Évènements

Recent historical and social scientific accounts of the fraught public emergence of gay identities in Istanbul during recent decades foreground the critical institutional role played by Istanbul Pride, an annual summer march along Istiklal Street. Brutally suppressed in 1993, informally sanctioned in 2003 with the AK Party’s rise to power, and currently in increasingly legal jeopardy, street-level political mobilisation by emergent sexual rights NGOs around this parade is often credited with enabling the development of a vibrant gay nightlife scene along Istiklal Street during the 2000s. This paper argues that grassroots mobilization by sexual rights NGOs did not in fact create the social conditions necessary for the emergence of a gay scene; rather, the institutions of a developing gay scene in the wider nightlife market have created the social conditions necessary for political mobilisation in terms of sexual identity. Based on archival research, oral history, and participant observation in the nightlife market around Istiklal Street, this paper charts the historical process through which changing conventions of “making street” in the area and petty capitalist marketing have prised open public spaces through which gay identities have become able to be institutionally articulated in Istanbul.