Turkey Bans Gay Pride For Seventh Year In A Row | Here are the other countries that oppose it

The march in Istanbul will be held anyway: “They will not be able to prevent LGBT people from gathering and making themselves visible”, say the organizers. In recent days, the police intervened to disperse citizens and stop some of the activists. It is not the first time in Turkey: until 2014, Pride brought thousands of people peacefully to the streets, but from the following year the march was banned and the repression of the police was very harsh.

Turkey is one of the few states in the Middle East to consider homosexuality legal. The Conservative government of Erdogan is taking many steps backwards on the subject of civil rights. However, his government is not alone in banning the LGBT Pride March year after year. Among the countries of United Nations there are 69, that is, those who consider relations between persons of the same sex a crime.

In some of these however, as in Tunisia, it is above all a formality and the demonstrations are held anyway. In others 37 African states participation in Pride is strongly opposed. The most decisive, and often bloody, actions take place in this sense Nigeria, Kenya e Uganda.

In Asia I’m 21 countries where it is illegal to wave the rainbow flag. Among them some important political and commercial partners of the West, such as Saudi Arabia ed United Arab Emirates, but also Iran, Afghanistan e Yemen, a state in which a Pride procession has never been held, even unofficially. In all these, even in the apparently more modern ones, the Sharia, the Islamic sacred law, which prohibits any kind of homosexual behavior.

Further east, there is the opposition to the march of the military regime of Myanmar and the North Korean one of Kim Jong-un. Also in China, where until 2019, for ten years, one of the most representative parades in the world was held, lo Shangai Pride, the 2020 event was canceled. The same fate has struck this year.

In Europe the situation is not much better. There Russiadespite repeated appeals from the European Court of Human Rights, the court of Moscow in 2012 it banned LGBTI + walking for the next 100 years. Pride is also illegal a St.Pietroburgo. In Poland instead the prohibition, imposed on Warsaw in 2005, it was declared illegal, while in Hungarydespite the controversial anti-LGBTI + law and the conservative attitude of the Orban government, the demonstrations are held regularly.

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