Indeed, I am prepared to wager a modest amount that many beyond Turkey's frontiers are far more concerned about someone called Halil Ibrahim Dinçdağ.Who? Mr. Dinçdağ's name, admittedly, is not bandied about as frequently as Michael Jackson's, but it does have a growing currency in the blogosphere. Some readers in Turkey can be forgiven for scratching their heads over his identity since his story has been underreported in large sections of the domestic press, including our own. In some papers, his name has not been mentioned at all, which is a pity, because his tale is interesting in so many different ways.
Mr. Dinçdağ was an aspiring football referee in the local Trabzon league whose life was suddenly turned upside down after he was “outed” for being gay. Homosexuality is still grounds for a medical exemption from military service in Turkey and somehow, the football authorities got wind that he had been excused. If he wasn't good enough for the army, he wasn't good enough for them, they decided, and refused to renew Mr. Dinçdağ's license. However, like any determined sportsman, the 33-year-old refused to admit defeat.
He went on the attack and accused the Football Federation of the very unprofessional foul of homophobia. His willingness to speak out was all the more impressive since he comes from a conservative family who apparently didn't know their son was gay and might have been expected to be embarrassed by their abrupt discovery of their son's sexual orientation. They, however, stood loyally and publicly by him. Mr. Dinçdağ's colleagues, his fellow referees, also spoke out in his defense. The Football Federation has clearly been embarrassed by the attention the case has received, and, according to reports, has hinted that the way would be open for him to have his license reinstated. At the same time they have been maliciously suggesting that he wasn't all that good a ref to begin with.
The story has resonance outside Turkey because there is a natural suspicion, even prejudice, that Muslim majority societies have a hard time tolerating people whose lifestyles are outside the norm. It is this portrayal of an essential intolerance in Islam which many Muslims themselves characterize as Islamophobia. That is why Mr. Dinçdağ's case is so newsworthy. His dignified behavior cuts across the grain. His dismissal reveals institutionalized prejudice against homosexuality in Turkey, but the reaction to this prejudice also reveals a rich vein of tolerance in society and a commitment to change.
This shouldn't come as a great surprise. It wasn't all that long ago that the Islamic world was accusing the West of intolerance. “The Age of Beloveds: Love and the Beloved in Early-Modern Ottoman and European Culture and Society,” a recent and well-reviewed study of love imagery in Ottoman literature by Walter Andrews and Mehmet Kalpaklı, identifies the all too obvious homoerotic strand that dominates Ottoman lyric poetry. Philip Mansel, in his detailed and engaging history of İstanbul, describes a city far more accepting of homosexuality than the West -- a tradition that dates from the conquest of Fatih Sultan Mehmet, who promised his warriors both good looking women and boys. He quotes a Venetian edict from 1577 which forbade boys under the age of 16 from traveling to Constantinople, lest “they turn Turk.” Nineteenth century travelers also report a society which displayed none of the prudishness of today's Football Federation.
That Mr. Dinçdağ's case has been greeted with an embarrassed silence in the conservative press in Turkey is, however, a source of concern. Do a search on homophobia (homofobi) in the archives, and you will be lucky to turn up more than a single entry. The search for Islamofobi turns up page after page after page. No one seems to understand that there are no prizes to be won for confronting other people's prejudices. You win respect by confronting your own.
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