TR — Metris, Instabul. Turkish transgender activists are up in arms over the plight of an inmate serving out a lengthy sentence in men’s prison who has twice gone on hunger strike and cut off his genitalia in a bid to force authorities’ hand at providing him ‘gender-transition’ plastic surgery at government expense. While decrying the conditions of the inmate under hashtags #BuseyeSesVer and #BuseninSesiOlalım, trans activists have continually pushed back against proposed law that seeks to establish dedicated prison wings for the protection of vulnerable transgender-identifying and gay inmates.
According to the nation’s LGBTQ+ press, Buse Aydın was imprisoned at the age of 22 for “political reasons” related to “separatism.” In 2013, after nearly two decades years in prison, Aydın decided he was in two prisons at once: a high-security prison in Tekirdag, and “the wrong body.”
He decided: “I want to be set free from the prison in my body.” Aydın was moved to a single cell for his safety, but told fellow transgender-identifying confidante Diren Çoşkun, with whom he once shared a cell, that he wanted to be transferred to women’s prison.
A court and psychiatric institution found that Aydın should be provided the surgery. However, the 6th Specialized Board of Forensic Medicine, after initially declaring Aydın “was in transsexual form and gender transition is suitable for her mental health,” told the Prosecutor’s Office on follow up that “gender transition” surgery is not categorized in the group of surgeries that are of vital importance or urgency. The Ministry of Health (MOH) stated that such surgery is for “purposes of aesthetics,” and would be performed only if Aydın paid for it. Aydın’s lawyer Eren Keskin slammed the MOH’s refusal to fund the plastic surgery as “anti-Constitutional” discrimination against the provision that “Everyone is equal.”
Aydın launched a hunger strike in July 2018. A tribunal ruled in Aydın’s favor, and he ended the hunger strike after 38 days. When the decision was not applied, he vowed on January 31, 2019 to “fast until death.” Aydın ceased the “death fast” on February 20 when the Human Rights Association petitioned the United Nations on his behalf.
In August, Aydın severed his penis, an act not unheard of amongst transgender-identifying inmates, including those serving time for such crimes as rapes of women and children or murder, who are not provided taxpayer-funded surgery and transfer to women’s prison on their specified timeline.
Aydın was transferred from Tekirdağ F-type Prison to a rehabilitation center of Metris prison in Instabul. Doctors appeared not to know what to do with him:
I went to Samatya hospital. Urology was not interested in me. The doctor told me ‘this is the first time I have seen a transsexual.’ He fired me. Plastic surgery took care of me. I was examined and transferred to Capa hospital. I went to Çapa. Urology didn’t take care of me, transferred me to Andrology. From Andrology to Plastic Surgery, and there, I was transferred back to Urology which referred me to Andrology…
The doctors haven’t spoken to me. They tried to figure out the situation, only talking through the window with the administrator. I found myself still in Andrology.
In the letter, he repeatedly threatened to kill himself “if my plastic surgery as a trans was still prevented.” He closed out with a request for donations to replenish his stock of feminine outfits.
Transgender activist mania over transgender prison life reached a fever pitch in Turkey when it came to public light that the inmate was in a men’s prison and being denied the “right” to plastic surgery on his genitals at government expense. LGBT+ media bewailed existing as “transgender” in a Turkish prison as a “double punishment.”
The primary “oppression” transgender-identifying inmates face, according to DW, is being “addressed by their birth names (deadnames) instead of the female name they’ve given themselves.” Lower on the list was “sexual harassment.” DW provided as an example that an allegation of sexual abuse of a transgender individual by a prison guard in Samsun was dismissed as “consensual sex.” Transgender-identifying inmates also complained of being searched by male guards, rather than the female guards they requested, DW said.
The Turkish government has, since 2014, proposed to set up “pink blocks” – wings intended to guarantee the safety of LGBT+ inmates in Turkish prisons from attacks and discrimination. Such LGBT+ activists as Hilal Basak Demirbas of the Civil Society in the Penal System fought the proposal, arguing that it is an example of the “institutionalization of existing discrimination” that would serve to perpetuate “exclusion of sexual minorities” from society. Dermibas and other activists also oppose placement of LGBT+ inmates in solitary confinement, insisting it is meant for “serious criminals.”
Instead, transgender activists often prefer to transfer men who identify as women to women’s prisons, despite the rising number of transgender-identifying male inmates on record who have raped women in prisons in the UK, US, Canada, Costa Rica and Argentina. In some of the cases, the men raped several female inmates before the stories were made public and prison officials took action, if any. In Argentina, a man impregnated a female prisoner and was granted early prison release to avoid further issue.
It is unclear why the transgender activist community suggests that being regarded and treated as female would protect transgender-identifying males from being raped by prison guards. A report by the Diyarbakır Bar Association found “female prisoners are exposed to violence, including sexual violence, and child prisoners are battered.”
Similarly, it is unclear how being recognized as female would protect transgender-identifying rape victims from accusations that they consented. 26 men who raped a 13-year-old girl had their prison sentences reduced from a mandatory minimum of 10 years to sentences ranging from one to six years after a court decided the child had “consented” to being sold to the teachers, civil servants, village elder and other men whose acts left her with “severe injuries and trauma.” Additionally, the nation’s Supreme Court warned of 3,000 recorded cases in Turkey of men marrying their rape and sexual abuse victims to evade legal punishment. The practice affects girls as young as five. A girl who was kidnapped and raped by three men saw charges against the three withdrawn when one of her rapists decided to marry her.
Whether men have the “right” to compel female guards to conduct physical searches of their bodies if the men say they identify as women is a point of controversy.
LGBTQ+ activists have given little attention to the safety of gay male inmates, who tend to be at least as vulnerable to sexual and physical violence as the transgender-identifying male inmates who receive sole focus of LGBT+ prison campaign efforts.
Aydın is expected to be released in 2036.
Read more on this story
Buse, prisoner trans woman in jail is in danger
Kedistan
She is one of the trans prisoners struggling in prison to get transitional surgery. Sentenced to life imprisonment for “separatism”, she was imprisoned when she was 22 years old, so for 25 years.
Ministry Rejects Gender Transition Surgery of Buse, Saying ‘It is for Aesthetics’
Bianet
Having cut her sexual organ as her gender transition surgery is prevented, trans inmate Buse still struggles to assume her own gender identity.
This article ignores a more important issue.
‘According to the nation’s LGBTQ+ press, Buse Aydın was imprisoned at the age of 22 for “political reasons” related to “separatism.” Continue reading Trans Activists Fight Against Dedicated Wing to Protect Trans, Gay Inmates – But Decry Trans Inmate Misery | Women Are Human. Read more at: https://www.womenarehuman.com/lgbt-activists-fight-against-dedicated-wing-to-protect-trans-gay-inmates-but-decry-trans-inmate-misery.’
So, in prison for about 25 years so far and not due for release before 2036. 40 years for what? “Political reasons” and “Separatism”? What does that mean? What exactly did a 22 year old do that so threatened Turkey’s then authoritarian and now totalitarian government?
Um, yes, of course we ignored that because it has nothing to do with the focus of our website, just as you wouldn’t expect an article about heart disease on a website focused on cancer, despite both being important matters.
Organizations have a particular theme they focus on so they don’t spread themselves too thin. This website’s focus is gender identity and its effects on society and individuals. The totalitarian system we concentrate on here is gender identity. I’m sure you can find or create spaces that concentrate on Turkish politics to discuss whether this man is rightfully imprisoned.
He and the LGBTQ+ articles on him are solely focused on using him as an example of the suffering of trans inmates. The 3 or so that even mention what he is in prison for brush over it in less than a sentence each as “political reasons” or “separatism.” None ask whether he should be there. They are less interested in him than what he represents.
Anyway, when researching inmates in Turkey, I was more sympathetic toward female arrestees forced to confess by beatings of female guards, and threats of being raped into confessing by packs of male prison guards banging to be let in.
This man is dehumanizing women by ‘identifying as a woman’ and using resources of organizations set up for women. I don’t fight for those who fight against me, whether against my humanity and rights as a woman or member of another demographic. He’s using suicide and self-harm as weapons of control, when no one is owed free plastic surgery, regardless of how distressed one feels about one’s appearance. The entitled mind makes rights out of privileges.
I don’t understand why these trans activists are decrying the creation of a wing for LGBTQ prisoners. It would be much safer for them, not that I know what much safer would be in a country like Turkey.
Yeesh!
It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, until you consider that the vast majority of these activists are autogynephiles. The pathology is such that rather than back the sensible proposal to build wings exclusively for LGBTQ prisoners, they would rather cry “Exclusion!” and hope to be made a burden to the female prison population. It is analogous to the rejection of the idea of Third Space public bathrooms here in the West.
Anything less is seen as an affront to the ‘inner woman’ these cats allege they possess and are forever seeking validation of.
Its perfectly logical from their perspective. Creation of a third space would lessen the probability they would be able to get their way into a women’s facility. The fear of violence they purport in male facilities is a fake justification. Like the fear of beatings in men’s toilets. These are ruses to leverage people’s sympathy. Creating a third space actually calls their bluff, and subsequent continued rejection of this option is an admission the above facts are true.
I think a law should be passed that inmates must serve their sentences in the same sex jail as the sex in which they committed their crimes. That would solve the majority of problems for female inmates.
I love how their ‘oppression’ is not being able to force (Turkish, probably Muslim) women to search their male genitals. Because men’s feelings matter more than women’s safety, women’s religious preferences, and women in general.
I mean they keep arguing that the state needs to pay for transition surgery, in prisons and in america the military.
If teh menz want laydee dressup tiemz, they need to not commit crimes, pay for it themselves, and keep it to themselves and not access facilities meant for women and children.
And yeah, Turkish women have it rough enough – I don’t think they need to add ‘men in women’s prisons’ to their burden.
Yes indeed.
These males resort to the familiar behaviour of emotional blackmail to grab sympathy. Meanwhile, the reporting of the violence handed out to the every day experience of women is not even a dot on the horizon; normalised as it has become as the misfortune of being female.
The length these men are prepared to go in having their ‘female’ identity acknowledged knows no end.
Open up a wing purely for men who insist they feel like women. This should certainly be the case for the UK. Not one hot of sympathy do I have for men who insist they are women. The only people who are female are, women!
“I’m going to kill myself if I don’t get the surgery, but please send money because I need new fashionable woman’s outfits.” Rich, eh?
My thoughts exactly 😂.
There are three empty prisons in the UK. They could be used to hold Trans criminals.