We are openly organizing against all systems and powers that colonize, exploit, and control our lives; that try to discipline us and erase us. We reject the limits this order assigns to us. We grow courage, solidarity, and resistance instead of fear.
As Istanbul LGBTİ+ Pride Week, while organizing Pride Week and the Pride March, while struggling not to abandon the streets, and while taking on the task of turning the Pride March each year not only into a celebration of our existence but also into an open line of struggle, we announce this year’s theme: AÇIK S’AÇIK.
We are open, because we refuse to hide.
We are shameless, because we do not fit into the morality of your order.
We are openly shameless, because our existence exceeds your limits and spills beyond them.
We, lubunyas who always find a way and seep through the cracks, have not bowed down to you. We will not bow down. We will open up and spill out.
We know that sexualities, gender expressions, and identities are not protected by permissions received from the state, institutions, or the 12th president, but through struggle. That is why we call out: everyone who lives without fear, without hiding, and without bowing down is part of this struggle. From here, we call out to everyone: the LGBTİ+ struggle is not only the struggle of us LGBTİ+ people; it is the struggle of women, the working class, Alevis, Armenians, Kurds, and all oppressed peoples. The LGBTİ+ struggle is one of the shared lines of defense of every struggle, and one of the most resistant struggles of these lands. This year, we invite everyone to become part of this resistance, to stand with our struggle, and we declare once again: we will not step back from united struggle. We will not step back from going to March 8, from attending the commemoration of the Suruç massacre, from standing with the Saturday Mothers, from going to Newroz, from commemorating the Madımak massacre, from supporting the struggle of the working class, from demanding justice for Hrant, from remembering the genocide in Palestine, from reminding everyone of Roboski, or from demanding justice for animals.
We see the atmosphere of despair in which you try to imprison us under the names of “general morality,” “protection of the family,” and “the year of the great family.” Against these institutional policies, we overflow from the norms, doors, barricades, and bars through which you try to confine us. With this resistance and commitment, we carry our bodies, desires, and anger to the streets. We are here not only to be seen and heard, but to shake the life cycle you deem fit for us. Throughout the year, we grow our strength and organize a queer and trans march and week together.
In this age where war, genocide, hatred, and denial are rising, we do not remain silent. In the face of fascism, we do not settle for merely surviving; we insist on not bowing down. WE OPEN UP, WE SPILL OUT.
The tools of domination used by powers are interconnected. Borders, power, and bodies are produced over and over again. Colonialism, capitalism, imperialism, racism, patriarchy, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, speciesism, and ecological destruction do not operate separately; they operate together. We are against this entire order.
We do not allow our LGBTİ+ identities to be used to legitimize wars. Pinkwashing is not freedom; it is bloody propaganda. We will not become tools for the legitimacy of murderous states.
As Istanbul LGBTİ+ Pride Week, we stand with the resistance of LGBTİ+ people all around the world; we demand justice for all lives that are exploited, violated, and devalued.
We have not forgotten our lubunya friends in exile, who cannot return even for the funerals of their families, friends, and loved ones; our lubunya friends who, even after losing their partners, are forced to act as if they lost only a friend; our friends whom we had to bury in cemeteries for the abandoned. We have not forgotten anything that has been done to us, we will not forget, and we say openly: our lives are unique and equal, and we will not stop until we have this.
We will continue to tend to our wounds with anger and struggle, and even when we are afraid at times, we will continue to stand in solidarity with one another.
Our LGBTİ+ struggle for existence is not secondary; as we have said, it is within every struggle, at the center of them. We are not waiting for anyone to give us freedom or a future. We want our freedom, and we will take it. Our struggle is the struggle to reclaim our lives stolen by this system, which is rotting further through deep poverty, rising racism, hostility toward migrants, homophobia, and transphobia. This is an uprising, and uprisings are openly shameless.
Our demands are not up for negotiation. Unconditional access to health care, housing, mental health services, and legal support is a right for LGBTİ+ people, especially disabled, intersex, and trans people. Despite the medical and bureaucratic obstacles being imposed on transition processes; despite penalties justified through “general morality” and “obscenity”; despite detention and repression mechanisms, we LGBTİ+ people will not accept domination over our lives and bodies.
“Our visibility, from our smallest personal expression to our joy of life, from our unstoppable anger against injustice to our unshakable resistance, is an open declaration of our existence in every form.”
We want a world where survival is not a privilege; where states and patriarchy do not decide whose life is valuable and livable; where life expectancy is not determined by identity. We want a world where sex work is not criminalized, labor is not exploited, LGBTİ+ people can live and grow old freely, and even our right to mourn is not subjected to control.
Some call this utopia. We call it inevitable.
We do not ask for permission.
We do not adapt.
We do not retreat.
We once again honor the memory of the comrades in struggle we have lost. We send our longing and greetings to all lubunya friends who had to leave this geography, who we know did not migrate without reason, and whose eyes and ears remain with us. Surely, one day, we will meet again!
