Grassroots Literacies: Lesbian and Gay Activism and the Internet in Turkey

1: Legato in Turkey: Literacy, Media, and Global Sexualities

1 Legato in Turkey Literacy, Media, and Global Sexualities In summer 2003, while collecting data for this research project in Istanbul, Turkey during the globally celebrated Gay Pride Week, I joined a screening of Stonewall (1995), a feature film about the 1969 riots at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York City. For many, the Stonewall riots marked the beginning of the gay rights movement in the United States. The screening took place at the headquarters of Lambda Istanbul, an LGBT1 advocacy organization, on the fifth floor of a building tucked away on a bustling side street in Beyoglu, a crowded, labyrinthine district of Istanbul. A sturdy cast-iron door, on which—before the doorbell was activated—people knocked fiercely so that those inside could hear, opened that day into a room full of white plastic chairs neatly organized in rows facing a TV and a VCR that played the film in English, with Turkish subtitles. The room was brimming with people who watched the film as they ate, among other items, delicious dolma (stuffed grape leaves) and börek (savory pastry) ordered for the occasion. Most of the attendees had learned of the screening through announcements on various community media, including the mailing lists of Legato2 (Lezbiyen-Gay Topluluğu [Lesbian and Gay Association])3 . As an Internet-based collegiate student group, Legato engaged in activism from the mid-1990s to summer 2008 to establish officially recognized LGBT student clubs, similar to those in U.S. institutions of higher education, in Turkish colleges and universities. This moment is a fitting opening for this book’s examination of grassroots literacies, lesbian and gay activism, and the Internet in Turkey because it exemplifies the many community literacy events co-organized by Legato. 1 2 GRASSROOTS LITERACIES As a literacy event4 , the screening exposed participants to multiple representations of homosexuality, community, activism, and discourses of gender and sexuality, through an audiovisual text that exercised, in this case, their sexuality-related literacy. In addition, the screening strengthened attendees’ community literacy and bolstered their participation in Legato, a collegiate Internet-mediated lesbian and gay student association, and Lambda Istanbul, a noncollegiate LGBT advocacy organization. Founded in 1993, Lambda Istanbul was one of the two major noncollegiate LGBT advocacy organizations established in Turkey in the first half of the 1990s. The other, Kaos GL (“kaos” is the Turkish spelling of “chaos”), was founded in 1994 in Ankara. Both organizations are still active and influential today, and they have been strongly engaged in creating an LGBT community and advocating for LGBT rights in Turkey. The inception of Legato in the second half of the 1990s can be traced to efforts by Kaos GL to recruit college students to initiate activism on college campuses in Ankara. These efforts included literacy events that were eventually replicated by Legato on university campuses across Turkey, such as film screenings, discussion groups, and initiatives and demonstrations criticizing negative representations of homosexuality and demanding recognition for lesbian and gay student groups. Consequently, in this book, I focus on Legato from the perspective of literacy and explore the centrality of the rhetorics of sexuality to its collegiate, Internet-mediated lesbian and gay activism in Turkey. The following overview covers the period from Legato’s inception in 1996 to Kaos GL’s September/October 2010 publication about collegiate lesbian and gay activism and illustrates Legato’s origins and history as an Internet-mediated collegiate group. Legato’s development was inextricably intertwined with not only the local LGBT advocacy organizations and their legacy of community organizing, but also the Internet, which was essential to its existence for two main reasons: (1) The Internet enabled Legato to become a national organization that spread across Turkey from its birthplace in Ankara; and (2) due to a lack of official recognition and support from universities, Legato was a largely Internet-based student group, with a Web site and a number of online groups. Therefore, the overview focuses on important developments in collegiate activism and the use of the Internet. Legato Overview5 By the mid-1990s, the Turkish LGBT population had formed subcultural institutions in Turkey’s two largest cities, Istanbul and Ankara, and Kaos 3 LEGATO IN TURKEY GL in Ankara was engaged in significant local social and political activities involving lesbian and gay university students. The first Legato group was founded in 1996 when several students who met at the Kaos GL meetings decided...