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Zenne Dancer: Gay "honor killing" movie
shakes Turkey up
21.1.2012 |
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January
21, 2012
ISTANBUL,— 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
apologised 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 apologise 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,www.ekurd.net
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 neighbourhoods.
Gays are normally depicted in Turkish movies as
colourful 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 Vakit called it "homosexual
propaganda" by a gay lobby bent on "legitimising
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 democratisation 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."
By Ece Toksabay - Reuters
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