Queer in Kurdistan: LGBT+ community weighed down by societal pressure

SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region — On April 1, Sulaimani security forces (Asayish) rounded up a group of men in Sarchinar, a neighborhood in the city where people of any sexual orientation can pick up sex workers.

The night of the arrests, operation supervisor Pshtiwan Bahadin told local media that the security forces had started a joint operation to arrest people they suspected of being LGBT+, and went on to use derogatory terms to describe the community.

In a statement published a day later, the Asayish said the arrests of the men in Sarchinar were part of a crackdown on prostitution in the city and not directed against any particular group of people. But activists fighting for the rights of the LGBT+ community, made up of people who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or other gender or sexual identities, slammed the approach. They claimed the operation had targeted gay men first and foremost.

A few kilometers away from Sarchinar, murals meant to encourage coexistence and acceptance of the LGBT+ community have repeatedly been vandalized after nightfall. Members of the LGBT+ community in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region are often persecuted by security forces and conservatives. They are subject to arrest, verbal abuse, and even murder. A crackdown on LGBT+ people in Iraq in 2009 saw deaths that probably number "in the hundreds," a well-informed official at the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) told Human Rights Watch (HRW). The murders were widely believed to have been conducted by Iran-backed militias. Amir Ashour, founder of IraQueer, said that data collected by his LGBT+ rights organization found there to be 220 LGBT+ killings in Iraq in the year 2017 alone – including in the Kurdistan Region, which officials tout as a haven for diversity and coexistence.

Coming out

Lavin*, from Sulaimani, does not identify with any particular gender or sexual orientation, and uses they/them pronouns. Lavin told Rudaw English that they had tried to test the waters and see if they would be able to come out to their family. The 24-year-old decided to use the Quranic story of Lot, in which God rained down stones on the people of the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because of acts like homosexuality, as an example.

“I once told my mom to tell me the story of Lot, and then asked her what would she do if I was like them … she said ‘I would take you to a river, kill you, and leave your body there,’” Lavin recalled with sadness in their voice.

Though some family members acknowledge Lavin’s sexuality, they consider it to be pathological. “My aunts and my sister know, but there are still times they call me sick,” Lavin said.

Family and honor are two of the main pillars of Kurdish society. Any damage to a family’s reputation can see a member disowned for the sake of honor, or even killed. To many, failure to marry and have children disrupts social order. To be of any sexual orientation other than straight can not only put that person’s life in danger, but damage a family’s reputation. It prevents their siblings or other relatives from living their life to the fullest and adds even more pressure on people who already have a lot to lose by going public with their sexuality.

“I was scared to come out because it could have ruined my sister's chances of getting married, or even my family’s reputation in the community,” said Saman Tahsin*, a 30-year-old gay man from Sulaimani who moved to the United States as a refugee in 2019.

Anti-LGBT sentiments are rife in Kurdistan, and held by some of its most educated and powerful. Omar Gulpi, a Kurdistan Justice Group (Komal) MP, filed a lawsuit in February against Rasan Organization, a non-profit advocating for LGBT+ rights in the Kurdistan Region. He called it a “sickness”.

Bekhal Abubakir, a lecturer from the English Department at the University of Sulaimani, called homosexuality “a sociopolitical movement.” "As far as I have researched, no one is born a homosexual,” Abubakir told Rudaw’s Bestoon Khalid on April 9.

“It is not related to the genes, but rather picked up from the surrounding of that person, and they need a lot of therapy, treatment, and counselling."

False equivalence

Levels of discrimination that gay men in Kurdistan face can vary. For men perceived as effeminate because of their build, their facial features, the length of their hair, or the clothes they wear, abuse can come from the most everyday actions. It is common to walk through the alleys of Sulaimani’s bazaar and hear middle-aged men shouting abuse, sometimes sexually explicit, at boys and men in their teens and twenties that look effeminate.

For Zhiar Ali, a Kurdish LGBT+ activist based in Sulaimani, the added level of discrimination more effeminate gay men face is because femininity is associated with weakness. Men are oftentimes denied housing by real estate brokers simply for "looking gay or sounding gay" – often targeting men who look less masculine. 

An Iraqi military officer who spoke to HRW of the 2009 crackdown on LGBT+ people linked what happened to men who look more feminine. “About a year ago, when the violence was a bit subdued and security was more or less under control, gay men, especially effeminate ones, started going out to cafes in groups and being obviously gay. I heard there was a lot of anger over it, and this is one of the things that sparked the recent campaign."

Fear and hatred of effeminate men have meant that some have been killed simply for looking gay – even if the evidence pointed towards them being straight. Karar Nushi, an Iraqi man famous on social media in part for his long blonde locks, was found dead on a busy street in Baghdad in 2017, not long after receiving death threats for his modelling. “There has not been real information saying that Karar was gay,” IraQueer’s Ashour told The Daily Beast in 2017. “It’s an assumption whoever killed him made based on how he looked.” Despite the often life-threatening danger LGBT+ people face, activists both queer and straight are fighting back.

Among them is 21-year-old Zhiar, who founded the Yeksani (Equality) initiative and is a former member of the LGBT+ advocacy group Rasan. Yeksani offers online mental health support to LGBT+ people.

"The LGBT+ community are deprived of many of the basic rights that a straight person has," Zhiar told Rudaw English at a busy cafe in Sulaimani. He spoke with volume and confidence; cafe goers would turn around and stare at times as he discussed a deeply taboo subject with no fear in his voice. "Five years ago, the cases of LGBT+ people being kicked out of their homes or being murdered was much higher than it is now,” Zhiar said, though progress has come about because of the perseverance of activists, not the help of the powerful.

A few organizations in the Kurdistan Region provide safe shelters for LGBT+ people who have been ostracized by their families or have chosen to leave their homes, but more are needed, Zhiar said. “We have a lot more cases that need a safe place to stay, and the current capacity is not nearly enough.” People who attack the community claim that they are “protecting” Kurdish society, but Zhiar wonders what exactly they are being protected from.

“This is not a virus that could be spread, this is not an illness that could be spread – this is not something that could be prevented by denying their existence and their rights to live,” he said.

Seeking refuge

For many LGBT+ people in the Kurdistan Region, escaping the suffocating repression and scrutiny they feel at home leaves them with no choice but to head abroad, but it is a difficult process. Most refugees and asylum seekers seek temporary sanctuary in neighboring countries, where they take in a brief sigh of relief. But things are different for LGBT+ refugees, as many of these countries are also notoriously hostile to them.

“Intolerance towards LGBTI individuals is also pervasive in a number of countries of first asylum and LGBTI asylum‐seekers and refugees may be under a continuous threat of human rights abuses due to discriminatory laws and hostile societal attitudes,” according to a UN refugee agency resettlement assessment tool for LGBT+ refugees last updated in 2019.

"In some contexts, LGBTI refugees struggle to access the services available to other refugees such as health care, education, self-reliance assistance as well as registration and refugee status determination. Local integration options in the first country of asylum thus may be limited or prove to be non-existent."

According to a UNHCR study from December 2015, almost 80 percent of the agency’s 106 offices indicated that they prioritize LGBTI refugees for resettlement.

Some, like Saman, are lucky enough to make it to a country they can feel safe in.

“I was bullied a lot back when I lived in Sulaimani,” Saman said. “When I was living there, I had a hard time. Sometimes when I would go to the gym, cars would stop and verbally abuse me.” Things have improved for him since he moved to the US, thanks to the assistance provided by the UN. “It’s way better here. I feel safe, I feel like myself,” he said.

The idea of one day returning to Kurdistan is distant for Saman. He said that it is hard to explain to people belonging to a culture heavily influenced by religion that it is normal to be homosexual, for the culture does not allow it.

“I sometimes think of going back only to see my family. As to living there, I don’t see myself ever going back. Not with everything going on and not with the society there.”

LGBT+ people who are still in Kurdistan are defiant. They “will always exist, as long as straight people exist,” Zhiar said. ”No matter how many times you try to push hate campaigns or murders – they will still find a way to live."

*Names have been changed to protect identities