Turkish volleyball star becomes target of homophobic slur

IZMIR, Turkey — Crushed under a tumbling lira, crippling inflation and rising taxes, many Turks enjoyed a moment of exhilaration when the national women’s volleyball team overpowered China on Sunday to claim their first-ever FIVB Nations League title. 

But the victory turned into a bitter domestic fight for women and LGBTQ rights after homophobic slurs against the team’s star player by arch-conservative daily Yeni Akit. While most newspapers’ headlines congratulated the team fondly known as “Sultans of the Net,” on July 18 Yeni Akit posted a photo of Ebrar Karakurt, the team’s opposition hitter, with the headline, “Here is the victory message of our national disgrace.” 

The photo shows Karakurt with the VNL gold medal around her neck. The six-foot-five volleyballer, who has cropped hair with bright pink highlights, quotes a stanza from Ismet Ozel, “Around my neck are jewels made of the shame of those who judge me — the gold medal." By quoting Ozel, a political poet who has turned from Marxism to Islam for inspiration, Karakurt made a thinly veiled jab at the Islamist conservatives who have attacked her for being a lesbian ever since she rose to national fame in 2021. 

Yeni Akit has previously denounced Karakurt, often diving into her social media posts to make news about her relationships and chastising her for being “a homosexual deviant flaunting a perverse lifestyle.” 

Last month, the newspaper published an item on her breakup with her girlfriend and asked the National Volleyball Federation to intervene — presumably to kick her off the national team. “How can they remain quiet when she is normalizing this perversity, particularly at the holy month of Ramadan?” the daily said. A source close to Karakurt told Al-Monitor that while many of her friends considered the reports legally actionable, she had refrained from suing the paper. 

The National Volleyball Federation has traditionally stood behind Karakurt, describing her as a top-notch professional. “The rest is nobody’s business,” a spokesman for the federation said when she was first targeted by conservatives in 2021. As Yeni Akit renewed its attack on Karakurt this week, the federation responded by posting a victorious photo of the volleyball star on its Twitter account and calling her “the best scorer.” 

While homosexuality is not illegal in Turkey, homophobia has sharply grown, partly due to the anti-gay discourse of the government. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) members fanned anti-LGBTQ sentiment during the elections, claiming that the opposition represented anti-Turkish values while AKP represented family values. Erdogan himself has been particularly disdainful toward lesbians, calling them “lesbians-schlesbians” and asking young people to ignore them. The Istanbul Pride march — once the largest gathering of the Middle East and southern Europe — has been banned since 2016. While the police suppress any activity that supports gay rights, conservative anti-LGBTQ protests are tolerated. ILGA-Europe, an advocacy group, ranks Turkey and Azerbaijan at the bottom of its list on LGBTQ equality.  

Karakurt retaliated against Yeni Akit and its supporters with a cartoon posted on her Twitter account Tuesday. “This is a day that I bounce back outside the volleyball court,” she tweeted. The post got 4.5 million views and nearly 160,000 likes. 

Opposition politicians rallied to Karakurt’s side. Ozgur Ozel, a senior member of the opposition Republican People’s Party, called on public prosecutors to take action against the Yeni Akit — which reflects the views of ruling AKP and its even more conservative political allies, Huda-Par and New Welfare Party — for inciting hatred and discrimination. The two political parties want new laws to close down LGBTQ clubs and associations and restrict content on media and TV series.  

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ministers steered clear of the debate around Karakurt. Erdogan and the First Lady Emine Erdogan posted their congratulations to the team.  

For Asli Alpar, a cartoonist and an activist for LGBTQ and women’s rights, the volleyball victory was also a victory against growing misogyny. “Despite all misogynists and political Islamists who argue that women cannot travel, work, or go to a co-education school, women have won,” she tweeted as she posted a cartoon of a female volleyballer. 

Alpar's tweet referred to the recent comments in favor of opening girls' schools by Turkey’s new education minister Yusuf Tekin. "Parents should have the option to send their daughters to girls' schools or to coeducational schools if they prefer," the minister said in a televised interview. 

The opposition fumed at the remarks, saying that since education was compulsory until 13, the state’s duty was to ensure that parents send their children to school. “Prioritizing gender-segregated education as a means to increase girls' enrollment rates is not a solution,” said Green Left Party deputy Mehmet Zeki Irmez.