Gay & Lesbian
Interview with GLBT rights lawyer
When you first meet Yasemin Öz you don’t immediately sense her strong crusading nature. The first things you notice are her twinkling eyes and her bemused demeanor, with a half-cocked smile that punctuates her conversation. It is this relaxed vibe that puts you at ease in her presence and draws you in, like having a tet-a-tete with a long-lost friend.
Her strong commitment to human rights issues in this country, specifically in the realm of GLBT, comes forth as soon as you pry into her lawyerly experiences. And while enumerating those background points, her pleasant openness never leaves her face.
A youngish 34, Öz has already done a lot to further the agenda of rectifying the murkily oppressive situation concerning Turkey's GLBT community, although she'll be the first one to point out that what she has accomplished is a mere scratch on the surface and everyone who can should henceforth pitch in to help.
In 2006, for instance, she went to Brussels to deliver an eye-opening and damning report on violence against transgender persons by the Turkish police to Oli Rehn, the EU Commissioner in charge for enlargement. The report was eventually incorporated in the 2007 Progress Report on Turkey's membership application status which Mr. Rehn issued to an intently inquisitive Turkish and international media (http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/pdf/key_documents/2007/nov/turkey_progress_reports_en.pdf on page 21).
A lot of people credit that seminal report with the fact that since then there has been a discernible change on the part of the authorities as well as some re-examination of government policies in dealing with the various GLBT sectors in general. In dealing with the members of the GLBT community, either in response or as a reaction to incidents involving them, there has been a restrained approach by the authorities unlike the quick bare-knuckled violence they employed (before the 2007 EU Progress Report) that gave rise to numerous cases of brutality and affronts to human dignity. One might say there has been a lighter, gloved hand approach now. Although, this being Turkey, where the social and religious dynamics are intertwined, it's still too soon to determine if this will hold out in the long run.
While in the EU capital, she gave some briefings to members of the European Parliament - among them UK West Midlands' Michael Cashman, an openly gay rapporteur and member of the Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee; Dutch Emine Bozkurt, EU Parliament rapporteur on woman's rights; and Sophie Int'Veld, another European Parliamentarian from that body’s Intergroup on Gay and Lesbian rights - on the then recently drawn-up closure case against Lambda Istanbul. The closure was instigated by Istanbul's AKP governor based on the organization's alleged objectives against Turkish "moral values and family structures".
In a case of what goes around comes around, the country's ruling party, AKP, which has an unabashed religious bent, was itself recently subjected to a closure case for Islamist activities deemed going against the Ataturkian-laic constitution by a staunch secularism-motivated prosecutor .
Regarding the Lambda Istanbul case, on May 29th of this year, the city's Third Civil Court of First Instance ruled against it on procedural pretexts. It ordered its closing on the grounds that there were "errors and deficiencies" in the organizational statutes. But the court arrived at this decision without specifying which articles if any were lacking or needed to be remedied and thus it can only be construed as arbitrary.
Yasemin Öz was immediately involved with other active Lambda Istanbul lawyers in drafting an appeal to the Court of Cassation (Supreme Court), where the case is now lodged.
Where are you from originally, and how long have you been living in Istanbul?
I was born in Afyon, one of two siblings. My parents still live there while my brother lives in Izmir. I’ve been in Istanbul for 1.5 years. I came to work at the Istanbul office of a Turkish international commodities corporation, for which I've been working for four years now.
And before here?
Ankara. That's where I studied law, at Ankara University, graduating in 1997.
Was that where you learned English? You have a good command of the language, I must say.
Oh, no. They don't teach in any other language in Turkish law schools other than in Turkish. No. I actually went to a special boarding school in Usak, near my hometown Afyon, where part of the secondary school curriculum was learning a foreign language. I took up English.
Was it in law school that you began to be aware and involved with human rights issues in this country?
Yes, but it was an evolutionary process in that I was coming into my own sexuality and I was questioning a lot about what was going on. At that time, there were no references for me to define my feelings as a lesbian. Only serendipitous or accidental exposures, such as seeing the Sapphic context of the movie "Basic Instinct" - even if it was a negative portrayal - or coming across girl-on-girl lovemaking in adventure novels.
I was 21 then and eager to identify my sexual orientation and, by a stroke of luck, I read and heard about KAOS GL, the first Turkish GLBT organization founded in Ankara in 1994. I immediately sought it out and became one of the first two female members sometime in 1995.
Being a law student, I was assigned by the group to read about and expound on homophobia and the Turkish laws which, believe me, I undertook with a missionary zeal. My findings and assessments were published in KAOS magazine in 1996.
What did you find out?
That our laws practically say nothing or ignore homosexuality as a subject except where it applies to the military, where homosexuals and the transgender are not allowed to serve.
That said, there is a real threat to Turkey's GLBT in the way some laws relating to morality and public order are being subjectively or prejudicially enforced and often violently applied to those that do not conform to the norms of the majority. These victims often have no recourse in the eyes of the law.
Can you cite some examples of the cases you handled?
I was one of the original three lawyers that took up pro-bono the cases of the 15 transgender persons who, for several days and nights in 2006, were attacked, beaten and shot at in their own homes by a veritable lynch mob of neighbors. Some were dragged by hair into the streets and those they found in the streets were seriously injured with knives and sticks. Police officers were present in some of the incidents but chose to turn a blind eye to what was happening. This was in Eryaman, a conservative neighborhood of Ankara, and the assault was perpetrated with the aim to drive them out; a blatant case of minority cleansing so to speak. Adding insult to injury, some of the girls were the ones hauled into the police stations and detained for alleged attacks on the police.
When we tried to get those involved to face charges, we encountered a lot of resistance from the prosecutor because he didn’t view the mob's actions as hate crimes and did not take into account the forced expulsion of a group of people from their lawful homes. These cases are ongoing. Unfortunately, I had to pass these to other lawyers when I moved to Istanbul.
Then there was the editor of KAOS himself, Umut Güner, who was indicted in 2006 under a vague statute banning "obscene" materials. While he was eventually acquitted of the pornography charge, that year's press run of the July issue was confiscated. In it were musings of gay writers on the impact of pornography on GLBT lives, the differences between erotic and hard porn- you know, more academic than gratuitous. I am currently involved along with other lawyers in adjudicating the seizure case before the European Court of Human Rights.
I am also in the midst of a high-profile case involving Esmeray, a well-known Istanbul transvestite artist and a local prominent feminist figure. We both work for AMARGI, the women’s cooperative which runs a bookshop and café in Beyoglu. I’m naturally representing her in court since I accompanied her when she filed the complaint at the police headquarters. This case attracted the international press and Human Rights Watch when it was first reported in Taraf Gazetesi.
What happened to her?
She was on the way home when some police agents stopped her in the vicinity of her house. They were checking identity cards, a regular occurrence in urban areas in this country. For no apparent reason other than perhaps the fact that she was a transgender person, she was badly beaten by those agents.
_________________________________________________________
Yasemin Öz runs (all alone, we might add!) the hot line www.kaosgl.org where she dispenses online legal advice and assistance to the GLBT community. Because of her regular day job, however, she cannot provide legal representation to everyone who needs it but she's happy to make referrals to some of her lawyer friends. She can also be reached at yasemin@kaosgl.org or personally at AMARGI Book Shop and CafÈ, Katip Mustafa Çelebi Mah. Tel Sok. No: 16 Beyoğlu-Istanbul / Turkey phone : 00 90 212 251 01 54 E-mail : Web Site : www.amargi.org.tr
Yasemin Öz: Human Rights Lawyer
Writer: Rene Ames
Interview with GLBT rights lawyer
When you first meet Yasemin Öz you don’t immediately sense her strong crusading nature. The first things you notice are her twinkling eyes and her bemused demeanor, with a half-cocked smile that punctuates her conversation. It is this relaxed vibe that puts you at ease in her presence and draws you in, like having a tet-a-tete with a long-lost friend.
Her strong commitment to human rights issues in this country, specifically in the realm of GLBT, comes forth as soon as you pry into her lawyerly experiences. And while enumerating those background points, her pleasant openness never leaves her face.
A youngish 34, Öz has already done a lot to further the agenda of rectifying the murkily oppressive situation concerning Turkey's GLBT community, although she'll be the first one to point out that what she has accomplished is a mere scratch on the surface and everyone who can should henceforth pitch in to help.
In 2006, for instance, she went to Brussels to deliver an eye-opening and damning report on violence against transgender persons by the Turkish police to Oli Rehn, the EU Commissioner in charge for enlargement. The report was eventually incorporated in the 2007 Progress Report on Turkey's membership application status which Mr. Rehn issued to an intently inquisitive Turkish and international media (http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/pdf/key_documents/2007/nov/turkey_progress_reports_en.pdf on page 21).
A lot of people credit that seminal report with the fact that since then there has been a discernible change on the part of the authorities as well as some re-examination of government policies in dealing with the various GLBT sectors in general. In dealing with the members of the GLBT community, either in response or as a reaction to incidents involving them, there has been a restrained approach by the authorities unlike the quick bare-knuckled violence they employed (before the 2007 EU Progress Report) that gave rise to numerous cases of brutality and affronts to human dignity. One might say there has been a lighter, gloved hand approach now. Although, this being Turkey, where the social and religious dynamics are intertwined, it's still too soon to determine if this will hold out in the long run.
While in the EU capital, she gave some briefings to members of the European Parliament - among them UK West Midlands' Michael Cashman, an openly gay rapporteur and member of the Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee; Dutch Emine Bozkurt, EU Parliament rapporteur on woman's rights; and Sophie Int'Veld, another European Parliamentarian from that body’s Intergroup on Gay and Lesbian rights - on the then recently drawn-up closure case against Lambda Istanbul. The closure was instigated by Istanbul's AKP governor based on the organization's alleged objectives against Turkish "moral values and family structures".
In a case of what goes around comes around, the country's ruling party, AKP, which has an unabashed religious bent, was itself recently subjected to a closure case for Islamist activities deemed going against the Ataturkian-laic constitution by a staunch secularism-motivated prosecutor .
Regarding the Lambda Istanbul case, on May 29th of this year, the city's Third Civil Court of First Instance ruled against it on procedural pretexts. It ordered its closing on the grounds that there were "errors and deficiencies" in the organizational statutes. But the court arrived at this decision without specifying which articles if any were lacking or needed to be remedied and thus it can only be construed as arbitrary.
Yasemin Öz was immediately involved with other active Lambda Istanbul lawyers in drafting an appeal to the Court of Cassation (Supreme Court), where the case is now lodged.
Where are you from originally, and how long have you been living in Istanbul?
I was born in Afyon, one of two siblings. My parents still live there while my brother lives in Izmir. I’ve been in Istanbul for 1.5 years. I came to work at the Istanbul office of a Turkish international commodities corporation, for which I've been working for four years now.
And before here?
Ankara. That's where I studied law, at Ankara University, graduating in 1997.
Was that where you learned English? You have a good command of the language, I must say.
Oh, no. They don't teach in any other language in Turkish law schools other than in Turkish. No. I actually went to a special boarding school in Usak, near my hometown Afyon, where part of the secondary school curriculum was learning a foreign language. I took up English.
Was it in law school that you began to be aware and involved with human rights issues in this country?
Yes, but it was an evolutionary process in that I was coming into my own sexuality and I was questioning a lot about what was going on. At that time, there were no references for me to define my feelings as a lesbian. Only serendipitous or accidental exposures, such as seeing the Sapphic context of the movie "Basic Instinct" - even if it was a negative portrayal - or coming across girl-on-girl lovemaking in adventure novels.
I was 21 then and eager to identify my sexual orientation and, by a stroke of luck, I read and heard about KAOS GL, the first Turkish GLBT organization founded in Ankara in 1994. I immediately sought it out and became one of the first two female members sometime in 1995.
Being a law student, I was assigned by the group to read about and expound on homophobia and the Turkish laws which, believe me, I undertook with a missionary zeal. My findings and assessments were published in KAOS magazine in 1996.
What did you find out?
That our laws practically say nothing or ignore homosexuality as a subject except where it applies to the military, where homosexuals and the transgender are not allowed to serve.
That said, there is a real threat to Turkey's GLBT in the way some laws relating to morality and public order are being subjectively or prejudicially enforced and often violently applied to those that do not conform to the norms of the majority. These victims often have no recourse in the eyes of the law.
Can you cite some examples of the cases you handled?
I was one of the original three lawyers that took up pro-bono the cases of the 15 transgender persons who, for several days and nights in 2006, were attacked, beaten and shot at in their own homes by a veritable lynch mob of neighbors. Some were dragged by hair into the streets and those they found in the streets were seriously injured with knives and sticks. Police officers were present in some of the incidents but chose to turn a blind eye to what was happening. This was in Eryaman, a conservative neighborhood of Ankara, and the assault was perpetrated with the aim to drive them out; a blatant case of minority cleansing so to speak. Adding insult to injury, some of the girls were the ones hauled into the police stations and detained for alleged attacks on the police.
When we tried to get those involved to face charges, we encountered a lot of resistance from the prosecutor because he didn’t view the mob's actions as hate crimes and did not take into account the forced expulsion of a group of people from their lawful homes. These cases are ongoing. Unfortunately, I had to pass these to other lawyers when I moved to Istanbul.
Then there was the editor of KAOS himself, Umut Güner, who was indicted in 2006 under a vague statute banning "obscene" materials. While he was eventually acquitted of the pornography charge, that year's press run of the July issue was confiscated. In it were musings of gay writers on the impact of pornography on GLBT lives, the differences between erotic and hard porn- you know, more academic than gratuitous. I am currently involved along with other lawyers in adjudicating the seizure case before the European Court of Human Rights.
I am also in the midst of a high-profile case involving Esmeray, a well-known Istanbul transvestite artist and a local prominent feminist figure. We both work for AMARGI, the women’s cooperative which runs a bookshop and café in Beyoglu. I’m naturally representing her in court since I accompanied her when she filed the complaint at the police headquarters. This case attracted the international press and Human Rights Watch when it was first reported in Taraf Gazetesi.
What happened to her?
She was on the way home when some police agents stopped her in the vicinity of her house. They were checking identity cards, a regular occurrence in urban areas in this country. For no apparent reason other than perhaps the fact that she was a transgender person, she was badly beaten by those agents.
_________________________________________________________
Yasemin Öz runs (all alone, we might add!) the hot line www.kaosgl.org where she dispenses online legal advice and assistance to the GLBT community. Because of her regular day job, however, she cannot provide legal representation to everyone who needs it but she's happy to make referrals to some of her lawyer friends. She can also be reached at yasemin@kaosgl.org or personally at AMARGI Book Shop and CafÈ, Katip Mustafa Çelebi Mah. Tel Sok. No: 16 Beyoğlu-Istanbul / Turkey phone : 00 90 212 251 01 54 E-mail : Web Site : www.amargi.org.tr