I felt I was going crazy.

Finally they said, “Now we’re going to the police station.” They asked if I’d ever been there, and told me there I could see my mother’s cunt.

They drove to the Second Branch of the Ankara Security Directorate—the city police headquarters notorious for torture from the 1980s on. “It has been called the ‘Building of Shame,’” Atilla remembers.

During the “incidents” in 1980s, mothers would look at that building and cry.⁶¹ They took me there. In the foyer, one of the guys from the other car came to me and held me by my ears and hit my head against the wall. I had earrings and he pulled them to hurt me. He was swearing and telling me to speak. The cop was holding me by my hair and hitting my legs. I was handcuffed and they were swinging me by my hair. With his knee he hit my stomach and my testicles. I doubled up and was about to faint. Holding me by the ears he smashed me into the wall... Ibne! I fell. Then I don’t remember.

Then they poured water on my face. They were making fun of my earrings, the way I was dressed. Asking, “Are you hurt? You don’t feel pain when you’re eating cocks, but you’re in pain now.” They said, “You must be used to it, faggot.” That was horrible.⁶²

Atilla begins to cry.

And they said, “This is nothing. We can decide to take you upstairs or not. If we do, you’re from Ankara, you know this building: everyone knows what happens here.” My ears were bleeding, my lips were bleeding. There was a woman officer and she said, “Aren’t you ashamed? You are a stain on manhood. Look at you. You’re not like a man, but you’re not like a woman.” I thought everything had happened to me that could happen, so I tried to answer her, but I realized I couldn’t talk. She was laughing and kept insulting me, saying I was disgusting. I tried to shout—I said, “I can understand the men to some extent, but how can a woman act like this?” She said, “I am more man than you. Don’t you understand that?”⁶³

They returned to the car and drove again. He was asked to collaborate with the police and when he refused the policeman said

 “[y]ou faggots don’t understand good from bad. You’re all the same sons of bitches.” He was furious now. “What do you want us to do to you? Do you want us to kill you?”

Finally, Atilla was dropped by the roadside: “They kept me in the car for some time before letting me out, hitting me.”

And they got in their cars and went away. ... I didn’t have power to walk. I felt filthy, degraded. I walked for a long time. It was very cold. I took a taxi in the end, and went home. I rang the bell and my mother answered. I pretended to be drunk, told her to turn off the lights, but she saw there was something wrong. In the bathroom I couldn’t recognize myself in the mirror. I thought, how could I let them use me that way?

I’m very afraid of policemen. For a long time I’d cross the street whenever I saw one. I am filled with hate as well as fear. … Having listened to other people’s stories has helped me recover. Because many gay people I know have horror stories with the police.⁶⁴

Reform falls short

Unquestionably, in the last 10 years, policing in Turkey has seen positive changes; UN and EU mechanisms have both recognized progress. In a 2005 report, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) recognized that “detention by law enforcement agencies [police and gendarmerie] is currently governed by a legislative and regulatory framework capable of combating effectively torture and other forms of ill-treatment by law enforcement officials.”⁶⁵ The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found in its 2006 Mission to Turkey that “torture and ill-treatment by the police had dramatically decreased in the past few years” and had “no doubts that the Government’s policy of ‘zero tolerance’ of torture is highly successful.”⁶⁶

However, neither the legal framework nor the zero-tolerance policy has seen full effects on the ground. In 2006, for example, in its mission to Turkey, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found cases of “ill-treatment of a psychological nature, such as threats of physical ill-treatment … not to mention verbal abuse”⁶⁷ in police headquarters. Police ill-treatment is still regularly reported, with allegations particularly relating to contexts outside formal sites of detention.⁶⁸

Moreover, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture has stressed that, while lesbian, gay bisexual, and transgender people worldwide are “disproportionately subjected to torture and other forms of ill-treatment, because they fail to conform to socially constructed gender expectations,” documenting these violations entails special difficulties:

… their status may also affect the consequences of their ill-treatment in terms of their access to complaint procedures or medical treatment in state hospitals, where they may fear further victimization, as well as in terms of legal consequences regarding the legal sanctions flowing from certain abuses. The Special Rapporteur would like to stress that, because of their economic and educational situation, allegedly often exacerbated or caused by discriminatory laws and attitudes, members of sexual minorities are deprived of the means to claim and ensure the enforcement of their rights, including their rights to legal representation and to obtain legal remedies, such as compensation... Discriminatory attitudes to members of sexual minorities can mean that they are perceived as less credible by law enforcement agencies or not fully entitled to an equal standard of protection, including protection against violence carried out by non-state agents.⁶⁹

Many gay men in Turkey emphasized their mistrust of the police. Cenk, a student and gay activist, said that “Most of my gay friends have been abused by the officers. The police are a patriarchal institution; they protect an idea of masculinity. … Police committing crimes against gay people, transvestites, transsexuals, is part of the mentality of the whole institution.”⁷⁰

Asked what would need to happen for police to gain the confidence of LGBT people, one gay man told Human Rights Watch:

Very simple. Treat transvestites and gays fairly on the street. If a guy steals my wallet in a hotel and if I go to the police, I want someone to be interested in it properly. Everyone is very afraid of people with uniforms in this country. … But as a guy with a high-pitched voice, you are just a zero in this country. There is a cold war between gays and people with uniforms. They do anything to fuck us, to psychologically and spiritually destroy us.⁷¹