'Queering Sexualities in Turkey' by Cenk Özbay

'Queering Sexualities in Turkey: Gay Men, Male Prostitutes and the City' by Cenk Özbay (IB Tauris, 194 pages, £64)

Since 2014, controversy has erupted every summer around the LGBT Pride March in Istanbul. The event had taken place at the end of June without incident for 13 years running, but for the past three years it has been banned by the authorities citing security concerns and public morals.

From an almost standing start, LGBT rights campaigners in Turkey have built up impressive momentum. But no good deed goes unpunished; the movement's increased visibility has led to an inevitable backlash from the conservative majority. The annual police crackdown on the Pride March is the clearest example of the general darkening atmosphere. From being an unwelcome but essentially harmless curiosity, LGBT rights campaigners are now often characterized as a nefarious Western imposition aiming to destroy the unity of the nation. 

Sabancı University Associate Professor Cenk Özbay's "Queering Sexualities in Turkey" was researched and written in the early 2000s, largely before LGBT issues became part of public consciousness. Its subject has also changed significantly in the years since: The largely analogue world of gay bars and hangouts that Özbay describes has almost entirely migrated to smart phones apps. But the book remains a fascinating window into the interaction between class and sexuality.

Özbay's research focused on the little-known underworld of male sex work in Istanbul. He interviewed dozens of subjects to draw a panorama of this landscape. The subject, he suggests, brings assumptions about gay behavior, masculinity, and class values into sharp focus. Neither transactional male sex nor homosexuality are criminalized...