(Reuters) -
On a hot summer's day in 2008, 26-year-old physics student Ahmet Yildiz was
shot dead when he popped out from his Istanbul apartment to buy ice cream.
The main
suspect in the killing, a fugitive still wanted by Turkish police, is Yildiz's
father, who could not accept that his only son was in a homosexual
relationship.
The case,
widely believed to be Turkey's first gay "honor killing", has
inspired a movie "Zenne", which opened on January 13 and explores gay
sexual identity and prejudice in overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey.
"We had
the movie idea in mind right after our dear friend Ahmet was killed," said
Caner Alper, writer and co-director of the movie. "His story needed to be
told."
Yildiz was
born into a wealthy religious family in the ancient city of Sanliurfa, in
Turkey's impoverished and conservative southeast, but moved to cosmopolitan
Istanbul during his university years, seeking more freedom as a gay man.
In
Istanbul, Yildiz started a new life and made new friends; he also began a gay
relationship and eventually moved in with his boyfriend, who witnessed Yildiz's
murder from the window of their apartment on the Asian side of the city divided
by the Bosphorus Strait.
In the
movie, Yildiz's character is encouraged to come out of the closet by a male
belly dancer, or zenne, and a German photographer who has moved to Istanbul
after a personal crisis in Afghanistan, where he accidentally caused the death
of several children during a photo shoot. Both are fictional characters.
In real
life, Yildiz's coming out as a gay man was seen as an affront in his deeply
patriarchal and tribal family, even though his parents adored him, a cousin,
Ahmet Kaya, told the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey.
LOOKING FOR
A "CURE"
Yildiz's
father had urged him to return to their village and to see a doctor and an imam
to "cure" him of his homosexuality and get married, but Yildiz
refused.
"Ahmet
loved his family more than anything else and he was tortured about
disappointing them," Kaya was quoted as saying in the foundation's report.
After he
was killed, the family did not claim Yildiz's body for a proper Islamic burial
-- an indication of the deep shame the family felt and that they had ceased to
consider him one of their own. He was buried instead in a "cemetery for
the nameless."
"The
one scene I wasn't able to distance myself from the character I played as an
actor was when Ahmet apologized to his father for being gay on the phone after coming
out," Erkan Avci, a young actor who played Yildiz, told Reuters.
"It's
such a great tragedy, so cruel and inhumane that anybody has to apologize for
who he is."
Avci drew
parallels between Ahmet's situation and his own as a Kurd from Diyarbakir province
in a country whose Kurdish minority has long complained of discrimination and
inequality.
"It
would have been immoral for me to turn down this role, as a man who had to
apologize for years for being Kurdish," he said.
"Zenne",
which won five awards at Turkey's most prestigious film festival, the Antalya
Golden Orange, has received a huge amount of attention in mainstream media and
is reported to be having reasonable success at the box office.
With a $1
million budget, including financial support from the Dutch embassy, it opened
in a luxury movie theatre in one of Istanbul's most fashionable neighborhoods.
Gays are
normally depicted in Turkish movies as colorful and exaggerated secondary
characters who add a comic element - hardly the main character of a story.
"Zenne"
tackles head-on such sensitive issues as gay society, prejudice and equal
rights for Turkey's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.
"'Zenne'
is a very special film for us. It brings to the screen some of the important
issues for the LGBT cause such as hate crimes, the complications for gay men to
forego the mandatory military service and coming out," said Umut Guner,
spokesman for the Ankara-based Kaos GL, a LGBT group.
PREJUDICE
The film
has not been welcomed in conservative circles.
Islamist
daily Vatan called it "homosexual propaganda" by a gay lobby bent on
"legitimizing perversion through their so-called art."
Despite
being the only suspect, Yildiz's father is still at large and is being tried in
absentia.
Friends and
activists, who have attended some of the hearings wearing masks bearing
Yildiz's portrait, say the authorities lack the will to find the perpetrator.
Alper and Mehmet
Binay, co-directors of the movie and together as a gay couple for 14 years,
said they heard their friend Yildiz receive death threats from his family over
the phone.
Yildiz
filed an official complaint but failed to receive any protection, they said.
"Honor
killings," or crimes carried out against mostly women and young girls seen
to have tainted the family's name, are not uncommon in Turkey, particularly in
poor and rural areas.
The
European Union, which Turkey wants to join, has repeatedly urged Ankara to take
a tougher stance against such crimes.
MILITARY
PRACTICES
Turkey is
often held as an example in the Middle East for marrying Islam and democracy,
but Turkish gay activists say Ankara's human rights record is far from perfect.
One
practice particularly abhorred by rights groups is the method by which gay men
can be exempted from the required 16-month military service: they have to prove
their homosexuality in medical tests and are compelled to provide photos of
them having sex with other men.
In the
movie, two characters undergoing one such examination are forced to wear
make-up and dress in women's clothes, while doctors perform anal examinations.
According
to Article 17 of the health regulations of the Turkish Armed Forces,
homosexuality is considered a "psychosexual deviance."
"Turkey
is going through a democratization process, and the army needs to enter this
phase, too," said Binay.
"We
don't live in a dream world and we don't expect it to happen all of a sudden in
such a deep-seated institution, but at least they could stop the humiliating
practices against gay men."
Turkish
rights groups reported 24 killings of gay and transsexual individuals in the
last two years. In most cases, courts reduced the sentences or the perpetrators
were not found.
In a report
last year, Amnesty International urged Ankara to draw up laws preventing
discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and to punish perpetrators
of homophobic attacks.
The EU in a
separate report also last year said lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
persons in Turkey "continued to suffer discrimination, intimidation and
violent crimes".
LGBT
activists say they get little sympathy from the AK Party, in power for a
decade, which has its roots in political Islam and is known for its socially
conservative stance.
Selma Aliye
Kavaf, Turkey's former Women and Family Affairs Minister, made waves in 2010
when she said homosexuality was "a biological disorder, a disease that
needs to be treated".
The current
interior minister accused an outlawed armed organization with "engaging in
every kind of immorality, including homosexuality".
Director
Binay said he hoped the movie would help to change views both among government
officials and the wider society, but believed that would not happen overnight.
"These
movies will be made in Turkey as long as those from different identities refuse
to learn to live together."
(Editing by
Ibon Villelabeitia and Sonya Hepinstall)
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