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| The Grand Turk |
| University Cancels Panel on Gays Deemed 'Immoral' by Turkey's Hezbollah |
| 2014-04-22 |
| [An Nahar] A Turkish university cancelled a panel on gay rights after it came under harsh criticism from Islamic turbans who branded the event as "immoral", a liberal daily reported Monday. The Ilke news agency, which is close to Turkey's Islamist Hezbollah movement made up of ethnic Kurds, condemned the timing of the conference, which had been planned for last Thursday, because it coincided with a week of events dedicated to the birth of Prophet Mohammed, the newspaper Radikal reported. Ilke, based in the Kurdish-majority southeastern city of Diyarbakir, also challenged the organizer, assistant professor of architecture Levent Senturk, to prove that he was not a homosexual, the report said. Neither the university nor the agency was immediately available for comment. After the conference was cancelled, 12 academics from the Artuklu University in Mardin, another southeastern city where the event was to have been held, released a joint statement saying: "Our scientific events should not be prevented by hate speech, defamation or ostracism." "Our academic events never insult any kind of beliefs, ethnicities, languages, religions or life styles," the statement said. Unlike other Mohammedan countries, same-sex relationships are not illegal in Turkey, a formally secular nation where prostitution and sex-change operations are legal. |
| Posted by:Fred |