The murder of Hande Kader, a transgender woman, has caused an outcry in Turkey’s biggest city Istanbul.
Turkey remains conservative on LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) issues, but on Sunday activists will stage a rare protest in Istanbul,, writes Rengin Arslan of BBC Turkish.
“Hande was one of the nicest people in the world. She was very calm normally but also hyperactive. She always went to the LGBTI marches. She pursued a cause that she felt right until the end.”
Davut Dengiler describes his 23-year-old flatmate, Hande Kader, whose body was found in a forest in Istanbul last week.
Ms Kader, a sex worker, was last seen entering a client’s car one night. Mr Dengiler had hoped she was still alive but he found her body in Istanbul’s morgue for unidentified persons.
“I was about to leave the morgue. I felt a sense of lightness for not having found her there. At the last minute, a doctor there said, ‘There’s also a burned body – look at that as well.’ I did. I told them identifying features. They then looked at the computer, at the report.
The doctor put his hand on my back and gave his condolences. I lost myself,” he said.
He explained Ms Kader’s reaction to the deaths of other trans people: “She would go crazy when trans individuals were killed. She’d be so sad… She had been stabbed and beaten before. This didn’t happen only to Hande. It happens to all of them.”
LGBTI activists protest against violence towards trans people, but the rest of Turkish society rarely reacts.
Under the state of emergency, declared after the failed coup attempt of 15 July, restrictions on demonstrations are in place.
But for the first time, famous figures in Turkey have joined the calls to raise awareness of Ms Kader’s murder and to take part in a demonstration scheduled for Sunday evening in Istanbul.
According to data from the rights group Transgender Europe, Turkey has the highest number of trans murders in Europe.
But “there is no safe country for trans people” as the group’s 2016 report observes.
Ms Kader tried to call attention to trans murders in Turkey and the lack of justice. She was usually in the front at demonstrations.
But it is perhaps the images of Hande Kader that have been shared innumerable times on social media that best explain the trans woman who is still waiting to be buried due to the processes of identification, post mortem, and DNA testing.
In 2015, police had banned the annual LGBTI Pride march in Taksim Square in Istanbul. They tried to disperse the crowds, using water cannon, rubber bullets and pepper spray. But Ms Kader stood stubbornly against the police.
She reproached journalists: “You take pictures but you do not publish them. No-one is hearing our voices.”
Hande Kader’s voice was silenced finally by murder, in a way no one would want to imagine: she was burned.
She earned a living through sex work, always putting her safety at risk. Like other trans individuals forced into prostitution, she worked on the street.
She sought a way out but could not find it.
“She did not like this work,” her close friend Funda said, adding, “but who would like it, anyway?”
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