ISTANBUL — A leading Turkish gay rights lobby group vowed Friday to fight a court ruling that ordered its closure after prosecutors accused it of breaching morality and family norms.

A Turkish court closed Istanbul’s only gay rights association on Thursday after the prosecutor said it broke public morality laws.

The prosecutor said that LambdaIstanbul violated a constitutional provision on the protection of the family and an article banning bodies “with objectives that violate law and morality.”

The court’s decision was not final and the association based in Istanbul continues its activities, Baran Ergenc, a member of the association, told Associated Press.

LambdaIstanbul said the ruling was an affront to human rights, vowing to appeal and continue its activities until the higher court rules on the case.

“This is a mistake and we hope that the Appeals Court will correct it,” group lawyer Firat Soyle told AFP.

He pointed at a 2005 decision by an Ankara prosecutor who threw out a similar application against another gay rights advocacy group, KAOS-GL, saying that homosexuality does not amount to immorality.

LambdaIstanbul, set up in 1993, will be the first gay rights association to be closed in the European Union candidate nation.

Homosexuality is legal in Turkey and central Istanbul has a thriving gay night scene, but there are no laws to protect gay men and lesbians from discrimination.

Gays in Turkey say they face social stigma in the Muslim nation with a secular tradition. Turkey’s government has implemented broad reforms in its bid to join the European Union but remains heavily influenced by conservative and religious values.

The court ordered the closure of the group for not eliminating words describing the sexual identities of its members in its official name, Ergenc said.

“If we take out the words lesbian, gay, bisexual and transvestites then it is not an association for them,” Ergenc told Associated Press. “The court found the association’s name in violation of public morality.”

Ergenc said the group was determined to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights if Turkey’s Appeals Court upholds the decision by the local court in Istanbul. It was not clear when the appeals court could make its decision.

The country is embroiled in political uncertainty while a court considers a case that could result in the ruling party being banned.

“We are in a country where a closure case has been opened against the ruling party. The political atmosphere is anti-democratic and it lacks tolerance,” Bawer Cakir, a gay rights activist in LambdaIstanbul, told Reuters.

Turkey’s ruling AK Party faces possible closure in a Constitutional Court case, and 71 members, including Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, could be banned because of alleged anti-secular activities.

Turkish courts can close down political parties that violate fundamental tenets of the country’s constitution which guarantees significant rights to citizens and defines the country as inherently secular. Courts have closed down more than 20 parties in recent decades.

The Constitutional Court agreed in March to take up a case to outlaw the Islamic-rooted ruling party on charges of anti-secular activities.

“This process is continuing on a knife edge. It is still not clear what will happen,” Milliyet newspaper quoted Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan as telling a group of reporters on a flight back from Lebanon.

If the AK Party is outlawed, its members are expected to form a new party, and banned members like Erdogan could run for office as independents.

Alongside the closure case, the Constitutional Court is expected to rule early next month on a case brought by two opposition parties, which challenges the government’s removal of a ban on the use of the Islamic headscarf at universities.

The two cases are linked as the headscarf amendment was seen as the catalyst for the party closure case, the indictment for which is packed with references to the headscarf.

Source: AFP, Reuters, Associated Press via IHT, The News (Pakistan)

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