Police Maltreatment Directed Towards Gay Venues in Istanbul
June 18, 2007

On the night of June 17, Saturday, Turkish police has raided a gay bar in Taksim area. Gay men were forced to leave the place with the threat of pepper gas and batons and some of them were harassed physically and maltreated.

During the incident that took place on Saturday night around 2:30 am at the gay bar called "Tekyon", the police went into the bar and yelled at the customers in a very rude fashion, used words like "out!", "clear the area!", "leave ulan!" (a Turkish insult word). As the attitude was outrageous, a part of the crowd wanted to show a reaction but the police attacked them with pepper gas and batons.

Bar owners commented: "Police has raided the bar without showing any particular reason and they were harsh and homophobic. There couldn’t have been this kind of interference before but it is not surprising that this is happening as a result of the excessive authority given to the police forces". It has also been stated that physical violence was used in the incident and that it was not hard to imagine what would have happened, if the prosecutor, though late, had not stepped in.

One of the gay men who was at the scene, Deniz Kar (23), said: "Cops have clearly attempted a lynch with their eyes full of hatred and homophobia and we were so shocked that we did not know what to do. One of the cops pushed me and attacked me. He threatened us with his baton and pepper gas and if I had resisted I would have certainly faced physical violence. This is against human rights and I want to know where the police are taking this power from!"

The police yelled to disperse the crowd that had gathered in front of the bar after they were forced to leave the place and they threatened the crowd with their batons. When the crowd started clapping to protest, they were attacked by the police again.

By: Erkan Alcam, (kaos gl magazine & kaosgl.org)

NOTE: Shortly after the management of the venue expressed the words above, they changed their statement, saying "they were raided legally because of the license problems the venue has not solved yet" and they did not want the name of the venue to be mentioned in the press releases or any other documents that gay rights organizations are going to present.