Kaos GL and Women for Women's Human Rights (WWHR)- New Ways held an online workshop to discuss the report "How did the Diyanet's khutbah reflect on the media?".
As Women for Women's Human Rights - New Ways Association and Kaos GL Association, we met in Istanbul between November 8-9 2019 at the 2 day Solidarity Keeps Alive Workshop in Istanbul to discuss how to fight together as feminists and LGBTI+ activists against right-wing conservative attacks that have become more and more organized over the recent years and describing itself as anti-gender movements.
We have organized the meeting, where we discussed topics such as media, law, activism, local politics/organization, academia/education, international advocacy, within the scope of the “One Day, One Struggle” campaign on November 9th; an international joint action day designated by The Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (CSBR), of which both of our associations are members.
After this workshop, we continued our cooperation and solidarity as two associations in the workshop's thematic areas. We continued to say “Solidarity Keeps Us Alive” in line with the road map we created for ourselves in the workshop. One concrete example of this was the "How did the Diyanet's khutbah reflect on the media?" workshop that we held on October 22. In this online workshop, 25 journalists, writers, feminists, and LGBTI+ activists discussed media reflections regarding the Diyanet's Friday khutbah, which targeted LGBTI+'s, people living with HIV and anyone who had extramarital sexual relationships, especially women. Read more via KAOS
Outcome Report of "How did the Diyanet's khutbah reflect on the media?” Workshop
“When we examine the news and columns published in this process, enmity strategy stands out, especially by the media close to the government. When we look at the articles, we see that the subject is discussed mainly in speculative, baseless sentences. Conspiracy theories about everything can be easily circulated around an artificial "enemy" and anyone connected to or allegedly connected to it. Rather than rationality, we see journalism that is intended to create instant, negative, strong emotions. In the debate around the Istanbul Convention, it is also evident that a separate strategy has been developed in the media to show LGBTI+'s as hostile.
Opposition and hostility against LGBTI+'s in the media is not accidental or coincidental. Both in this report and in our other monitoring activities, we notice that the policies of enmity in the media have been put into effect very quickly in parallel with the statements of public authorities, ministers, the President and senior public officials against LGBTI+'s.
Among the most frequently used strategies to show LGBTI+'s as hostile are discrediting, showing LGBTI+ organizations and LGBTI+'s as "marginal" and "elements that are alien to society", marking LGBTI+ as "Western" to turn the issue into an external one, transforming LGBTI+'s into a polarization tool stand out.” Read the full report