ANKARA — Cayan Hakiki trimmed their finger nails and scrubbed off the polish last week in order to take Turkish university entrance exams without being hassled, as advocacy groups say LGBT+ people face increasingly open discrimination.
“I didn’t want any problems at the entrance,” Hakiki, 23, told Reuters at home in the capital Ankara. Hakiki identifies as “lubunya” in Turkish, a term that refers to people who identify with LGBT+ culture but for which there is no direct translation.
“We are subject to all kinds of violence from the moment we begin to exist as an LGBTI+ person, whether from people on the street, the government or the poli…
Keep on reading: For Turkey’s LGBT+ community, discrimination said to loom larger