TurkishDailyNews.com – ŞAFAK TİMUR
Generations in Turkey grew up with the fabulous voice and around 200 compositions of the classical Turkish music performer Zeki M?ren, who dared to sing with a man’s body in women’s clothes and make-up in 1950’s Turkey. Turks called their first Golden Record awarded artist the sun of art, never openly referring to him as gay but rather as extraordinary. M?ren was not the only one with different sexual tendencies and was followed by B?lent Ersoy, whose approved talent in the same art competed from time to time with her transsexual identity.
The children of this country grew up unaware of the existence of gays and lesbians, but they were condemned by their parents -who rarely talk about sex- for not enjoying Ersoy or M?ren’s music. Just until the development of Turkey’s own gay-lesbian-transgender movement, extraordinary sexual tendencies continued to be lived behind four walls, as reflected in Ersoy’s choice to call the ban on her for taking stage because of her transsexual identity after 1980 military coup as the internal affairs of our country, in an interview abroad.