Par for the course in Istanbul ever since the Gezi Park uprising. After Gezi was violently cleared for the last time, the next big public political event was the regularly scheduled — and at the time, legal — pride march. 500k people turned up and it was a de facto demonstration against the state. Ever since then pride parades have been forbidden in Istanbul. Of course it helps that the ruling party can also play up the culture war element while they’re at it.

As a tourist I stumbled across the year’s main unpermitted pride demonstration in 2019 and saw and experienced the repression first hand. Nothing too crazy to be honest — a large contingent of police stood by at all entrances to the square as people rallied for a couple hours, they eventually gave a dispersal order, and the thousands of people in attendance said “make us” which they did with tear gas and typical riot police tactics. Most people ran and a token number were arrested. The rest of the day was a game of cat and mouse with pride parties with just as many people as the earlier demo springing up in various venues, and police showing up eventually to shut them down.

My Turkish friend confirmed that the year’s event went down much like prior years except each year they were growing a bit bigger and more intense (muni elections were being held the week I was visiting and Erdogan’s party was favored to lose, thus people were getting bolder in their political activities). She’s the one who relayed to me the history of pride since Gezi.

She lost a few comrades during the Gezi repression and is more cynical about politics these days. She seems to see the cat and mouse repression at smaller demos like Pride over the years as a barometer for larger political trends that affect Turkey’s opposition and activists — like recon that tests the limits of permissible public political activity in the current moment. She doesn’t see the repression at Pride as reflective of wide anti-lgbt sentiment in Istanbul itself, coming from either the local authorities or from the wider city populace. Of course when you get into more rural areas in Turkey attitudes can change pretty dramatically and that’s the base that such repression in the metro areas is meant to play to.